NEW DELHI: Your neighbourhood beauty parlour is probably the place where you pamper yourself - and your skin - after a hectic week's work. But beware, it may not be the best thing for your precious skin.

A recent survey in various city beauty parlours, done by the dermatology department of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has revealed that one-third of all women who wax their arms and legs end up with ugly rashes on their upper arms and thighs within a few days.

An earlier study by the department had shown that facials may cause acne in one-third women who undergo it.

And contrary to what you may be thinking, the adverse reactions were not a result of substandard creams or packs used. Further analysis has shown that the adverse reactions of both waxing and facials are a "physiological" outcome of the procedures themselves rather than quality of the material.

Says Dr Neena Khanna, professor of dermatology, AIIMS: "Over the past few years, I have seen 70-odd patients who came to us with odd rashes in their arms and legs. Looking into their previous histories, all of them were found to have done waxing in the few days prior to their visit. Biopsies in 28 women showed that the rashes were a result of waxing. That is when we decided to do a parlour survey to find out more about it."

Of the 50 women surveyed in parlours, a third were found to develop similar rashes and biopsies proved that the etiology was the same as that found in the women who had come to AIIMS.

"Upper arms and thighs are often the place where the hair.

grows haphazardly. If the strips are not pulled exactly against the direction of hair growth, part of the follicle breaks and remains embedded in the skin. When hair starts growing again, it often grows sideways causing the rashes," Khanna explained.

Referring to her own earlier study on facials, Khanna said, "That was interesting because what we found is that the vigorous massaging in the cheek and jaw regions often causes sebaceous glands to burst. This causes acne - seen in at least a third of the women we studied - within 3-10 weeks of the facial."

Doctors point out that from a time when acne was supposed to happen in 20% adolescents, it is now believed to happen at some time and to some degree in all individuals between adolescence and 30 years of age. But the incidence of adult acne - so called when it happens for the first time after the age of 30 - says south Delhi-based consultant dermatologist and an adjunct professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, Dr Raj Kubba, has definitely gone up and many more women than men are affected.

"I would be very much willing to believe that beauty parlours are definitely contributing to the increased incidence of adult acne. The socio-economic strata of patients that I cater to is such that almost all my patients go to beauty parlours very frequently. Apart from that, the high glycemic load of the diet is now being increasingly viewed as yet another possible risk factor."