Part 7 -

Minimize Alcohol Consumption

Hi Guys,

Here with the next part of my cystic acne cure. This section is based on the same principles already explained in the previous two sections on clean water and diet, which is basically to minimize the amount of toxins entering your body, so this post will be quite short and sweet.

I have titled this section ‘minimizing alcohol consumption’ but alot of the following information also applies to recreational drugs or prescription drugs.

Alcohol was the main indulgence for me and the substance which I had the most experience with however, hence the title and topic of this post.

So very simply put here is how I believe alcohol contributes to acne, there are 2 main points:

1. Alcohol is a toxin

Just like excess hormones, chemicals found in tap water and the preservatives & additives found in food, alcohol cannot be used for the growth of the body therefore it must be expelled. As I’ve probably stated several times: If your body is already having a hard time removing these toxins via it’s primary excretory system (The liver and kidneys) it will call on the skin to help out. When toxins are being passed through the skin on your face, this is where the trouble happens and acne forms.

2. Dehydration

Alcohol dehydrates the body (including the skin). When your skin is dehydrated it becomes dry and tight which hinders the secretion of sebum and toxins through the pores. Also, the body creates extra sebum to compensate for the dryness of the skin. So basically, there is an increase of sebum and toxins trying to escape through the skin but because the skin has become dry and tight, it gets stuck and causes more acne.

The second time I developed cystic acne, when my overall health and skin worsened due to my poor diet and lifestyle, I started getting at least one zit after a night out drinking. This worsened until, even just a few beers would cause bunches of pimples and a few cysts to appear. This was quite a problem for me, as going out drinking with my buddies was an enjoyable part of my social life but obviously I didn’t want my skin to get worse.

My decision of course was to give up drinking. I actually went without alcohol completely for over a year and a half. It was quite tough from going from someone who went out drinking fairly often to not drinking at all, especially with your friends around you goading you in to having ‘just one beer’. So you have to learn how to train yourself to ignore the distractions and peer-pressure and stay on track. Self Discipline is a MUST to achieve this.

If you also like a bit of a drink and don’t think you can stop all of a sudden, then I have a little tip for you:

You should still eventually stop drinking (until you get clear at least) but you can do it gradually. As you are reducing the amount you intake, when you do drink alcohol, make sure you drink EXTRA water to counteract the alcohol. The water will keep your skin hydrated and also help liver and kidney flush out the extra toxins coming in from the alcohol. To be safe, drink 1 glass of clean water per alcoholic beverage. That’s right, so if you go out and have 4 alcoholic beverages, then you should also drink 4 glasses of CLEAN water on top of the 8 glasses you are already drinking. This means you will be queueing up at the bathroom pretty often which may be a little annoying but it’s better than waking up the next day with a bunch of zits on your face =)

I can tell you that today I drink on occassion, I don’t drink to get drunk anymore…. I think I’m too old to enjoy the feeling of being completely wasted =) But I do enjoy a beer or a glass of wine with a meal quite often. I also still drink the extra water when I consume alcohol but I’m not as strict with it anymore.

And that’s the 5th part of my cystic acne cure, we’re almost there!

Peace,

The Anonymous Guru

©2010 TheAnonymousGuru. All Rights Reserved.

Part 6 -

A Healthy Diet

Hi guys,

Here with the 4th part of my cystic acne cure, and probably the trickiest one of all which is diet. I’ve been thinking quite alot about this section and about what exactly I should recommend you eat and not eat and I have concluded that I can really only provide you with my own personal experience and give you very broad recommendations.

I have realized that people react differently to different foods and that a contributor of acne to one person may be completely fine for another. Also taking into consideration things like allergies and so on, diet becomes a very complicated and personal issue.

Alot of people will tell you not to eat specific foods, E.g don’t eat chocolate, or don’t eat chilli etc. (For me I know that my body doesn’t react well to milk, cream, MSG and overly oily foods) but I believe that different foods are acne contributors to different people and if I start telling you specifically not to eat this or that because it breaks me out I might just end up confusing and frustrating you because it is not at all a contributor to your acne.

