Articles by Dr. Derrick Adams, Board Certified Dermatologist and Medical Director, Vita Dermatology, Red Bluff, (A division of Lassen Medical Group)
Don’t you just love pharmaceutical commercials these days? A soothing voiceover tells us that the drug “may cause dizziness, dry mouth, seizures, sudden death,” while smiling actors run hand-in-hand on the beach, play catch with grandchildren, or share a romantic dinner,” and then “erections lasting over four hours, blindness, flatulence with discharge,” all without a care in the world.
As a kid I always looked forward to that quick peek into the cockpit you got when boarding an airplane. Sometimes the pilot would give me a quick wink while mumbling important pilot stuff into his headgear.
Zinc-based Sunscreen Best Environmental Choice I spend a large part of my day preaching the message of moderating your exposure to the sun. The subject of sunscreen factors heavily into that message.
Is your scalp itchy? Is it dry and flaky yet still paradoxically greasy? Do you shed a blizzard of flakes? Redness and tenderness to the scalp got you down? You very well may have dandruff or seborrheic dermatitis as dermatologist like to call it.
So why do some people get dandruff? The cause of dandruff is believed to be a complicated interaction between naturally occurring yeast, your skin oil, and the resultant inflammation. For unclear reasons, the yeast finds the composition of some individuals’ scalp oil to be delicious. The digestion of these oils generates fatty acids that penetrate the skin and stir up inflammation (hence the redness and flaking). It is not an infection of yeast per se, but a poorly understood reaction to your skin’s natural inhabitants.
Mole And Skin Tag Removal Nobody likes skin tags and unsightly moles. Most of us are not Marilyn Monroe or Cindy Crawford and cannot make our moles sexy. Patients often seek out a dermatologist to have these growths removed. Skin tags are those little pesky things that crop up around the neck, arm pits and […]
Albinos In East Africa It is 2014 isn’t it? One would like to believe some degree of pragmatism and scientific thought has woven its way into the world by now right? Don’t get your hopes up too high. Allow me to tell you about life as an albino in east Africa. Albinism is a genetic […]
Tattoos, Piercings, and now… Sensory Augmentation? I am guessing that this topic does not pertain to many of you. But human beings do some interesting things to their skin and I wanted to share this with my readers. Modifying the human body has become faddish the past several decades. I have seen innumerable piercings in […]
Molluscum Skin Disease Molluscum isn’t dangerous, but it’s inconvenient for parents. “A pox upon your house!” cried a dying Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. ( I know it’s actually “a plague upon your house” but somewhere along the line we started saying “pox.”) The highly contagious nature of pox viruses has been known for centuries. […]
Big breasts and summer sometimes do not mix well in the North State. I am not talking about falling out of your bikini at Shasta Lake either. I’m talking about boob sweat. Boob sweat may sound funny to some, but enough women seek medical advise on it for me to write this article. Embarrassing as armpit stains can be to both sexes, boob sweat carries the added insult of rashes, irritation and yeast overgrowth. One of my patients laments that her “melons become watermelons” in June.
Sunscreen Isn’t Full-Proof Sun Protection Sunscreen gets the bulk of our attention when it comes to sun protection. I wear sunscreen and I recommend you do as well. However as the old saying goes: “to err is human”. Most of us are simply inept at using our sunscreens. We don’t put it on thick enough. […]
