Dermarolling »

Sarah Vaughter’s dermaroller test & review

The “original dermaroller” is a patented Swiss invention, and the creators only sell to medical professionals for a reason. These rollers are sold to upmarket beauty clinics as a kind of extortion scheme: “If you don’t want to be sued for patent infriction you have to buy our roller”. Apart from the patent, there is nothing special about these “original” rollers. They’re non-autoclavable plastic disposable dermarollers. All the other rollers are “inferior copies”, if we have to believe the producer of the original – but we wanted to verify this claim.

Of the pirates, there is one (Dr. Roller) claiming to be the “Genuine and Official Derma Rolling System”. It is made in South Korea and because they have a very professional looking website that they advertize heavily, (also with “professional posters” – paid spammers – on forums) their costs have to be recouped by a high purchase price. And then there still is money left for a hefty profit, because all these rollers cost about the same to produce – relatively little. Until recently, Dr. Roller’s only real difference with the other useable “pirates” is that it is in a nice uniform color and has chrome washers on its sides. But we found the perfect copy of Dr. Roller’s dermaroller – at a much lower price.

We purchased eleven different dermarollers and tested them. One was “dead on arrival”: Its needles had penetrated the blister packaging and some were bent. We found that the needles were of textile-grade steel instead of surgical steel, and the handle was too flexible to apply constant pressure. This worst roller in our test pictured above almost looks identical to the second-best roller in our test, roller E! We did not even test this one further or assign it a letter – we wrapped it in Scotch tape and binned it after taking these photo’s.

Note how the needles are in a straight line, instead of “interlinked” or zig-zag. Zig-zag is better, to distribute the pricks more evenly. The three last rollers in our test, labeled H, I and J all have straight lines of needles, and are therefore not recommended. Straight lines are cheaper to manufacture, so some vendors rely on the novice not knowing about this.

The cheapest dermarollers all suffer from the same ailment: Their needles are not made of surgical steel. Model I had one bent needle when it arrived, but one is enough to cause serious skin injury. Think of unhooking a fish the messy way. Its handle is a simple round stick – not ergonomic at all.

Model A is the “original copy”, Dr. Roller. Notice how it looks identical to roller C, our current test winner, closely followed by model E. We preferred (narrow) roller B and C on aesthetic grounds mainly. The narrow B has a narrow head, which is preferable to a wide head with a raised center with less needles. And now about a big problem with ordering dermarollers online: You can’t be sure the roller in the picture is the same as you’ll actually end up with. Also, G’s handle is different from F’s. That handle is too thin and weak to use. There are a great number of rollers out there and new ones pop up literally every week. To make matters worse, the bad copies imitate the good copies so it’s a quite a lottery, regardless of the price of the roller because the same roller can be priced outrageously high on one website, and half that on another site.

But it gets much more confusing. First of all, the cardboard and plastic boxes are usually “generic”, meaning that the dermaroller factory only produces the roller itself, and they buy the boxes from another factory and print shop. This is the case with the many different MT and MTS rollers out there. Rollers D, E and F are examples of that. The look the same but they come from different factories and their workmanship differs enormously depending not only on the factory but also, it seems, on whether the quality control team had a rough night. Our own experience with some of these rollers attests to that. We had to change factory several times until we found a high-quality supplier for our current MT-model roller, roller E. Our best selling models are roller B and C. More about the test criteria later, first more about the total confusion in dermaroller-land:

On the Internet, you can’t even rely on the brand name of the roller! We found three totally different rollers for sale for wildly different prices, all called “ZGTS roller”:

The same for “Medic roller”:

But it gets even stranger – did you see how the lower-left “ZGTS” roller in the first picture looks the same as the lower-left “Medic roller” in the second picture? And did you notice how the right “ZGTS” roller in the first picture looks the same as the bottom-right “Medic” roller in the second picture?  The situation is even worse for the “MT”, “MTS” and “MNS” rollers out there. A dozen factories all calling their rollers by this generic name (“Microneedle therapy”), using whatever plastic and cardboard boxes are available. It took us a couple of years to start to understand this mess of ever changing factories, agents and advertizing. We came to the conclusion that this mess is deliberate – it is done to parasitize on the “good name” of their competitors.

You have to realize that none of the roller factories sells directly to the public. They do not employ English-speaking people. They are just huge SE-Asian plastic gadget factories. Instead, they sell to mostly unscrupulous agents in the region, who’s only objective is to make a quick buck. Again – we burnt our fingers with that too. The agents all sell under different names on eBay and Amazon and on various websites where they promise miracles with their dermaroller. Please keep in mind that the agents are completely clueless and disinterested in regard to skin care or even dermarolling. They are business people, almost always SE Asian males around 25 years of age. And then there are the thousands of sites made by anyone interested in the financial side of this market – none of them actually interested in helping people with skin issues – reselling those many dozens of different rollers of questionable quality and even more questionable value for money. Most rollers are ridiculously overpriced.

