Are you vegan, gluten-free, only drink rain water, and can still not figure out why in the heck you still have acne? This one’s for you boo. Welcome to Health Bytes!
There are many reasons why acne can happen, but most people focus on acne as an external issue and don’t think of acne as a warning sign. Acne usually points to a underlying issue with your digestion, elimination, your diet, hormones, and sometimes the balance of microorganisms in your gut. You may have what in your mind is the PERFECT diet, but still can’t beat the blackheads. Here’s a few reasons why:
- You eat a lot of processed or packaged foods, or fried foods. Consuming foods with dead oils and high in trans fats that are processed can cause breakouts for some of us, because everyone has different levels of sensitivities to food. Even if your bff can wolf down fries and maintain her blemish free skin, it may not last for long and could lead to a much more serious health condition. If you are sensitive, consider it a blessing and stay away from foods with excess oils, stabilizers, chemicals, high fructose corn syrup, and other fillers.
- You have some underlying elimination issues. The colon is literally our bodies’ sewage system. In order to keep our skin clear we need to have regular bowel movements. the colon needs to be clear enough to process waste and toxins out of the body. If you are only having one bowel movement over the course of a few days — it’s a sign that you are constipated and need to drink a lot of additional water. To calculate how much water you need, a good general rule of thumb is to divide your body weight in half and drink that amount in fluid ounces, not to exceed 125 fluid ounces.
- You May Have…Parasites! A lot of people don’t know this, but some acne or skin breakouts can be caused by parasites. Parasitic infection is usually a sign of an underlying root cause or health issue sometimes related to leaky gut, for example mercury poisoning, candida overgrowth. DO you have fatigue, or a visible white coating on your tongue? It may be time to figure out what’s really going on and get the buggers or candida out of your system.
- Last but not least: Stress and hormonal imbalance can cause acne. Remember when you were a teenager and everyone said not to worry about your acne because your raging hormones caused them? Well when we get older and still have acne, that’s no longer an acceptable answer. SO now what? Well if we are stressed out, and our cortisol levels are consistently high, our body stays in fight or flight mode, and we can eventually wear out our adrenals, and throw off the balance of progesterone and estrogen in our body. If estrogen levels get high, we also may breakout, or have an imbalance that manifests itself in other ways such as fibroids, endometriosis etc. in women. Moral of the story is that acne can be affected by more than diet alone. If you do the work to figure out what your acne is trying to tell you about your body; you’ll be able to stay blemish-free and keep that natural glow! -XO Esosa E, MS AKA Raw Girl