My Acne is GONE.

For the first time in almost ten years of struggling with cystic acne, I was finally able to get rid of my acne once and for all, and it had nothing to do with anything that dermatologists told me.  It had nothing to do with medication.  In fact, I have learned one simple truth: acne has far more to do with what goes in your body than what you put on your body.  This is something that no dermatologist taught me; it is something I learned on my own.

Everyone's body is different, so I guess I can only theorize how this would work for other people, but I finally found what worked for me.  After all these years of going to dermatologists, going on almost every prescription and over the counter acne medication on the market, including one round of isotretinoin (Accutane), and still no success, do you know what finally worked for me?  The answer seems so simple.  All I had to do was eliminate dairy products, refined sugar, and processed foods from my diet, and my acne disappeared.

Many people would call this extreme, but I feel like it is far more extreme to poison your body with all kinds of medications which have been proven to be biologically harmful (just look at what isotretinoin will do to an unborn fetus).

I am not perfect at sticking to this diet, but I know that when I am very strict with it, my acne is completely gone.  When I let up on my diet a little, my acne comes back a little.  But when I go back to eating a typical American diet all the time, that's when my acne is the worst.

I know that this may not be the solution to every person that struggles with acne, but I wanted to share my experience in the hopes that it would help others.   It can't hurt to try, right?  It took weeks and weeks of eating this way before my acne finally cleared up, and then months and months for my acne scars to fade, so you do have to be patient and give it some time, but I started to notice improvement within the first few weeks.

I don't know why my body reacts this way to dairy products especially, but processed foods and refined sugars affect it as well.  I guess my body is just more sensitive than most.  Maybe I am mildly allergic to these foods.  Who knows?  I just know that this was one of the best discoveries I have ever been fortunate enough to stumble upon.

I used to be afraid to moisturize my face, because I was afraid that it would make me break out even worse, and I did notice a slight improvement of my acne when my face was really dry. I now know that that was a big mistake, because very dry skin has a harder time healing itself, so my acne scars would never really fade.  Now that I figured out how to prevent acne by the way that I eat, I can moisturize the heck out of my skin, and my skin looks about a million times healthier and more vibrant than it did before.  My acne scars began fading after I started moisturizing regularly, and now my acne scars are barely even visible even if you look closely.  I even put thick Eucerin cream, vaseline, and even baby oil on my face, and I don't get a single pimple from oil "clogging my pores," lol.  It makes me wonder if the whole thing dermatologists teach about "oil being bad and clogging pores" as a way for companies to make more money selling oil-free stuff.  Who knows in this crazy world.  I could be totally wrong.  I just know what works for me from my own experience.

Anyway, I hope people don't think I am crazy or anything.  I just wanted to share what worked for me in the hopes that I might be able to help someone else.

-Kassidee.