How I Healed Cystic Acne Naturally
I never had a pimple in high school, I even remember the first time I popped a pimple when I was 17.
Flash forward to age 20, I started getting random cysts all over my chin, cheeks, and forehead. And they became consistent.
I was living in Los Angeles, pursuing acting, so it was literally soul crushing. I couldn’t get a single acting job, however, I did get a contract with a prestigious acne face wash brand for a while. Although, I did try their products and while they would work if I continuously used them, they consequently made my eyes very red all the time.
I felt so hopeless. Only people with acne struggles understand how annoying it is to always wear makeup, never letting their partners touch their face, falling asleep with makeup on, and the utter lack of self confidence. Sometimes my skin would clear up for a few days and give me some false sense of hope, just to go back to inflamed.
I tried every single product, diet, changed my pillowcases, stopped eating chocolate, tried to live stress free – yoga, meditating, everything. I read every article and tried every trick. It wasn’t fair. And I never stopped thinking about it. It was not a life I wanted to live and by this time, I was 26.
6 years of acne struggles lead my dermatologist to put me on orthotrycycline (antibiotics) for acne. It did work at first, but years later it contributed to a severe gut disorder which I am still recovering from… more on that later. 2 years later, the antibiotics stopped working and my acne was worse than ever. My doctor prescribed me Accutane, also known as Isotretinoin.
Now Accutane is very, very dangerous. I’m actually surprised its still on the market.
It is basically an overdose of a synthetic version of vitamin A, which builds up in the liver and cause your oil glands to shrink. Most people take it daily from 4-6 months and about half the time, need to do a second round later in life. You have to take it with fat like cheese or milk to have it be absorbed better into your body, since vitamin A is fat soluble.
I had to pay about a thousand out of pocket to start the program:
$200 for the doctor visits (2 of them)
$300 for the blood work
$400 for only the first month of medication
This does not include all the money I spent on eyedrops, nasal spray, moisturizers galore, and new makeup that didn’t flake right off my face.
My symptoms were horrific. I got nosebleeds, cracked and bleeding lips, itchy scalp, super dry eyes, and my makeup would constantly flake off in chunks. Oh and my acne got waayyyyy worse before it got better. I was only on Accutane for about a month before I had to quit, but not due to any of these symptoms.
There has been a lot of speculation that Accutane causes depression. The jury is still out because more research needs to be done (I will link a study), but after a few shorts weeks I was hurled into a debilitating depression.
Everyone tried to tell me it was just due to my skin adjusting and the new breakouts, and had all sorts of advice for me to buck up and self love and ‘blah blah blah’ bullshit. So with pressure from my friends and family, I stopped taking the drug, and figured bad skin was better than being suicidal.
However, once I got off, I was still depressed and I still had acne. So I knew for a fact, it had to be my diet. Accutane was the spark my health needed to downhill spiral.
Now comes the fun stuff! How I cured myself of acne FOREVER.
If you don’t know already, I am a certified Functional Nutritional Therapist, and I actually started school right after I got off Accutane. So when it comes to diet, I got to experiment and learn about holistic health all while trying to heal myself.
I learned in school that hormones caused most skin and acne problems, but balancing them is hard AF. Also, hormones are made up of FATS.
A quick lesson in fats, there are good guys and bad guys. Bad guys are the TRANS FATS like rancid oils. Some small amounts occur in animal products but those are actually good for you (studies linked here). I was a strict vegan at the time so I knew it my acne had something to do with the trans fats in all the vegetable oils I was using, like my vegan “butter”.
Why are vegetable oils rancid? It’s because these oils made from things like canola (rapeseed), corn, soy, sunflower, peanut, and sesame and are chemically altered to stay liquid at room temperature.
Not only that but they also become inflammatory (causing free radical damage) when they are exposed to ANY sort of light or heat. That means grocery store lights, heat while being cooked, and packaged or shipped.
*Coconut and olive oils are exempt from this list of bad oils because they have a different molecular makeup than these other polyunsaturated, rancid oils. Coconut is exempt because it is saturated and olive oil because of its oleic acid.
At the time of my bad skin, I was eating a lot of packaged vegan foods like tortilla chips, potato chips, vegan cookies, restaurant food, etc. Restaurant food specifically uses A LOT of canola oil because using olive oil would be too expensive.
My solution? I immediately gave up all these foods and cooked everything at home. I read ALL the labels, and if it had canola oil, I didn’t buy it.
Here’s a list of common foods that have vegetable oils like canola in them:
Salad Dressings
Infant Formula
Breads, Rolls, and Pastries
Cereals
Frozen Foods
Vegan Meat Substitutes
Margarine
Candy
Fried Foods
Tofu
Soy Sauce
Soy Cheese
Tomato Sauce
Soups
Condiments
Protein Powders
The list goes on…
When I gave up vegetable oils, my skin FLOURISHED.
Simply by removing the toxic oils, my body was able to deal with my inflammation in a healthy way. And now, I can eat some bad food here and there and do not have breakouts. Sometimes, I even go to bed without washing my face and I wake up with NO PIMPLES.
It’s seriously a miracle and it only took me about 5 weeks to have completely clear skin.
I never thought I would be confident enough to post a makeup-free selfie.
This is not medical advice, this is just what worked for me and MANY many others.
I encourage you all to write down a food and mood journal, which I linked a free template here to track how your skin and mood is affected by what you eat. It doesn’t cost a thing and it’s the first step of getting back in tune with your body and what you put in it.
Thank you for reading, add me on Instagram, shoot me a DM and just know that I am here for you. I know your struggle and I wish you the very very best.
And as always, happy eating!