Test criteria:

We soaked all rollers for a night in Ethanol. We put all rollers in boiling water for a few minutes. We tried to pull out the needles with pliers. We vigorously rolled each roller over hardboard for two minutes and then made a closeup picture of its needles to see if they were still sharp, like this (roller C):

I tried all rollers a little on my thighs. Only rollers A, B, C end E met our demands for a roller with straight, sturdy, durably sharp needles, high production quality and resistance to sterilizing fluids and heat. We also paid attention to how easy it is to keep the roller clean. Tiny irregularities in the roller head are hard-to-clean places for skin oils and skin flakes to build up, inviting bacteria. Roller A has a bad price/quality ratio so we took roller C and E in our assortment. Roller C is virtually identical to roller A at a fraction of its price. Apart from the color and the metal rings on the side, the same goes for roller E.

Candida, Skin fungi »

It’s not always easy to obtain photographic evidence of the efficacy of our flagship antifungal product: Lufenuron. For obvious reasons, we won’t be provided with imagery of the successful resolution of vaginal Candidiasis, neither is it practical to photograph the inside of a person’s bowels. So we were pleasantly surprised to have Peter, a Norwegian customer send us the below illustrated testimonial to Lufenuron’s effectiveness in treating various (presumedly) fungal infections:

NB: We have received an email from someone who did not believe that these feet are the same. They thought the scar was suspicious. The reason for the scar is explained below. To prove that this is a real before-and-after story, we give out the full name and email address of this customer on request.

Hi Sarah…

Time for some feedback as promised – I started my first course of Lufenuron the day of arrival, Thursday, October 29th.

I ingested the first 15 grams as per the recommended 5 day regimen – no obvious Herxheimer reaction occured (at least none that I know of), may be some nausea on the 3rd or 4th day, but this could be for any reason what so ever – nausea is NOT uncommon in my life :o((

BUT – I’ve had som VERY POSITIVE reactions – dandruff and scaling of my forehead has subsided almost totally – my “Pustular Psoriasis” on hands and feet are reduced by an estimated 80% – a few stubborn ulcers and “hot spots” seem to remain, but I really think Lufenuron has helped A LOT – I’ll show you some “Before and After” pictures HERE:

July 12, 2009. Most recent photo BEFORE Lufenuron

November 9, 2009. 10 days AFTER starting Lufenuron – some minor sores still present, but MUCH MUCH BETTER!!!

One can still see the “shaded area” that used to be infected – this is the BEST SITUATION in some 20 years+!!!! Also you will see the lower part of the scar related to my bypass surgery – the “vein-graft-cut” extending almost up to the groin…. I had heart surgery on August 10th 2009 – her they took approx. 2 feet of vein (also called graft) from the inside of my left leg, of which they used the best parts for coronary bypass – the scar extend the same 2 feet upwards from the ankle….

ALSO there is some improvements in my Prostate-urinating problem – everything “flows easier” though still room for improvement….

Unfortuantely the whole observation process has been masked by a touch of Swine Flu – I think I have had this for the last 10 days or so, not severely ill, but I had the usual symptoms – light fever, cough, sore throat (especially tonsils and saliva glands), runny nose, sore muscles and feeling “bad all over” – I hav’nt got it veryfied by blood tests, but the whole society around me are struck by H1N1 right now, so why not me??

But again – theese flu-symptoms COULD BE severe die-off reactions as well?? Who really knows??

My plan for the future is: resume Lufenuron intake (I stopped after the first course to see “hov far and where this took me”) – I think I will take another bag as the “5 day protocol” to sort of saturate my system with Lufenuron.

AND – YOU CAN USE MY PICTURES as much as you want – I think they are quite amazing actually – first of all THEY ARE THE TRUE STORY - and should the Psoriasis issue be solved completely using Lufenuron, you will get a picture of this as well…

How does Lufenuron kill fungi?

Candida’s cell wall is made of Ergosterol and Chitin. Most other fungi have Chitin in their cell walls as well. Dave Iler found this beautiful photo of  this deadly organism – mycelial Candida albicans – of which the Chitin part of the cell wall was stained with a fluorescent dye.  The photographer is Veronica Veses-Jimenez, and it made second place in a photography contest here.

Sarah,

You may have already seen this.

It is a fascinating fluorescent light photomicrograph of Candida Albicans, stained with a chitin brightener (among other things).  Since one of the dyes is a chitin brightener then it stands to reason that the blue fluorescence in the exterior hyphael cell walls must be chitin.

This is one beautiful photograph, and a magnificent piece of work.  It’s the best I’ve ever seen.

