Facial

When she was younger, Mabel Yingling used to treat herself now and then to a facial at the Hochschild-Kohn beauty salon in Baltimore."I felt like I owed it to myself," said Yingling, 71, of Furnace Hills.I just don't bother any more. I just stick to my Estee Lauder make-up."She hadn't had a facial in years until last week, when she and fellow members of the Finksburg Senior Center got free treatments from the 11th-graders in the cosmetology department at the Carroll County Career and Technology Center.

When did the holidays become an exercise in anxiety, tension mounting with each fa, la and la? Shopping stress. Baking stress. Light-stringing stress. Relatives. And that "Are you ready for Christmas?" thing. Hardly helping. But the year is winding down - shouldn't we take a cue? To that end, it seemed a good, scented rubdown couldn't hurt. I took on the not particularly arduous task of searching area spas for a moment or two of Zen, to see if a massage, scrub or perhaps a paraffin pedicure could straighten the star atop the tree and help the Hanukkah oil burn an extra night.

A crew of nail technicians, massage therapists and facial assistants stand at the ready. Their tools -- a vibrating pedi-spa chair, kneady knuckles and gooey seaweed wraps -- are not those of torture but of first-class pampering.What's a stressed-out vacationer to do?Relax."It makes you feel special," says Lisette d'Amours Coates, sitting atop the throne-like pedi-spa chair at the Headlines salon in Ocean City. The Washington resident is just starting a pedicure after her manicure. "It's very relaxing."

A growing number of people looking for less invasive procedures than plastic surgery or Botox injections to do away with wrinkles and sagging jawlines are turning to the ancient Chinese-rooted practice of acupuncture. And they are starting to come to Laurel's Main Street for the treatment. Since late 2011, acupuncturist Janet Young, of Laurel, has offered facial rejuvenation treatments at the Neighborhood Acupuncture center in the 300 block of Main Street. A master's-degree graduate of the Tai Sophia Institute in North Laurel, Young said using acupuncture to slow the aging process is not a quick fix like Botox, which relaxes the muscles and provides immediate results, but it does work.

They come to the Johns Hopkins Medical Center from all over the world -- scared-looking children with misshapen heads and faces that make you want to avert your eyes at the same time you want to comfort them.It is as if the hand of their Creator slipped in shaping their tiny skulls. In one picture, a little girl's skull balloons out on one side. In another, a little boy's bulging right eye seems to dribble down his cheek, inches lower than the left.To most people, these children have horrible deformities.

We've all taken bad snapshots at one time or another, especially when it comes to pictures of people. There are the ones taken with someone's eyes closed or with a bad facial expression. Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to say "cheese" when you press the button. And while there are all sorts of photo-retouching products available to remove red eye and manipulate the images, none of them are actually designed to retouch facial expressions. Until now. FaceFilter ($30) from Reallusion is a unique photo editor specifically designed to make faces more attractive.

Q: When my toddler takes a nap, she sleeps on her stomach. When she wakes up, her face and eyes are red and swollen. Why? Is she allergic to something in the bed?A: A "puffy" face on waking is common. Although we've never seen a formal explanation, we think mild swelling of the facial tissues can be explained by what is known about blood circulation.The smallest blood vessels, the capillaries that wind their way through body tissues, are somewhat leaky. A small amount of liquid from the blood seeps out. It tends to collect where tissues are loose.

She climbed onto a spa table, where she received a facial. When the treatment was completed, she walked out into a lounge to wait for her massage. "Getting a facial is a different experience. It was very relaxing," said Katie Rasmussen of the facial. "It made me feel tingly and clean." Katie was enjoying the spa treatments, a gift for her 14th birthday, with friend Katie Delaney, 13, at Turf Valley Resort in Ellicott City. One of only a few spas statewide that offer packages for teenagers, Turf Valley is catering to a growing number of kids who are migrating to spas for beauty treatments.

