You Put WHAT on Your Face?!

I am not putting up an accompanying pic on So Loverly today because I couldn't find any non-disgusting picture which didn't send a shudder down my spine. Keep on reading and you will understand why.

My colleagues and I were happily chattering away in the car when one of them suddenly dropped a bombshell.

"You know," she casually said, "the latest health treatment craze seems to be leeches."

"WHAT?" We all shrieked in unison as our driver tried not swerve about crazily.

She tsked. "LEECHES. There's a guy in Penampang (a district in Sabah) who is breeding medical-grade leeches. He seems to be quite popular."

All of us blanched.

Now then, don't get me wrong. The women I work with are some of the toughest women I know. They have been to places so remote, dirt roads don't even exist, and they have been bitten by more leeches than they can remember. However, the idea of voluntarily putting a leech on themselves without a sound medical reason is something they shy away from.

So apparently, leech treatment is getting quite popular in some circles as a cure-all for aches, rashes and whatever ails you. My curious colleague decided to accompany her neighbour for one of these sessions, chit-chatted to the owner and reported that lots of people are beginning to swear by leech treatment as a cure for acne. Acne patients go there every week or fortnight to grab a leech which will suck out all the pus and help with congested blood flow.

The results, they say, are remarkable.

*shudder*

"So", we asked, "what happened to my colleague's neighbour?"

"Well", she said, "seems that the poor man's face started swelling up for no reason and the doctors couldn't figure out why. That's why he was trying out the leech treatment for his swollen face.

"What they do is to pick up a leech and let it walk around the face until it "sniffs" out the right spot (probably where the blood is the most congested). Then the leech will bite, suck until it's full and drop off."

"Then what happens to the leech?", I asked. "Do they plop it back into a bottle and let it rest?"

My colleague sat up. "Now that's the surprising thing", she said. "That leech dropped dead after a few minutes of dropping off. Apparently the blood was so toxic, it killed the poor leech."

All of us sat in dead silence after that.

I have tried lots of things back in my bad acne days but if leeches were an option 10 years ago, I think I would have still drawn a hard and fast line there.

What about you?