Enjoy.

Cordially,

Dave

Lufenuron prevents Candida from growing and repairing the Chitin in its cell wall.

By blocking Candida’s Chitin-synthesis, the Candida does not have a way to repair the constant damage being done to its cell wall caused by various processes in its environment (our bodies), including the onslaught of our immune system. Within hours, holes start to form in its cell wall, and its guts literally seep out, killing it. The Ergosterol gives Candida’s cell wall its flexibility, and the Chitin is responsible for its strength. Candida can’t grow and it can’t keep its cell wall intact, when Lufenuron is present in sufficient concentration around it.

This is not the first foot rash Lufenuron clears up. Half a year after writing this article, we received this email from a different customer:

Dear Sarah,

I have a question.  WHEN WILL MORE LUFENURON BE AVAILABLE????

The first round I bought for my husband because he had a severe patch of dermatitis on his leg that I suspected was yeast related.  Yes, you guessed it.  IT WAS COMPLETELY HEALED!!!!

I had planned to buy the Lufenuron for me especially if it worked for healing his leg as I have been on the Candida diet for over a year.  Please tell me the Lufenuron will be available soon.  By the way, I happened to ask the vet about taking this medicine and she replied that, “if you can give it to a cat it can’t hurt you”.  I thought that was funny.

God bless,
~j. inmаn
Murray, KY

Details on Lufenuron as a cure for fungal infections

Buy Lufenuron

Mental Health »

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is an environmentally aquired disorder. It’s nurture, not nature, that causes it. BPD is the worst manifestation of post traumatic stress syndrome: Borderliners have received less love during childhood than the absolute minimum required to avoid serious, permanent brain damage.

Borderliners are people with unhealed third degree burns to their emotional system. This means that a borderliner is in a constant state of emotional suffering of varying intensity. This suffering is so great and the societal and personal consequences of their peculiar character are so severe, that about one in ten borderliners eventually commits suicide. The emotional pain suffered by a bordeliner is such that they may be willing to exchange their predicament with a terminal cancer patient, as long as they would be emotionally “whole”. In essence, the self-aware borderliner can’t imagine a greater pain. Sadly, the borderliner, even when given genuine affection, usually feels uncomfortable with it or experiences it as insincere.

BPD improves with age

Borderliners’ wide spectrum of problems can’t be blamed on bad genes, narcissism or carelessness. They often don’t finish an education, hold a job or stay in a relationship – and there is nothing they can do about it. The borderliner’s psyche is that of an emotionally shell-shocked person. If you were to throw a firecracker at the heels of a person with a war trauma, he’ll take cover, initially, while you’d better beat a hasty retreat or experience his fury. No matter how often you tell a person with BPD to “just forget about the past, chill out and start enjoying life” – this won’t work.  A borderliner’s efforts to ignore the problem, apply himself and be like a normal person remain fruitless, because the borderliner is not just in a “state of mind”. We can make the analogy that it is more a hardware problem, than a software problem. As a child, the emotional processing part of the borderliners’ brain did not develop properly. Some parts were undeveloped and certain coping- and defence mechanisms became overdeveloped. It is impossible to fully rewire those neuronal pathways, but things can in fact be done to slowly revert some of the damage. And borderliners mellow with age as well.

BPD is extremely difficult to treat because the abberant neural pathways were formed in early childhood and reinforced for years afterward, in the child’s most sensitive formative period. These abnormalities are real and visible in brain scans – both of brain stucture and activity. We can’t really speak of abnormalities for they likely are sanity- and even life-preserving coping mechanisms that have proven beneficial to the borderliner as the target of abuse. To the pre-borderline child, the environment appears chronically life-threatening and there is no help available (on the contrary) from the family. These survival mechanisms cope with the abuse either actively (agressive-defensive behavior) or passively (social withdrawal and emotional coping strategies such as the creation of a fantasy world in which the borderliner is a loved and respected hero). In the borderliner, some important emotional neuronal pathways have never formed, such as feeling comfortable when  given affection, and the ability to express their own desire for closeness. Whereas schizoids and psychopaths are usually content with their personality disorders and in fact consider “normals” to be impaired by their emotions or concience, borderliners are constantly aware of their “strangeness”. They are unhappy misfits. They are hypersensitive, badly control their emotions and may have feelings of inferiority. And if you’d ask a borderliner: “What makes you happy”, they’d likely say: “Nothing, really”. Most borderliners don’t have the ability to be truly happy, not even for a short while.

