Food for Healing

I've had skin problems since I was a teenager. It started with mild acne and was mildly annoying. I went on birth control to help with the severity of my periods and that helped. Then last summer when I came off of birth control (because my periods did get better, I'll post about that later) my skin went CRAZY. I mean out-of-control. I had horrible cystic acne all over the top half of my body. I know, gross. And hey, give me some credit for my vulnerability here. So I put two and two together and figured it had to be hormonal acne because it happened when I came off of birth control. 

So yes I could just keep taking birth control if I wanted a fast cure, but that's really just treating the symptom of my unbalanced hormones. And I would like to balance my hormones naturally through food if possible, or natural supplements. I don't want to keep taking pills adding hormones and adding to my hormone imbalance when I could work to fix this and let my body do what it's supposed to naturally. I want my body to do what it was meant to do. And yes I do believe in conventional medicine when necessary. I take allergy medicine when I'm sneezy and I couldn't live without sudafed when I'm sick, although I'd love natural remedies for allergies and stuffiness. I just don't want to have to take a bunch of extra added hormones for the next however long to treat my acne. I would rather figure out how to eat well and figure out what's going on in my body that's causing it to go crazy on my skin. 

So...I've been researching and I found a few things. The first website I found that deals with acne naturally was The Cellulite Investigation. This is a great blog whose primary aim is to investigate cellulite, but the writer did struggle with acne that she was getting from the fluoride in her water. She writes about it in the previous link I gave to the blog. It's worth looking at if you struggle with acne. I knew my acne was hormonal though and my acne has only been cystic twice in my life, once on a b.c. pill I had a bad reaction too and when I came off b.c.

Then, I found this. And I was so relieved. I mean so relieved. I researched online for days before I came across this website. Or really I guess it's a blog. And I know you shouldn't believe everything you read, but this girl struggled with acne for 3 years and she's my age. Her blog is her story of her struggle with acne and her quest to treat it naturally through diet and how she figured out how to do that. She did see a medical doctor at the same time, but she also writes about the negative side effects of accutane and proactiv, which was interesting because I'm too scared to try accutane (side effects) and proactiv always stops working on me after a certain period, which she writes about! She has a 7 step e-course you can download (for free!) and a book you can download ($27). And she also recommends skin care, but you can only get it in Australia, where she is from. 

All in all I found the information in the course really helpful. Some of it I knew from some of the other stuff I've been reading lately, but it was a great reminder that what we put in our bodies has to come out. And if we're eating a lot of processed food, our bodies have to get the toxins out, and our livers and colons (I knew, ew) can only do so much, and then eventually it comes out of our skin. She also talks about stress causing acne, which I can totally see. It will be interesting to see that if during my low stress summer state, I have any clearing of the skin. :) 

So, if you struggle with acne, I really encourage you to check out http://www.highonhealth.org/. I think it's full of great information for health in general, especially for those of us who want to clear our skin naturally. I'm going to try all of this (eating non-processed foods, low sugar, managing stress better, natural skin care, getting my hormones tested) for three months to see if it works. And I may have to ride a bumpy skin road while I wait it out, but that's ok because we all know that our worth does not lie in what our skin looks like. Ok good. I need to say that as much for myself as for others. :)

This post is a part of Fight Back Friday at Food Renegade.


Oh and UPDATE from the last post: Sugar Cravings: It's getting better the longer I'm away from it. I got some more fruit and that's helped (mmm...cherries). And the more I tell myself that if I'm eating a ton of processed sugar, I'm making it worse for my skin, that really helps! So I feel like I'm making progress! And I got a smoothie at Whole Foods yesterday and I actually thought it was too sweet! Can you believe that?! I was shocked at myself! I think the sugar addiction may be starting to leave. Yay!