So you think you've tried everything for your skin?
POV: You’re you.
“I feel like I’ve tried EVERYTHING and nothing works!”
You’ve tried:
Expensive skin care
Cheap skin care
Antibiotics
Probiotics
Collagen powder
Greens powders
Glow powders
Raw onion juice (… yep)
Fish oil
Cutting out dairy
Cutting out gluten
Cutting out meat
Chaste-tree extract
Pillow cases
Now my turn:
If I had to choose one statement that I hear over and over again from my clients, it is THIS!
“I have tried EVERYTHING!”
It is so common to feel this way because acne has a way of stripping all hope, optimism and faith out of you. It can sneak up on you and have you feeling completely frustrating, disheartened and demoralised.
When somebody tells me that they have tried everything, my follow up questions go something like this:
“How long did you try it for?”
“Were you consistent with it?”
“Did you cut it out completely or just partly?”
“Were you taking a proper therapeutic dose for a consistent period of time?”
“Do you know whether the thing you tried was actually addressing the cause of your acne?” (acne is not greens powder deficiency ;)
Then I start to piece together the story of what is going on and what is causing your acne, and WHY nothing has helped yet!
It can take up to a few months for some types of acne to come to the surface. That means that the breakouts you are experiencing now, could be a reflection of what was going on for you MONTHS ago!
Hormone changes, inflammation, gut stuff, food intolerances, anxiety - these do not develop overnight and neither does acne. Its usually never just one thing causing it either, so to be able to really nail acne you need to look at all the different factors at play.
Acne is the external manifestation of what is going on deeper within your body and mind.
It is a (painfully obvious and un-ignorable) sign from your body that something is up.
Usually it is a combination of factors that caused your acne in the first place, and a combination of factors that is keeping it in a perpetual cycle of breaking out! To figure out what those factors are, can be damn near impossible to do alone. That’s my job!
In the same way, figuring out what to do about acne and how to clear it up is a tough gig if you don’t have a really thorough understanding of skin, hormones, gut health, stress and nutrition!
The other hard part about treating your own skin is feeling anxious and stressed about your skin, and the urge to swap from one tactic to another in an attempt to fix it. Like, how long are you supposed to try something before deciding it doesn’t work and moving on to something else!?
Most of my clients come to me on one or more medications of supplements that they are trying to help with their skin.
These usually look like antibiotics, the oral contraceptive pill, roaccutane or in the natural sphere, a generic skin health tablet or some other retail multivitamin. They might give it a month, sometimes more something less before trying something else.
Different treatments have different timelines!
For instance, you need to be following a diet or lifestyle change for 10-12 weeks before expecting change. Other treatments like Vitex need 4-12 weeks to take effect. Gut and digestion related acne can improve within a couple of weeks with the right supplements and changes.
There is no magic pill (pharmaceutical or otherwise) that will clear up your skin. So taking one or two tablets in isolation without exploring and addressing the underlying drivers very rarely yields good results!
In my experience talking to clients, trying ‘everything’ often looks like:
Taking an over the counter vitamin like zinc
Or a low dose, low quality probiotic
Or spending thousands on topical skin care without treating the internal side of things
Or cutting out dairy and wheat (some of the time)
Or a very well-marketed skin & digestion tablet
Everyone is doing the best that they can with the knowledge and resources that they have, but let me assure you that you have not tried everything yet!
I could fill a book (perhaps I will one day) with things that you haven’t tried!
Which is really exciting because it means you can have hope that the right combination of treatment is still out there for you! I don’t like to toot my own horn, but you haven’t tried my way yet either!
I approach acne holistically, which means that my priority is to go through your health, diet and lifestyle with a fine-toothed comb and work out what caused your acne to start and what is getting in the way of your body healing it.
Your skin is always trying to heal and it is on your side!
I look at:
Hormone imbalances that might be causing your acne
Gut health and digestive issues that might be causing hormone imbalances or acne
Stress, inflammation and dietary factors that mess with gut health and hormones and skin
Gut infections or skin infections that drive acne
Emotional and spiritual wounds that create patterns in diet, lifestyle and hormones
Skin care and the health of your skin as a structural organ
Nutritional deficiencies that are slowing down skin repair
Then I:
Work with you to create a treatment plan that addresses these
Prescribe appropriate herbal and nutritional remedies
Support you to make the changes you need to make to get results
Cheer you on and help you to stay consistent and resilient
Share my own experience with mindset and confidence when experiencing acne
Give recommendations about food and meal choices that align with you
I dont:
Support an all or nothing mentality (perfection is not an option!)
Do the work for you (I love to educate and empower - the rest is up to you!)
Expect you to do everything overnight
Try and sell you things you don’t need (I give my recommendations and access to the remedies I feel are best suited to you and what you do with that information is up to you!)
I’ve been there. I’ve had acne (more than once) and I’ve tried to treat myself (and failed). I believe in a combined and collaborative approach where we both muck in and work it out together!
If you are still looking for a clue about what is actually causing your acne, take my free quiz!
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