Polka-dots.

What's that on your left cheek?

Oh yeah. I always get that question from new people I meet.

I have no idea WHEN I had freckles, but I'm pretty sure that I don't have these when I was a kid.

Looking back at my old photos, my skin was spotless.

(I uploaded an actual photo of my freckle, haha! Look closely and you will see.)

What are freckles?
Freckles are sort of spots you find in a person's skin - particularly in persons with fair complexion. They are flat, kind-of circular spots in random areas, which develop after repeated exposure to the sun. They are always darker than the skin due to accumulation of dark pigments called melanin; may be in red, yellow, tan, brown, black, or light-brown.

Types?
There are two types of freckles.
1. Ephelides - This type of freckle is the one that appears during sunny season and disappears during winter. This may be hereditary. Using sunscreen helps suppress this kind of freckle.
2. Lentigines - This is the type of freckle that does not disappear during the winter. They are normally darker than the ephelides, and are occasionally part of a rare genetic syndrome. For most parts, they are isolated or found in unimportant areas.


Apparently, there is no winter in my country. So I'm assuming that my freckles are of the second type. Hahaha.

Now, there's this type they call "liver spots". This kind of freckle is just like the lentigines. They appear in aged people, and it has nothing to do with the liver. ROFL.

How are freckles formed?
After exposure to the sun, or probably tanning salon or anything that emits UV rays, our skin reacts differently. The outer layer of the skin normally thickens and the melanocytes (pigment-producing cells in our body) produces the pigment melanin at an increased rate to protect our skin from being damaged and for future exposures.

Basically, uneven distribution of melanin causes the freckles. It is nothing more than an unusually heavy deposit of melanin at one area of the skin. =)

Prevention.
It's easy. SUN SCREEN and PROTECTIVE CLOTHING.

I read in an article about a study made on twins about freckle count. The twins had almost the same freckle count, and they concluded that heredity has something to do with having freckles.

Prevention is better than cure - so if you start to develop freckles, let it serve as a warning that your skin is vulnerable to sunburn (or even skin cancer). Better watch out and start protecting your precious skin. If you see any spots on your face, get it checked by a dermatologist to make sure they're not cancerous.

Can I remove them?
My boyfriend tagged me to his dermatologist for his skin asthma around September of 2007 (or something). While waiting for the doctor, I asked the assistant, "What can I do to remove my freckles?" She said, "I don't think you can remove it. But you can lighten it with laser."

I searched the web about freckle removal.

Bleaching creams. Products containing hydroquinone and kojic acid can be purchased without a prescription. Higher concentrations of hydroquinone (over 2%) require a prescription. These products can lighten freckles if they are applied consistently over a period of months. (from here)


Vitamin A acid / Retin-A in conjunction with bleaching creams can also help lighten the freckles over a period of time.

Cryosurgery - A light freeze with liquid nitrogen can be used to treat freckles, but I don't know how they do that.

And then comes the laser part. They said that most lasers, especially the ones that produce green lights, can effectively reduce and eliminate freckles. It is safe and simple, highly successful, and have lower risk of developing scars. =)

My friends would often ask me - "Don't you want those removed?"

I don't really know. These spots contributed to my identity physically. And I got used to having them there, so why else would I want them off?

Perhaps I'll decide when I have plenty of money to spend. =p


References:
Medicinet
Freckle Guide

Summer Skin Cutter!

Ah. It's been a while. A long long while.

It is summer again. For most people, it's beach and pool and out-of-town time. For college students, ongoing classes. For high school, it's vacation.

For little boys - it's horror.

In the Philippines, more often than not, circumcision is a summer event. You'll find "Painless circumcision" or "Murang tuli" at every corner and clinics around your place.

Circumcision way back.
I browsed the net and found a compilation of why circumcision is performed.

• a religious sacrifice
• a rite of passage marking a little boy into a young adult
• a sympathetic magic to ensure virility
• as a means of suppressing sexual pleasure; remove excessive pleasure
  
• an aid to hygiene where regular bathing is impractical
• means of marking social status (lower or higher)
• discourage masturbation or any sexual action
• demonstration of one's ability to endure pain
• increase men's attractiveness to women
• symbolic castration (any action, surgical, chemical or otherwise, by which a male loses the functions of the testes or to a female loses the functions of the ovaries)
• male counterpart to menstruation or breaking the hymen

Circumcision was an important issue for first century Jews and Christians. Philo Jaudeous, a first century author, defended that circumcision on several grounds, including health, cleanliness, fertility and as a symbol of "the excision of all superfluous and excessive pleasure." Another author mentioned that it was instituted for moral reasons - "for perfecting what is morally defective" (Maimonides).

In Europe, except the Jews, they don't really practice circumcision.

