Skin

First, they take a scalpel and scrape the top layer of skin from your face. Then, they spread acid where they just finished scraping.Some kind of torture, you ask, aimed at getting prisoners to talk?Not even close. It's a skin care treatment designed to remove acne or other facial scars, tighten wrinkles and heal skin damage caused by over-exposure to the sun.Not only do women freely submit to this treatment, called BioMedic MicroPeel, they shell out $75 at a time for the pleasure. And they say it doesn't hurt.

I was prescribed Advair for asthma. It worked well for my breathing problem, but my skin became thin, and I started bruising badly. Then I experienced horrible damage to my skin, with deep gashes from a slight bump. One day, I leaned on the bathroom counter, and several inches of the skin on my arm peeled off. My lung specialist insisted Advair was not responsible for thinning skin. My pharmacist said it could be from steroids. She checked my meds and told me Advair contains a steroid. My doctor still said it was not the medication.

AT THE MOMENT, my office smells more like a Y than most Y's. There are no sweaty guys here, just a bulging shopping bag full of Ben-Gay, Aspercreme, Eucalyptament, Heet and other "topical analgesic balms."This is the stuff you rub into your skin after you've played tennis for the first time in years, when you feel that familiar ache the medicos call delayed-onset muscle soreness. The stuff tends to the pungent.I've been collecting the balms because after years of blind faith, I want to find out whether they really work.

Cover Girl Cosmetics, a Hunt-Valley based arm of Procter & Gamble Co., announced yesterday that, in a bid to shore up its sales to black and other dark-skinned women, it is introducing a wide range of new shades to meet their needs.In a related move, the company said it had signed Lana Ogilvie, who has appeared on American fashion magazine covers, as the first black model to be signed to an exclusive contract with the brand.Cover Girl's 72 new products will include liquid makeups, pressed powders, loose powders, blush, lipstick and nail polish.

Ski instructor Andi Broom knows a thing or two about caring for skin in the cold. Each winter weekend, Broom, her husband, Scott, and two daughters, Molly, 10, and Taylor, 9, hit the slopes armed with sunscreen, lip balm and moisturizers. Broom teaches skiing at Whitetail Mountain Resort in Mercersburg, Pa., while her husband volunteers to help his daughters' downhill race team. The Brooms spend hundreds of hours in the brisk winter air. "We have to be even more careful in the winter than in the summer," says Andi, who lives in Towson.

Q: I have a skin problem I can't seem to solve. My skin feels sore until I moisturize, yet all along my jaw line and a little way down my neck, I break out. Sometimes, throughout the day, my skin along the sides of my nose and on my cheeks becomes sore and at times itches. Why does my skin do these things? I use Cetaphil Lotion, 3 percent hydrogen peroxide on blemishes, Neutrogena SPF 15 and Clinique's Stay True Foundation, and Victoria Jackson blush.-- LisaA: It sounds to me as if you are doing everything right.

WHEN PRESCRIPTIVES' new line of 115 foundations for skin started arriving at cosmetics counters, minority customers cheered.That is the word about the "All Skins" line from Susanne Spencer, a Prescriptives counter manager at Neiman Marcus. Such an emotional response may be due to the fact that for years many mainstream and upscale cosmetics companies failed to provide products for women of color.That finally is changing with lines such as All Skins, which offer possibilities for virtually every complexion.

Shingles is a painful, and somewhat mysterious, skin disease that affects people who have had chicken pox. It may occur spontaneously or may be induced by stress, fever, radiation therapy, tissue damage or immunosupression. Dr. Oanh Lauring, chief of dermatology at Mercy Medical Center, says doctors do not know the specific mechanism that triggers reactivation. What is shingles? A reactivation of chicken pox later in life. Another name is herpes zoster, which confuses people because they think it is related to the herpes virus that is sexually transmitted or causes mouth sores, but it isn't.

Linda Collinson isn't Revlon, Noxell or Procter & Gamble.The founder of LaCrista Inc. natural skin care products in Davidsonville hasno laboratory, no marketing department and no Christie Brinkley. Collinson's lab is her kitchen. She is her own sales staff.Still, up on the shelves at Giant Food, Peoples Drug Stores, DrugEmporium, The Cosmetic Center, Safeway and health food stores, LaCrista Face & Body moisturizer and cleanser sits side by side with big-name products.The 40-year-old former housewife and substitute teacher never set out to take on the cosmetic giants, to invest thousandsof dollars in caps, bottles, advertising and almond oil only to be shut out again and again.

WESTMINSTER - The strange, distorted and abstracted play, "The Skin of Our Teeth," is one most theater companies feel obliged to present.All these companies know why, few know how.But director Ron Miller, designer Ira Domser and their company of student actors appeared to know both, as Western Maryland College Theatre opened its 1990-1991 season with a production of Thornton Wilder's 1942 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama.The why is because everyone understands that this play has something positive to say about the indomitable spirit of the human race and says it with humor and inventiveness, but seldom with poetry.