You will have noticed that I keep everything very simple, I don’t go too far into the technical or medical side of things because I don’t want to make all of this too confusing and my recommendations for diet to cure cystic acne will also be quite broad. So please also do your own research and experimentation to find out what is best for you.

This section on diet still deals with the task of reducing the amount of toxins (toxins being anything the body must expel as it does not contribute to it’s growth) entering your body. Again alot of this I have learnt from Clear for Life which has more specific, scientific reasons behind my recommendations.

Firstly, lets dispel a huge acne myth: DIET DOES NOT CONTRIBUTE TO ACNE. This is COMPLETELY false. Now you might not see any negative effects on your health by eating 1 bowl of heavily processed and preserved instant noodles, but if you did that every day for 3 months (which I did at one point in time) I can guarantee that you will begin to notice the effects that it has on your health.

Put very basically:

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. EAT WELL AND YOU WILL LIVE WELL.

So firstly, let me tell you about my diet before I decided to start living healthy. This is how NOT to eat =)

A couple of things which you should know that will better help you understand how I allowed my eating habits to get so bad are:

1. I believed that diet had nothing to do with acne

2. I can’t cook =p

3. I have an extremely fast metabolism and I have a very hard time gaining weight (basically I can eat what I want and not gain a single pound)

OK, so this is what I predominantly used to eat on a daily basis, this covers approximately a 2 year period after I overcame cystic acne the first time (after Accutane):

First meal

One of the following:

- A bowl of instant noodles

- A box of microwaveable pasta

- A banana

- A frozen meat pie

Second meal

One of the following:

- A bowl of instant noodles

- A box of microwaveable pasta

- A banana

- A frozen meat pie

(Which ever one I didn’t eat for my first meal)

Inbetween

- Usually some chocolate

- Sometimes a mini-muffin or cake

- Lollies

Third meal

Dinner varied depending on whether my girlfriend at the time cooked or not. If she did, it was usually pretty healthy stuff with a decent amount of veggies in it. If she didn’t, I would usually get take away from somewhere nearby which as usually either:

- Pizza

- Souvlaki

- McDonalds

- Vietnamese food

Beverages

- Tap water (I don’t know how much as I wasn’t very strict with my water intake after Accutane)

- Soft drinks (Usually Coke with every meal)

So as you can see, I wasn’t really eating very well. My vegetable intake was very low and completely at random, only one serve a day max. I would eat 1 piece of fruit (a banana, because its easy and convenient) roughly every second day. The rest of my diet consisted of refined carbs, processed and preserved foods, and food and drinks containing alot of refined sugar.

I thought it was a pretty decent diet because I was always full, I never got any immediate symptoms or signals telling me that my eating habits were unhealthy. No acne, no stomach aches and I wasn’t getting fat.

But one day I woke up with a couple of pimples, and then a week later a couple more, and then a couple of big, ugly ones and slowly but surely I slipped back into my acne hell and had a face covered with cystic acne worse than before.

I also developed what I think was chronic fatigue syndrome, I never went to see a doctor about it but I used to get extremely tired very early in the eveneing (around 8pm) and would be unable to concentrate or really do anything apart from laze around. The color of my face also became a greyish tone and I would often get headaches and the occasional migraine.

So the effects of bad diet creep up on you, which is why I believe people always say that diet has nothing to do with pimples, maybe their experiments consisted of eating some French fries and watching their face for an hour to see if any pimples appeared, and if nothing happened they would conclude ‘Nope! French fries doesn’t give you pimples, so I can eat them every day!’