Ancient Greek artwork portrayed penises covered with foreskin (sometimes in exquisite detail), except in the portrayal or satyrs, barbarians, and lechers. To hide a circumcised penis, during the second century, men would attach copper weight (called the Judeum pondum) was hung from the remnants of the circumcised foreskin until, in time, they became sufficiently stretched to cover the glans. Celsus, a 2nd century Greek philosopher and opponent of Christianity, described two surgical techniquesin his medical treatise De Medicina to restore a foreskin. One technique is by cutting around the base of the glans to loosen the penile shaft. The skin was then stretch over the glans, allowing it to heal and giving it the appearance of an uncircumcised penis.

In 1870, Lewis Sayre, a prominent New York orthopedic surgeon and vice president of the newly-formed American Medical Association, examined a five-year-old boy who was unable to straighten his legs, and whose condition had so far defied treatment. He noted that the boys genitals were inflammed, and he hypothesized that the long term irritation of the boy's foreskin has paralyzed his knees via reflex neurosis. Sayre circumcised the boy, and within a few weeks, the boy recovered from the paralysis. After a few more incidents in which circumcision appeared effective in treating paralyzed joints, Sayre promoted circumcision as an orthopedic remedy.

Pros and Cons of circumcision.

• It is easier to clean a circumcised penis. Although you can teach an uncircumcised boy to clean his own penis by retracting the foreskin, some kids end up having infection becauser of poor hygiene.
• It may be a little odd, but I actually found a study performed to prove that the penis of an uncircumcised boy is more sensitive than a circumcised boy. It said that intact men enjoy four times more penile sensitivity. (more HERE)

"The most sensitive part of the penis is the preputial opening. The results confirmed that the frenulum and ridged band of the inner foreskin are highly erogenous structures that are routinely removed by circumcision, leaving the penis with one-fourth the fine-touch sensitivity it originally possessed." - Morris Sorrells, MD, lead researcher

Five sites on the penis-all regularly removed by circumcision-are more sensitive than the most sensitive site remaining on the circumcised penis.

"Oddly, the most sensitive site on the circumcised penis is the circumcision scar itself." - Robert Van Howe, Researcher pediatrician and statistician

Taken from the ACTUAL research:

• Five locations on the uncircumcised penis that are routinely removed at circumcision had lower pressure thresholds than the ventral scar of the circumcised penis.
• For womne, having a male partnet with a foreskin increased the duration and comfort of coitus, and increased the likelihood of achieving single and multiply orgasms.
• The type of nerve endings in the penis vary with location. The glans penis primarily has free nerve ending that can sense deep pressure and pain. The transitional area from the external to the internal surface of the prepuce, or 'ridged band', has a pleated appearance that in continuous with the frenulum and has a high density of fine-touch neuroreceptors, such as Meissner's corpuscles. Based on this histology, the transitional region and the ventral surface of the prepuce would be expected to have lower thresholds for light touch.
  

• Small risks are due to minor infection around the circumcised area, which can easily be solved by the family physician.
• Public health benefits include protection from urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted HIV, HPV (responsible for cervical cancer and genital warts), syphilis and chancroid (STD characterized by painful sores on the genitalia), penile and prostate cancer, phimosis (male foreskin cannot be fully retracted from genitalia, thrush, and inflammatory dermatoses.
• In females, circumcised partners provides protection from cervical cancer and chlamydia infection.

Female Circumcision.
Different terms:

• female genital cutting
• female genital mutilation
• female circumcision
• female genital mutilation/cutting

"all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs whether for cultural, religious or other non-therapeutic reasons." - WHO 2June2006

• maintenance of cleanliness
• maintenance of good health
• preservation of virginity
• enhancement of fertility
• prevention of promiscuity
  
• increase of matrimonial opportunities
• pursuance of aesthetics
• improvement of male sexual performance and pleasure
• promotion of social and political cohesion

Type I
- removal or splitting of the clitoral hood (hoodectomy), with or without excision of the clitoris

Type II
- "excision of the clitoris with partial or total excision of the labia minora."
- also called khafd, meaning reduction in Arabic.

Type III: Infibulation with excision
- "excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching/narrowing of the vaginal opening"
- also known as "pharaonic circumcision."

Type IV: Other types
- "all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, for example, pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterization."

Ouch!!!!


Legal Issue!
In Oregon, a father (an attorney) is in the process of converting into Judaism. He wants his 12-year-old son Misha, who is in his custody, to be circumcised. The decision was opposed by Misha himself and his mother.

The court believes that Misha has the right to be consulted before the circumcision. It opened the doors to a possible change of custody, depending on the child's opinion.


References:
Doctors Opposing Circumcision
Noharmm Org
Wikipedia - Female Circumcision
Wikipedia - Circumcision
Nemours Foundation
Circinfo