SPA IN THE VALLEY Hunt Valley Towne Centre 410-771-0200 You can linger in the warm jetted pool, then have a massage. Or lounge in the sauna or eucalyptus steam room before your facial. With 10,600 square feet -- and 14 massage and facial rooms, 12 pedi-spas and 20 hair styling stations -- Hunt Valley's new Spa in the Valley is large enough to offer such amenities. And with two doctors on staff, botox and other medical procedures are available too. A regular manicure costs $18, although you could spend $85 on a mango-butter spa manicure-pedicure, which takes two hours and 15 minutes.

'Holiday Spa Day' at Hershey What's the deal?: Are the holidays giving you hives? Soothe yourself with the Holiday Spa Day Package, a 4 1/2 -hour treatment that includes an incense-infused massage, a Peppermint Pattie Salt Scrub and Chocolate Fondue Wrap, a Peppermint Anti-Aging Facial and lunch. The $420 package is good through Jan. 15. If you're short on time or money, the Holiday Season Sampler costs less and lasts just 80 minutes. It includes a full body exfoliation, a hydrating Spice Wrap and a Holiday Spice Massage.

She enters the clinic on a walker, slow yet remarkably steady, and as Pauline Wood hails her host for the day, she gives him a bag of lemon tarts she rose early that morning to bake.  With her white hair and glasses, Wood, 89, is every inch the lovable but tough grandmother, complete with her love of puppies, her passion for raising heirloom tomatoes and her predilection for waving away offers of help with the words, "Oh my goodness, I ...

It has been pretty obvious for the past few weeks, but it only recently became official. The Orioles are now allowed to wear a little hair on their chins. Manager Buck Showalter confirmed Monday that he has gotten approval from ownership to relax the team's facial hair policy — to a limited extent — but there is a caveat. "It's kind of 'Can they keep it presentable?'" Showalter said. "They're going to police themselves. " Showalter and president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail approached owner Peter Angelos after the club brought in two veterans — Derrek Lee and Vladimir Guerrero — who have long worn goatees.

The facial cancers that are devastating populations of Tasmanian devils in Australia are a nerve tumor that escaped its original host and became a parasite of the cultural icon, passing from one devil to the next by bites when the animals are fighting or mating, researchers reported Thursday. A genetic analysis of tumors from Tasmanian devils widely separated geographically shows that all the tumors are virtually identical - and distinct from the animals' own genomes, researchers from the United States and Australia reported in the journal Science.

'Holiday Spa Day' at Hershey What's the deal?: Are the holidays giving you hives? Soothe yourself with the Holiday Spa Day Package, a 4 1/2 -hour treatment that includes an incense-infused massage, a Peppermint Pattie Salt Scrub and Chocolate Fondue Wrap, a Peppermint Anti-Aging Facial and lunch. The $420 package is good through Jan. 15. If you're short on time or money, the Holiday Season Sampler costs less and lasts just 80 minutes. It includes a full body exfoliation, a hydrating Spice Wrap and a Holiday Spice Massage.

The Pearl Spa Ritz-Carlton Residences 821 Key Highway, Inner Harbor 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, 9 a.m.-9 p.m Thursday and Friday, 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday 443-692-1911; thepearlspa.com Really, dahling, you're looking awfully stressed. A treatment at the new Pearl Spa will fix you right up. It's so lovely there, all that aqua and soft music, and those water features ever ywhere. The Hawaiian Rapture massage sounds nice (with hot lava stones, natch) or a Pearlfusion facial.

A local medispa has unveiled a new facial treatment for Baltimore's skin care junkies that is as good as gold. To be more accurate, it is gold. Diana Gavrila, owner of Diana's European Skin Care in Timonium, has recently begun offering clients a 24-karat gold facial. The facial, new to the United States, was introduced in the past year by UMO, a Japanese skin-care company. Gavrila's is the only spa in Maryland that provides the treatment, although it is offered at upscale salons in other states.

A man was struck and killed last night when he jumped in front of a Metro subway train in an apparent suicide at the Charles Center Station, Maryland Transportation Authority officials said. The driver of the train suffered facial injuries when he slammed on the emergency brake to try to stop the train before it hit the victim, said Frank Fulton, an authority spokesman. Dozens of passengers on the train were evacuated, and the station, near Calvert and Charles streets in Baltimore, was closed for several hours, he said.