What was happening to me was I was slowly, day-by-day, bit-by-bit contributing to the toxins I was already accumulating through dirty tap water and bad sleeping habits with extra toxins from unhealthy food (Preservatives, chemicals, food coloring etc.) into my body until it came to a point where the body’s primary excretory organs (liver and kidneys) couldn’t handle them anymore and had to start using my skin (one of the body’s secondary excretory systems) to help expel them.

So after learning about how diet was affecting my health and acne I decided to make a huge change in my diet. It was a little tough at first but as I was also learning about the Laws of Obedience and Sacrifice this new diet was a good chance for me to apply and test the new knowledge I had gained.

Below is the diet I took on to get clear:

First thing after I wake up:

- A cup of green tea

First meal

- A fruit salad (Apple, kiwi fruit, grapefruit, orange)

Second meal

- A banana

Third meal

- Salad with a simple dressing (usually spinach or baby rocket)

Fourth meal

- Toasted wholemeal bread X 2 slices

Fifth meal

- Avocado sliced with soy sauce and wasabi

Sixth meal

- Bacon and eggs

Seventh meal

- Whatever was on for dinner

Beverages

- Clean filtered water X 6 glasses

- Various teas (Green tea, barley tea, Puaru tea, black tea)

Supplements

Before starting my new diet I was experimenting with various supplements such as: Liver care Complex,  Zinc tablets, Acidophilus, Garlic, Vitamin B and Cod Liver Oil which I continued to use for a while but then slowly stopped using. These supplements were probably good for me but, they didn’t do anything on their own and I don’t feel any different after discontinuing their use. I occasionally still take the Liver care Complex tablets if I’ve had a lot to drink, and I take Vitamin C every now and then to support my immune system.

One supplement which I do believe had an impact on my acne and helped accelerate my healing process is a supplement called DIM.

It is labelled as an ‘Estrogen Metabolism Formula’ which initially worried me a little as I thought I would start growing breasts if I started taking it, but it is completely fine for both men and women.

Diindolymethane is an anti-andgrogen extracted from cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and brussels sprouts and concentrated into convenient little pills. Apparently taking a couple of pills of DIM is equal to eating a couple of POUNDS of cruciferous vegetables.

DIM was the last of the supplements that I added to my ‘pill collection’ so I was able to acutely feel the difference in my skin as I started taking it. DIM would make my skin slightly less oily and my lips a little dry, it felt similar to being on Accutane but much, much milder. It also made my existing acne feel much less inflamed, and it seemed that alot of my acne was ‘peaking’ faster. (I don’t know what the correct term is but by ‘peaking’ I mean when the yellow head of the pimple appears on the surface of the skin).

Side effects: DIM would make me feel quite relaxed and kind of dreamy sometimes, a bit like a cold and flu tablet but again, much milder. I would also have very vivid dreams if I took it after a late dinner. It did sometimes affect my sleep however and I would sometimes be up all night with vivid daydreams throughout the night but not actually falling asleep.

I followed this EXACT diet for about 1/2 a year and within that time-frame along with my other lifestyle changes such as meditation, yoga, exercise and learning about and applying the laws of life, my skin improved dramatically. After seeing such drastic changes I slowly started loosening up with this particular diet and being less strict with it, today I only retain the following steps:

First thing after I wake up:

- A cup of green tea

First meal

- A fruit salad (Apple, kiwi fruit, grapefruit, orange)

Second meal

- A banana

Third meal

- Salad with a simple dressing (usually spinach or baby rocket)

Beverages

- Clean filtered water X 6 glasses

- Various teas (Green tea, barley tea, Puaru tea, black tea)

I still do not drink any soft drinks but I do eat dessert after dinner, and sometimes in the afternoon as well (I have a bit of a sweet tooth)

After my salad I eat pretty much anything I feel like though by habit I do eat quite healthily, I rarely eat fast-food or processed or preserved foods.

