Healing Acne
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 100
It doesn't matter if you are suffering from an autoimmune condition or some simple hormonal acne or even fine lines and wrinkles on your face. Healing acne is a struggle for so many.
The good news is, there are things from the grocery store, simple things that can help you heal acne fast.
Today we're talking about how to start healing acne right in your home, no creams or wipes needed. We will also cover what's going on with the skin why you're experiencing some of the changes that you are. Although healing acne is the topic, the information we'll cover is a good starting point for most skin conditions even psoriasis and eczema.
If you haven’t downloaded my free guide, 5 things you can do to start healing your psoriasis right now - then make sure you check that out TODAY. You can download it at audreychristie.com/psoriasis or on the show notes page at audreychristie.com/100.
Speaking of that...this is our 100th EPISODE! OH MY GOODNESS! It’s so funny to go back and look at season one and how things have evolved as we improve this pod and increase our audience. Mega huge thank you to all that have contributed to this effort and tuned int and listened and to those brands that have sponsored us too!
Healing Acne: When to be Concerned
Often people wonder - "why is this happening to me? Why can’t I just wake up with a clear and beautiful skin every single day?"
Unfortunately, there is no real short answer because as you know we are all unique, we are all bio-individual. I truly believe that part of the issue we have in this day in age revolves around those darn Instagram filters. I’m guilty of using them too. Just like you can suffer from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) when you scroll through Instagram or Facebook, we get the same fear/shame happening regarding our skin when we look at perfectly filtered photos all day. We tend to forget that skin is a living, breathing, and evolving organ of our body. And, oh yeah, we all have things like PORES and occasional blemishes.
But when does an occasional blemish become something to be more concerned about?
Our skin is at the end of the road from the inside out (which is kind of a bummer because its the outside for everything else). By “end of the road,” I mean it is the last stop, the last organ to receive nutrients, the last organ to receive hydration, and the last organ to start to show signs of overload.
When you start to see frequent blemishes, multiple blemishes, rashes, and breakouts it's a sign that your body has had enough. You are either overloaded with toxins physically, emotionally, energetically, or undernourished/under hydrated. Luckily the fix is fairly simple and if you do it well, the road can be really short to healing your acne.
Skin Products/Topically Healing Acne
You may have heard me say before that the average woman has 80+ different toxins in her bloodstream before leaving the house. These primarily come from the topical products applied in the course of getting ready in the morning. Things like your soap, shampoo, conditioner, moisturizer, all the different makeup products applied, hair products, toothpaste, lotions, detergent or dryer sheet residues...it adds up quickly.
All of that stuff, anything that touches the skin, within 26 seconds of touching your skin, is in your bloodstream. Depending on the chemical that gets in your bloodstream, it can cross important barriers into tissues (including the blood-brain barrier or your breast milk or damage your gut lining or mess with your immune system or all of the above). Eventually, that toxin has to be sorted out at your liver where it may be stored in fat tissue, disposed of via one of your waste channels, or when everything else is busy oor overloaded - last resort - sent through the skin.
Guess what happens then? You get a blemish, zit, rash, or a whole bunch of them together. Sometimes on your face and sometimes elsewhere on the body.
The very first step I ask people to do is start swapping out their daily use products for more natural alternatives. This doesn’t have to be costly at all, my colleague Bria who owns the Hebe Holistic Spa recommends, Mad Hippie products for young and more experienced skin, and just plain oils like grapeseed oil for hydration. You can even add a few drops of essential oils here to create the perfect blend for your skin. (Bria is located in Lake Dallas and a holistic skin care consultation is so affordable here’s the link.)
If you wish to DIY it then read those product packages, if you don’t recognize and ingredient or if its not something you could put in your mouth (and not call poison control) then don’t put it on your skin. There is a great little app called Think Dirty that can help. (I recommend Young Living Mineral Make Up for those that like a little more than super market brands).
The last thing I will touch on topically is SOAP, you don’t need it, only use soap when your face is actually dirty. Otherwise, some warm water and grapeseed oil will do the trick!
This may seem inconsequential at first - but the stuff you put on your skin is even linked to hormonal issues resulting in acne. It’s all related and it's all important.
Hydration
Topical hydration is sometimes necessary for the skin - Bria our facialist says “hydrate the skin topically like a plant, when it looks like it needs it.”
What is even more important when healing acne - is hydrating the skin internally.
