Leah sees spots: My grandmother always says to put a drop of Visine on spots. I’ve never done it, but was curious as to whether there is any truth in this. And would it damage the skin?
The Right Brain’s red-eyed reply:
Visine
Visine and potty humor
Supposedly, you can prank someone by someone by putting a few drops of Visine in their drink to give them an amusing case of diarrhea. (This is assuming of course, that you’re the kind of person who finds diarrhea amusing.) But according to Snopes.com, this prank is actually an urban legend; Visine will NOT give you the runs. But it will cause vomiting, seizures, difficulty breathing, blurred vision and it can even induce coma. Now THAT’S entertainment!
Visine ruined my love life
What does this have to do with your skin? Imagine the following scenario: The night of your Big Date you discover a nasty pimple on your face. Taking your kindly old grandmother’s advice, you dab a few drops of Visine on the zit. Later that night in the throes of passion, as your main squeeze’s lips brush across your rosy cheek, he gets a tiny taste of tetrahydrozoline hydrochoride. Sometime after the vomiting and tremors subside, but before he slips into a coma, he drives you home. You do NOT get a good night kiss.
The Beauty Brains bottom line
Visine
Does anyone else have a favorite grandma’s home remedy they’d like to ask about? Vomit your comment for the rest of the Beauty Brains community.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
My Grandma always used olive oil on her skin. She would do some type of olive oil deep face mask, where she would cleanse her skin and leave the oil on her face for about 10 minutes while steaming it. She has the most perfect, beautiful supple skin. She also used olive oil for stretch marks, on herself, and my mother’s pregnant bellies. neither of them had stretch marks afterwards! Oh and she also used it instead of lanolin on her nipples while breastfeeding.
Visine is good for blemishes, immediately after you have picked at them. It takes down the swelling and the redness so it doesn’t look like you have been picking.
It has no affect on blemishes otherwise.
Tawny raises an interesting point: I wonder if the active ingredient in Visine penetrates the skin enough to work on superficial blood vessels. Good comment!
I use Visine on my blemishes and it DOES remove redness. Once it dripped out of my eyes, ran down my face, and caused white streaks to appear on my face. It doesn’t last all day-so reapply. I’ve also gotten it into my mouth before and there was no vomitting. I think you’d need to ingest more than a drop or two to cause any damage…
Visin DEFINITELY does work on redness of the skin. I have used it for sunburns and pimples and it helps remove redness with enough layers that it actually leaves a temporary white area around the pimple.
If Visine works by reducing blood flow it means that it also slows down the healing process. Pimples get red because of inflammation, and inflammation is crucial for healing. It happens because the immune system is fighting bacteria and other invaders in the blocked pore.
Are you sure you want to clamp down your body’s efforts to get rid of the bacteria and heal your skin?
If visine can cause rebound redness in the eyes with longterm use, could it make redness in the face, say from broken capillaries, worse if you used it as a remedy to reduce facial redness ?