So now I have clean, clear skin and I pretty much eat whatever I like as long as I keep to the ‘easier’ version of my diet =)

So based on my experience here are my basic recommendations for you:

1. Cut down on sugar

2. Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables

3. Don’t eat anything but fruit and veggies before noon

3. Try to eat as little processed food as possible

And here are my reasons for each recommendation:

Cut down on sugar:

I’m sure if you have searched for your own cystic acne cure you will have come across several sources which talk about sugar levels in the blood and insulin resistance being a cause of acne. To be honest I don’t know the exact mechanics of how all of this works and I remember becoming extremely confused and kind of stressed out trying to learn about what I should and shouldn’t be eating and also when I should be eating what etc. etc. It all became a bit too much for me so in the end I just followed my intuition, took the advice and drastically cut down my sugar intake, and it worked.

As I mentioned previously, nowadays I do eat sweets (mostly ice-cream and cake) but I don’t drink soft drinks which used to be the main source of sugar in my previous diet. Today as a sweetener in my teas I use Manuka Honey.

Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables:

They’re good for you =)

Don’t eat anything but fruit and veggies before noon:

In Clear for Life the author talks a fair bit about food combining. I don’t follow it all that strictly (though I did at the very beginning) but I believe that there is alot of truth to it. Basically it says that certain types of foods are broken down by the body with acids (proteins – meat, fish) , and others are broken down with alkalis (carbs – rice, bread, pasta etc.) So if you eat meat and rice, the stomach releases acids and alkalis to break down the foods for digestion. But of course if you mix and acid with an alkali, they cancel each other out and the chemical solution created by the stomach to break down the foods becomes neutral. This means the food isn’t broken down properly which causes problems for the digestive system.

You can read more into this by typing ‘food combining’ into Google. Personally I don’t go too far with it, the main thing I do is to eat only fruits and veggies in the morning and I make sure to eat the right combination of fruits and veggies and wait the required time for them to be completely digested before going onto the next meal.

The reason why I don’t eat anything other than fruit and veggies in the morning is because fruit & veg are very easy to digest and are a good warm up for your digestive system. Since it has been resting throughout the night you want to give it something nice and easy to work on first.

I guess it’s like stretching and warming up before you play sports. If you go straight into the match without warming up and stretching your muscles, there is more chance of injury and your body probably wont perform as well. This is the same with your digestive system.

Try to eat as little processed food as possible:

Again all of the food-coloring, preservatives and chemicals found in highly processed foods are toxic materials which need to be released by the body. Reduce the amount of toxins going in and your body wont need to take so much of it out.

And thats all! I hope this post was helpful and I will be back with the final 3 steps as soon as possible!

Peace,

The Anonymous Guru

©2010 TheAnonymousGuru. All Rights Reserved.

Part 3 -

Know the Laws of Life

OK straight off the bat I’m going to hit you with some ‘weird’ stuff =) Knowing the Laws of Life.

The reason I’m putting this step right at the beginning is because curing cystic acne is an inside job, and you can’t get any more ‘inside’ than your attitude, habits and the way you think.

I know you all probably want to hear the ‘practical’ stuff related to your physical self, but you have to start with a healthy mind as a solid foundation. Once you have achieved a healthy mind and a positive mindset then you can start building a healthy body.

To the un-initiated these Laws might sound a little ‘out there’ but please put your pre-conceptions aside, have some ‘blind’ faith and have a try. This first step is extremely important and was one of the most crucial steps for me to get clear. Knowing these Laws not only have cleared my skin, they have drastically improved my health, my finances, my relationships, my career and most importantly my level of happiness.

I studied 11 Laws, there are probably more but these are the ones I learnt about:

Thinking / Supply / Attraction / Receiving / Increase / Compensation / Non-resistance / Forgiveness / Sacrifice / Obedience / Success

Specifically, the Laws which I think helped me most to get clear are:

• The Law of Attraction

• The Law of Sacrifice

• The Law of Obedience

The Law of Attraction

I’m sure all of you have heard a little bit about the Law of Attraction (probably through a movie called ‘The Secret’) so I’m not going to explain too much here.