Essentially, BPD is what happens to a person when you spend years mentally and physically torturing them from early childhood. The torture consists at least in withholding all physical and verbal expressions of love, and often it there is the active component of telling the child that he is hated and worthless. Broken promises, emotional neglect and verbal abuse. Often, threats are made of various types, such as to harm or kill the child or expel it from the house. Borderliners often were regularly beaten or even sexually abused and generally have been treated without a modicum of emotional support or even a basic respect for them as a human being with feelings.  The most irrepairable damage, the most vicious torture of all is the near-total absence of parental closeness. Instead  there is rude verbal and physical rejection of the infant, resulting in the absence of any kind of bonding. This leaves severe, permanent scars and is perhaps the main cause of BPD. A classic example of the background and behavior of a person with BPD is here. Many ignorant comments by armchair psychologists, blaming the victim, assuming it’s all a trivially solved attitude problem of a selfish and lazy narcissist, instead of severe brain damage caused by years of extreme child abuse.

Ironically, the overwhelming underlying cause for such a childhood is personality disorders in their parents. An example would be a passive father who for some reason (drug addiction, illness, disability) doesn’t participate in the childrearing an overbearing, highly controlling mother with Aspergers syndrome.  Some parents treat the child as an annoying object they are stuck with, a frustrating entity with unfortunately a mind of its own. This sometimes rebellious, attention-craving little person should be turned into an obedient drone who follows strict schedules and procedures, robbing it of everything that makes it a person. Privacy is denied. Myriads of rules and restrictions are imposed and punishments inflicted at the slightest infraction. Any form of affection is withheld. Physical contact is taboo, except when it can’t be avoided, and then it is done with coarse indifference or annoyed hostility. Emotional closeness is zero. The child will feel under permanent threat and constant surveillance. It comes to realize it has no rights, only duties. It is denied its basic humanity. There is no refuge. No alternative ways of receiving or expressing affection are available. The infant grows up a feral child concerning matters to do with love. To ward off insanity, coping mechanisms develop. The borderliner withdraws in solitary hobbies and lying becomes second nature, such as not to provoke anger in people with power over him. Petty theft such as shoplifting occurs as a surrogate for “receiving something nice”. The child retracts into fantasy world of its own making in which it is the center of positive attention, admired and respected by all. Terrible nightmares are common, such as dreams in which the child is chased and killed by a parent.

Borderliners need love and want to give it, too

Borderliners are misunderstood. Some call them “emotional vampires”, a bottomless pit for love, a one-way street, unable to reciprocate on affection, using people for temporary relief and discarding them as used bubble gum. The borderline person comes across that way due to a total lack of love throughout their entire childhood. It should not come as a surprise that borderliners have one gigantic need: The need to feel loved. No person has a greater need for genuine affection than the borderliner. A borderliner needs love like a person with scurvy needs vitamin C. And they desperately want to give themselves to those they feel affection for – but they often have great difficulty doing so. Borderliners are so emotionally insecure that it is easy to hurt them. And because they have never experienced the safety of the knowledge of being loved, they’ll “split” you one way or the other: They will immediately and often permanently reclassify you from “friendly” to “hostile”, and a small perceived slight can terminate a relationship before it had a chance to come to fruition.

This oversensitive black-and-white thinking may make borderliners look “needy”, but that would be oversimplification.  Their sense of belonging in the relationship need regular reinforcement in the form of tenderly expressed physical affection and a genuine interest in, and respect of their persona. If that condition is fulfilled, they can become loyal partners, even when things aren’t always perfect. in the relationship. Borderliners do very badly with people who make careless hurtful remarks or who are unable to regularly express affection. A borderliner’s fragile sense of acceptence easily becomes a feeling of being a tolerated burden. He will never again want to be an undesirable element and thus will crudely cancel a relationship in which he is hurt once too often.

Self-treating Borderline Personality Disorder

There are ways in which the borderliner can undo a little of the damage inflicted to him. The best thing a borderliner can do to partially heal himself is to be around people who give him the feeling of being loved and accepted. The more a borderliner experiences affection, the more often he is treated kindly, the more self esteem and confidence is built up. The fragile self  is slowly bolstered and it becomes possible to see people as more colorful entities than merely black and white, good or bad, loving or indifferent.

Such a therapy is very hard to attain. I know someone – a classical case of Borderline Personality – who was seriously contemplating suicide. During a long phone conversation I suggested him to go on a long holiday instead. He ended up quitting his job, selling most of his belongings and embarking on a long journey of working his way around the world. Originally an office worker, he held various more glamorous jobs such as windsurfing instructor and he had many flings and short relationships. This way, he learnt that he could be a desirable, respected, loved person. He was significantly “deprogrammed” after years of living that way. His partners initially suffered the consequences of dealing with an emotional invalid, but his travels eventually boosted his self confidence and made relatively stable love relationships possible for him. The likelihood of accelerated improvement is increased when the borderliner understands what it is that ails him. But they are damaged goods and they always will be.