When I was a little girl, I was completely obsessed with becoming a big kid and eventually, the holy grail: becoming a teenager. I wanted everything about the life I observed teenagers to enjoy. Getting to wear braces (teeth jewelry), permed hair (this was the 80s), and driving around in their convertibles, laughing with their friends and blowing bubbles with pink bubble gum—what a life these mythical creatures led in my wide eyes.
At some point, I decided there was a list of things that solidified that a girl was well on the path to teenagerdom. These rites of passage included:
- Wearing a bra 🎉
- Shaving one’s legs
- Wearing Lady Speed Stick deodorant
- And using Clearasil and Noxema every day
Interestingly enough, as an adult, I don’t practice any of these on any regular basis (I hate shaving, prefer to wax and use only non-toxic deodorant) So, naturally from age 10 to 12, I went on a crusade to make sure I crossed the threshold of each of these milestones as soon as possible, which was no easy feat since my mother was (rightfully, thankfully) adamant that childhood and young adolescence should be enjoyed and savored and that the rush to grow up was not a worthwhile or wholesome pursuit.
So, I did what all little girls do at some point and I began to pray. I prayed that God would give me acne because that’s what teenagers had and if I had it, my mom wouldn’t have any more excuses as to why I couldn’t slather my face with petroleum byproducts, burning alcohol pads, and artificial fragrance every day—just like they did.
Well, it took a few years, but boy did God deliver. When I was 16, I developed severe, chronic cystic acne on my face. It was painful, it was humiliating, it was depressing. The acne lasted for several years, eventually tapering off into monthly breakouts in my mid-20s and only fully healing and clearing up around age 30, as a side-effect of some drastic adjustments to my lifestyle and diet and then later noticing my skin was always consistently beautiful and clear.
In hindsight, knowing what I know now, I can see so clearly alllll the factors and choices that resulted in that painful, confusing chapter of my life. Here are the main culprits:
- SAD diet. Like most of us, I grew up on the Standard American Diet (aptly nicknamed the SAD diet). That meant fishsticks, Campbell’s soup, lots of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and (my personal hell) daily school cafeteria food. All these things, day after day, add up to A LOT of processed food, industrial seed oils, empty calories, and allergens, which when combined, result in the person being both malnourished and suffering from chronic inflammation, which eventually causes major damage to the intestines and digestive process.
- Soy products. Interestingly, at age 16, I decided to become a vegan. I also began to suffer from an eating disorder around the same time, so my mother, in an effort to make sure I would eat something every day, bought me all the soy milk (which I drank instead of water) and soy burgers (which became my daily sustenance). Interestingly, it was also around this time that my small amount of pimples erupted into full on cystic acne and my periods became an excruciating event of debilitating pain every month. Soy, as it’s grown in the US, is almost always genetically modified, soaked with pesticides, and processed with many chemicals and stabilizers in it. I don’t have to tell you, none of those things are good for human consumption and will likely trigger severe hormonal imbalances as your body reacts to WTF it’s trying to process—hello crazy period and acne face!
- Toxic skincare. So sometime around age 12, I finally got my wish granted and became a regular user of all the big drugstore teenager skincare brands. Nothing like scrubbing your face with abrasive chemicals and then slathering it with what’s basically mentholated Vaseline every day to destroy your beautiful skin barrier and microbiome. The regular use of my teenager products quickly resulted in extreme dryness in patches around my face (I can still feel the burn!) combined with a greasy oil slick on my forehead. Bad, bad, bad, so bad.
- High toxic load. Remember that chemical-based deodorant I mentioned earlier? And the high-fragrance petroleum-based shaving cream I started using when I fiiiinally got to start shaving? And the dryer sheets and the nail polish and the toxic shampoo and the chemical-laden lotions and the fragranced Bath & Body Works I also used obsessively around that time? All of that stuff quickly added up to an insanely high toxic load that my body just couldn’t process quickly enough, especially when combined with the other variables mentioned above. What happens when you have a high toxic load and aren’t detoxing appropriately? Inflammation! Hormonal imbalance! Headaches! Acne! And, eventually, far more serious issues when you continue to subject your body to so much to heal from.
- Seed oils. This one definitely ties in with Point #1 above, but it was really the final piece in the puzzle to completely end my acne for good, so it deserves its own place on the list. In my late 20s, I was living in Bangkok, Thailand, where a typical part of the culture is to eat takeout and go out to eat for the majority of meals. At this time, though I had corrected most of items #1-4 on the list above, I still had the occasional breakout. When I moved back to the States, I so craved to start cooking again and stumbled upon some amazing nutrition-based chefs sharing their wisdom. One of the first things I learned was about oils, how some were great raw, but should never be heated as they become toxic (ahem, olive oil!) and how some oils simply aren’t meant for human consumption at all and are toxic in all their forms (canola oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil—don’t touch these with a ten-foot pole!) and once I began to use and consume fats and oils appropriately (and banish the toxic ones), what was left of my acne quickly vanished completely and was never to be seen again.
So, there you have it. My journey with acne and how I went from a miserable sufferer to fully healed, only taking about 15 years 😉 Hopefully my struggles can save you some time and heartache if you also find yourself on a journey with acne. Have hope—it can heal! It took another five years after I healed my acne to find what worked to really take my skin to the next level and be not only consistently clear, but also youthful, elastic, and glowy. Stay tuned for that, and in the meantime, if you’re struggling with the acne puzzle, don’t hesitate to get in touch (hello@ uncivilizedskincare .com) and I’d be happy to work through some helpful approaches with you!