What I benefitted from this Law is it caused me to stop WORRYING about my acne and checking it out in the mirror every 10 minutes.

It taught me that my constant focussing on my acne was actually attracting more acne rather than making it go away. As the Law states ‘anything you focus on will only get bigger’.

Even more valuably, it taught me how to feel good even when I looked horrible and basically be happy throughout my process of healing (which did take a while).

The eventual shift of focus from being miserable to being happy even though my condition hadn’t yet changed is what I believe guided me to the information I needed to get clear.

The Law of Sacrifice

‘Discipline is the high road that leads to everything that makes life worth living’

The Law of Sacrifice is not about losing something but gaining something. It is about giving up things of a lower nature to gain things of a higher nature. It is about GROWTH and DISCIPLINE.

Discipline is when you give your self a command and then follow it. It is the act of taking control of your life.

In this case, your command is to have clear skin. In order to obtain clear skin you must sacrifice some thing, or things of a lower nature and replace them with things of a higher nature. In my case I gave up:

• Alcohol

• Soft drinks

• Junk Food

• Some of my free time

and replaced them with:

• Clean water and teas only

• A healthy diet

• Exercise

• Yoga

Basically The Law of Sacrifice taught me to break old, negative habits and create positive, new ones.

All human beings are controlled by habits, if you have negative habits, you can only ever create negative results. Severe acne is a result of a lifestyle full of negative habits. Learn to change your habits and your lifestyle will change and ultimately your skin will change.

To put it simply, create positive habits and positive results must soon follow, it is Law! The good thing is, once you form a new habit, it is easy and natural to maintain it because….. it’s a habit!

For me doing this required a bit of effort and discipline. I had been given the wrong information about acne for years, I believed it was because of germs and under-sized pores, and that it had nothing to do with diet or lifestyle. So the change in the way I was thinking and the things I had to do every day to get clear was uncomfortable and sometimes painful but the reward was ENORMOUS!

The Law of Obedience

Once you learn about the Laws of Life, you will understand the significance of the Law of Obedience.

To quote Bob Proctor: ‘He who obeys the laws of Nature and acts as an obedient servant later becomes the master and reaps a full harvest.’

We live in a universe where everything works in an exact, predictable, fail-safe way. Nature never plants an apple seed and grows a lemon tree. People who focus on negative things never get positive results. If you do the wrong things you will never get the right results.

So study the Laws, remember them, work in harmony with the Laws and obey them. If you can do this, I believe you can have anything you want in life not just clear skin.

_________________________________________

RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS & RESOURCES:

Laws of Sacrifice & Obedience: You can find out about all 11 Laws including the Laws of Sacrifice and Obedience here . Or you can visit www.thinklovelive.com , on this site you can hear an interview with Bob Proctor where he explains more about them. I would highly recommend getting a set of the 11 Laws program if you are able, it will help speed up your journey to clear skin and also keep you on track. More importantly are the life lessons you will gain from learning about the 11 Laws which will improve all areas of your life, not just your skin.

Law of Attraction: To get the absolute, perfect understanding of the Law of Attraction you MUST check out ABRAHAM-Hicks, their website is www.abraham-hicks.com . Or, check them out on YouTube, there are thousands of videos there for you to see and truly understand what it is and how to use it. I will talk more about these guys in a later post.

I feel personally indebted to these two sources of information, I truly believe they have changed my life =)

_________________________________________

Anyway, thats all for now, I hope you found this information helpful. I will be back soon with more!

Peace,

The Anonymous Guru

©2010 TheAnonymousGuru. All Rights Reserved.

Part 1 -

My war with ACNE

In this first series I am going to share my knowledge on one of the toughest challenges I have overcome in my life:

ACNE!

In total, it took me 12 years of constant struggle to overcome acne, and as any other acne sufferer knows acne is not a minor problem, it is a serious, debilitating and frustrating disease.

