Treatment for blackheads is generally the following:

1. Clean the area thoroughly with a good quality soap and warm water.
2. Hot towels applied to the area and steam the area for 15 minutes.
3. Squeezing out all of the blackheads with either a blackhead tool, or sanitized hands.
4. Applying cold water to the area, as well as an astringent such as witch hazel.
5. Air dry the area.


There are no products that completely remove blackheads as far as I know.

Hi Raynor - I've been a huge gamer for years, so I've been sitting a lot. I've had adductor+groin pain that comes and goes for a year.
I have to sit cross legged otherwise it's too painful and i also have pain when I bring my legs together. Any idea which exercice I should do and should I do stretching or strenghtening?
I'm supposed to see a physical therapist but it's probably gonna be in a month so im just asking for now.

Thank you

In regard to this post, am I supposed to stop chest workouts all together? Or just do light/moderate chest to maintain?

And how long should I be training like this?

Hey I got a question regarding my mom.

She's 54 and she has diabetes.
Lately she says she's been experiencing pain in both her legs, and she feels joint pain in her hands I tried looking up what could be the cause but I'm not sure. She has been walking 10-15 minutes for the past 5 days and I told her to see a doctor but IDK.

Any clues?

This post was edited by xXCrAzYsHoT on Oct 1 2012 02:30pm

Have you been diagnosed with anything? Have you had x-rays or any kind of evaluation by a physician?

Do NOT train chest for around 2-4 weeks. After you come back, start chest up where you left off. You will see your strength still there, or even stronger right off the bat with improved support/stabilizer muscles.

Sounds like arthritis. Very common for her age, and even more common for women. It can also be osteoporosis.

The best bet would be for her to see a doctor, get a full examination, and go from there.

Some concerns for her would be:

1. Increase calcium + magnesium + potassium intake to around 2g calcium per day, 2g magnesium per day, and 3g potassium per day.

2. Sit in a jacuzzi/hot tub for 30 minutes a day.

3. Keep the areas mobile with light stretching, walking, but above all else - swimming if possible.

4. Increase fish oil consumption to 3g per food meal. Have her take 3g with every meal, and a minimum of 9g per day.

5. Take joint support products such as Glucosamine, Chondroitin, and MSM.

6. Have her start taking Yoga classes - this can help tremendously.

7. Increase her water intake to 3/4 - 1 gals per day.

8. Increase intake of raw veggies/fruits.

9. Increase protein intake to around 100g per day, and keep sugar intake as low as possible.

No, not yet. Only had blood+urine test so far and they were fine. I went to see a massage therapist and I had pain when she was massaging my adductors and hamstrings. Im pretty sure my psoas are thight as well.

Adductor Muscles
A study in the March 2007 "American Journal of Roentgenology" suggests that adductor dysfunction is a frequent cause of pubic pain. The study reviewed soccer players with injuries to the symphysis pubis. The recommended treatment in this case includes rest, avoiding activities that aggravate the condition, over-the-counter anti-inflammatory medications and adductor muscle stretches to relieve pressure on the pubic bones and joint. A simple way to stretch the adductor muscles is to squat with your back against a wall for support and your elbows between your knees to push the knees outward.

this looks a lot like me but i dont think ive had any injury, it just came overtime from sitting too much cross legged at the computer+bad posture in my opinion. People who have had squat injuries seem to share my symptoms as well. I hope its not an hernia but i cant see to find any bulge.

This post was edited by pierrot_morin on Oct 1 2012 07:07pm

Wow, this thread is awesome!

I have a question for you (with a lot of back story that needs to be said) I hope that is okay:

I used to work out almost daily, and that involves cardio, weights and kick boxing. The tricky part is that my knees are slightly knocked. It's hard to describe without taking a picture, so I'm going to try an ASCII picture:

| |
/ \

They sort of look like that. They aren't at that angle, they are definitely less knocked than above, but they are off and have been all of my life. If my leg was straight in front of me, I would say it's like a 5 to 10 degree angle.
My patellas dislocate all the time (outward dislocations on both legs). It happens to my left one much less often than my right, but when it happens they move out of the socket and back in, usually causing me to fall (and swear a LOT). This generally happens when I mis-step or slip on ice (if I slide while twisting my leg, or putting pressure/weight on my leg as it's sideways). It's painful and has swelling for a day or two when it happens, but at this point I've gotten use to these types of dislocations.

Here's the tricky bit. My left patella has never dislocated and remained out of socket until I pop it back in, but my right one has done it twice so far. Those two times, my right patella was out of socket and I had to relocated it (painfully... zzz) myself.
About a year ago is the last time I had a serious dislocation of my right patella (the first time was 6 years ago). It was while I was kick boxing. After landing a high kick on the bag, I had placed my leg behind me and pushed off of it, but I think I slipped very slightly on my shoe lace, or some water or maybe even my own sweat on the gym floor but regardless, the slip was JUST enough to blow my knee out. I relocated it on site but went to the doctors anyways.

I'm being recommended surgery, but I really don't want to follow through with it because they say it will be very difficult to fully recover and be able to kick box again (in case you're wondering, the surgery would be for my right leg only and would align my tibia with my knee joint/femur).

They say that if I do very specific exercises I may be able to strengthen my knee cap and lessen the rate of dislocations. I'm going to make a small diagram below.

y | x x | y Let's say the lines are my thighs/shins, and the circles are my knees. I'd have the strengthen the interior muscles a LOT, and not exercise the exterior muscles at all. I've marked interior with x and exterior with y.
y o x x o y
y | x x | y

It may sound weird, but the docs say that the muscles of the outside of my leg have always been too strong while the inside was too loose, and that's why I have to specifically exercise them like that (if I did the surgery above, one of the steps would be to cut the exterior muscle connected to my knee cap and tighten the inside one as well).

Although I've had minor dislocations (the type that just pop out then back in really quickly) throughout playing sports and such, my most recent dislocation was very mentally scarring since it was such a severe case while in the middle of exercising, even though minor dislocations had happened to me all the time. I have not exercised at all since then and have gained like twenty pounds over the last year, and I feel the noticeable health difference (and the extra weight/appearance on me). Every time I get motivated to start exercising again, I just dismiss it immediately and get scared to start exercising again.

My question to you is, are there any slow exercises I can start doing to begin strengthening the inside muscles? I feel like my body weight is more than enough right now so I don't need any extra weights or anything. Could I progress in strengthening the inside muscles, and maybe work my way up to stronger interior leg work outs? I would REALLY rather not do anything that involves twisting my knee, at least not right off of the bat. I also have an electric muscle stimulator if you think that it would help (as you can imagine, I've had a #$%^ ton of physiotherapy, lol) post workouts.

I really appreciate your time in reading my giant wall of text. I know most of the questions you've been answering were simpler ones/not so indepth so I'm sorry to burden you with such a long one. I'm going to donate 10FG to you, regardless to whether you respond or not, just because I think that the thread you've made here is amazing and really helpful to a lot of people. Thank you!

This post was edited by TerrorisT613 on Oct 1 2012 08:46pm

Ok thanks man, appreciate all the help.