When I do a complimentary mini- case review, one of the first things we talk about is the amount of water consumed in a day. I often hear “oh I drink a lot of water, probably 64 ounces a day!” Unfortunately - unless you weigh about 50lbs, that is not enough water to sustain your human suit, much less heal it or hydrate and heal your skin.
If you weigh 120 lbs or less you must drink your weight in ounces each and every day - of plain old (filtered) water. Kids too! And you will need more if you sweat.
If you weigh more than 120 lbs then you need a gallon of water a day (that’s 128 ounces) and if you are over 200lbs you will need a bit more than that.
The conventional recommendation is 64 ounces or 8 glasses of water a day. That will keep you from dying likely - but it will not allow the body to function optimally, let alone heal. Recall that the skin is the last stop, so everything else must be hydrated before the skin is. This step alone can even help with many fine lines and untimely wrinkles!
Nutrition for Healing Acne
Once you get those first 2 things underway, you will be headed right for healing acne and beautiful, youthful skin. But one of the big roadblocks for clear skin comes from food. The fuel that you are putting in your body is likely a big player in this skin issue you are having. It may even be one of the top issues - but we need to have a good base in place with products and hydration before changing nutrition.
Most of the time when I start talking nutritional changes that's when I start hearing about this supplement or that supplement or powder or potion. The hard truth here is: the best way to get these nutrients are through food. I’ve said it again and again, you can’t out supplement poor nutrition.
The biggest trigger for skin conditions is dairy products. And I totally get it there was a time I couldn’t consider living without cheese on all the things too. Here’s the problem, it causes a mucus reaction (snot) in all people AND even if your gut lining is not triggering seasonal allergies (you know that’s not really a pollen problem, yeah?) then we do know that the hormone content in milk is a huge problem for those predisposed to acne.
Cattle are kept in a pregnancy cycle to maximize milk production - guess what is in that milk - along with something that would turn your stomach related to mastitis? Loads and loads of hormones and something called casomorphin - natures queue for you to want more milk.
Often people say they don’t drink milk but they have a little cheese here and there - unfortunately that as bad for your healing acne journey if not worse because it takes 5-6 gallons of milk to make 1 pound of cheese so we are just concentrating those hormones into that little cheese block.
Kicking dairy to the curb is a big step in healing your body and our primary goal in today’s episode, healing your skin. Dairy products ARE NOT health foods.
MicroNutrients
Getting rid of dairy is critical but so is nourishing the body with anti inflammatory foods. The very best way to consume omega 3s is through plant foods like flax and chia seeds. There are some tricks to it to maximize that dosage.
Omega 3 has to be consumed through our food because it is not produced in the body. The reason we need such a high dose is to move towards an optimal balance of omega 3s to omega 6s. Hear this - you never want to supplement with omega 6 oils. ONLY omega 3s. A balanced ratio of omega 6s to omega 3s is 4:1, most people are at 26:1. Those omega 3s are the building block of all cells, omega 6s on the contrary are inflammatory.
Stress
As you know, stress has a major impact on our body. It physically changes the cells and chemical messengers that are floating around in our blood and it causes toxin build up - this is often expressed through the skin in the form of lots of things but one of those is acne.
This could be ongoing stress sometimes called chronic stress, or significant short term stress. This stress could be mental or physical, so it for example could be anxiety about surgery or the surgery itself that stresses the body.
The number 1 best way to fix stress is beginning a mindfulness practice. If you’d like to download my special guide on how to meditate for healing - then grab that on the show notes page at audreychristie.com/100
The answer to the big question - how long to I have to do this to see if it works? Most people start to feel a difference just DIYing this thing with no dairy lots of water meditation and product swaps within about 10 days. Sometimes we need a deeper healing that may require longer or specialized input from me. Regardless, I would ask you to give it a good 6 weeks before determining if it is working for you. Can you do this for 6 weeks for clear skin? Bet you can!
Wrap Up
To wrap this up, give this a go for 6 weeks for clear skin - kick dairy to the curb - because it's not a health food, reduce your stress, and dramatically increase your omega 3 intake and your raw veggie intake for dramatic results.
Thanks for listening to the Naturalistic Nurse Podcast, if you’d like to contribute to this podcasting effort of getting the work out about how to shift your practice to ditch the bandaid fixes and shift to root cause resolutions that stick be sure and subscribe, rate and leave a review - I’d be oh- so grateful.
Be well,