The type of acne I suffered was quite severe, it wasn’t just a bunch of little dots on my face, they were large, swollen, bumps covering almost every part of my face and neck. This kind of acne is often referred to as ‘cystic acne’ or ’severe acne’ and just one ‘bump’ would often take months to completely clear. At it’s most severe I would have had close to 30 of these cysts on my face and neck, so yeah, as you can imagine life wasn’t much fun.

During those 12 years, acne was literally the first thing on my mind when I woke up and the last thing when I went to bed. Every morning the first thing I would do is wake up and check for new spots, and I would monitor their progress throughout the day, constantly surveying my face from all angles in the mirror.

When I went out (which was extremely rare), I felt like everyone I met was looking at my acne and not me, I would hate doing anything that would involve people getting close to me, getting a haircut was especially uncomfortable as I just knew my hairdresser would have to get real close to my face and would be disgusted at the sight of my horrible skin.

Cystic acne was truly a cruel and debilitating disease, it crushed my self-esteem, made me feel hopeless and it frustrated the crap out of me! It affected every aspect of my life, my social life, family life, study… basically whatever I was doing, acne was in the back of my mind, no actually it was at the front of my mind!

To make it worse, everyone claimed to know the reason and the cure, everyone from my sister to my friend’s friend’s Mum’s hairdresser.

For a long time I was led to believe that the reason that I had severe acne was because of the ‘germs’ living on my face, people would tell me things like ‘oh you can’t touch your face or you will spread the germs and your skin will get worse’, ‘put wet teabags on your face, the anti-oxidants will kill the germs that are giving you pimples’, ‘don’t sleep face down, the germs from your pillow will get onto your face and your skin will get worse’ etc. etc. Of course by this time I had also already tried nearly every cream, peel and scrub I could find in the supermarket and drug store.

When none of these things worked I decided to see a dermatologist ( I ended up seeing 3 different derms ), but unfortunately they also didn’t have a clue as to what caused severe acne either (or they made too much money selling me drugs to tell me what actually caused it), so I ended up just as mis-informed and miserable as before.

After seeing the ‘professionals’ I believed that the reason I had cystic acne was because my skin produced too much oil but I had small pores! So the oil would get ’stuck’ trying to squeeze out of my under-sized pores causing acne. ‘Wow! That’s a big problem, how do you fix that doctor?’, ‘Well we have to give you drugs that will make your face stop producing oil of course!’ At the time that made absolute sense, ‘Yeah of course! No oil, no acne! What a simple solution!’ But of course that wasn’t the problem, so the solution wasn’t a solution at all.

Looking back, some of the things I tried to get rid of my cystic acne are quite ridiculous, but at the time I remember being full of hope and excitement that the next ‘cure’ was finally going to release me from my hell. Luckily I can laugh at it a little now =)

Some of the things which I tried to cure cystic acne which DID NOT work were:

1. Minomycin (AKA Tetracycline – I did several courses of this drug)

2. Roaccutane (This cleared me up for a couple of years but then the acne came back even worse)

3. Sticking potter’s clay on my face

4. Massaging castor oil on my face every night

5. Leaving my face covered in tea bags for 1 hour every day

6. Plastering my face in toothpaste

7. Caking my face in Benzoyl Peroxide

8. Various Antibiotics

9. Basically every commercial skin product on the market.

I’m sure alot of you fellow cystic acne sufferers have had some experience with these methods. It may be possible that some people have had success with these techniques but I personally didn’t and I know many other people who didn’t either. I believe that for most people suffering from severe acne, trying to get clear in these ways will only keep you going round in circles.

Anyway, enough negative talk I’m here to enlighten you not bring you down with all these sad stories =) From my next post onwards everything will be positive as I share with you the steps I took to finally achieving permanent, clear skin!

Peace,

The Anonymous Guru.

©2010 TheAnonymousGuru. All Rights Reserved.