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 5 -

Clean Water

OK so now we have covered how to reduce the amount of toxins (stress hormones) being created by your body through negative thinking and lack of sleep. Next is how to reduce the amount of toxins coming in to your body from outside sources, and what I believe was the biggest outside source of toxins was in the water I was drinking.

I am sure all of you have been told by someone, that to get rid of your acne you should drink 8-10 glasses of water a day.

This is completely true if you are talking about PURE water. But if the water you are drinking has something in it which is triggering your acne, then drinking 8-10 glasses of water a day is not only not the cure, but could be the CAUSE.

Now tap water where I live is considered ‘clean’, most people drink it, it is served at restaurants etc. But I believe this is only because most people are unaware of the toxic substances that have been found in ‘clean’ tap-water. Among the hundreds of toxic substances found in tap water are:

Chlorine and bromine – Chemical disinfectants that can cause anemia and stomach problems

Pesticides – which can increase the risk of hormonal imbalance, reproductive problems and cancers.

Heavy Metals - such as lead and mercury which can impair growth and brain development.

Pharmaceuticals – including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones have been found in the drinking water supplies of 24 major US metropolitan areas

Etc. etc.

Basically there is a whole lot of crap that is no good for your health in tap water and these substances were DEFINITELY a contributor to my cystic acne. They could also be the cause of much more serious diseases being suffered by people around the world.

Thinking about this makes me feel that people that suffer from acne are in a way very lucky. It is a relatively minor disease which quickly tells you something is up, so you need to change what you’re doing before something worse happens. I believe this is better than poisoning yourself and not having acne, which means you never change your lifestyle and your habits because on the surface everything seems to be going fine, and then 15 years down the track your hit with a BIG disease which is much harder to overcome and could end your life.

This reminds me of a story my Dad often tells me about him and his group of friends that would go out drinking nearly every night when they were younger. My Dad developed hepatitis at age 21 from this habit which put him in hospital and ended his drinking days early. His friends used to visit him in hospital and say things like ‘Oh poor guy, how unlucky to be struck with such a disease, now he can’t drink anymore!’. Of course at the time, my Dad wasn’t happy about his situation, when he went out he couldn’t drink and get wasted with all of his buddies, but now he tells me of how much of a blessing hepatitis was because it forced him to make a significant change to his lifestyle. His friends who never got an ‘early warning’ just kept drinking and today at age 69 my Dad tells me of how he watched his whole group of friends pass away one-by-one from alcohol related diseases, none of them lived past their 40’s.

So acne to me was kind of like hepatitis to my Dad. It was the warning sign which caused me to really look at how I was living and it told me to start making changes. It may sound funny that out of the bad influences that acne has steered me away from, such as drugs, excessive alcohol and bad diet, I would rate being moved away from drinking 8-10 glasses of toxic water as the biggest positive change to my physical health.

It is possible that if I never had severe acne that I would still be drinking water full of these poisons which could possibly have lead to cancer or some other serious disease later in my life.

So now I look back at all those years of my regimen of 10 glasses of toxic water a day, depositing toxic materials into my body and I just think ‘NO WONDERI HAD ACNE!’ To make things worse I was boiling my water before drinking it as I was falsely informed that boiling water ‘purified’ it by evaporating all of the ‘bad stuff’ when in fact I was CONCENTRATING the level of toxic content in my water. This is because although some bacteria and other living organisms are evaporated, chemicals which have a higher boiling point than water remain in the water.

OK so what should you do?

Well this is the easiest of all of my recommendations because you don’t need to form new habits, or learn anything new. You just need to go and buy a high-quality WATER FILTER. If you already have one then great, you can rest assured that all that water you are going to drink to get clear is going to help you (sufficient water IS a key part of getting clear).

I would definitely recommend getting a good filter, not one of those little 2 liter ones that only take 5 minutes to filter the 2 liters but a very thorough filter. The filter I have is a ‘mineralized and magnetically charged’ water filter by a company called ‘Alps’. It holds around 14 liters of water and would take over a day to filter that 14 liters through. The reason it takes so long is because it has 7 stages of filtration starting with a bulb-like ceramic filter at the top, after a week of passing tap water through it is covered in brown sludge, see below.

After that there is another filtering cartridge which contains natural sediments that removes chemicals like chlorine, unpleasant odours, trihalomethanes (THMs), lead and other heavy metals.

The water that comes out is BEAUTIFUL, it smells, tastes and feels….. CLEAN (I don’t really know how else to describe it)

Whenever I open the top section of the filter to add more tap water I am reminded of what I used to be putting into my body everyday, it not only can see it but I can smell it too….. IT STINKS! The sludge on the ceramic ball has this dull, dirty river smell that really puts me off.

Sometimes I am in a situation where I have to drink tap water and I can really taste the difference, actually before even tasting it I can tell if it’s tap water purely by the smell.

Unfortunately I can’t find the ‘ALPS’ website, or any information on the company to show you the exact filter that I own but I have found a near identical product from a company called ‘ADYA’ which you can learn more about on the following link:

Adya Minerals Water Filtration System

So what do you do once you have your filter?

Now you can drink your daily 8-10 glasses of water! And you can have peace of mind knowing that each glass really is contributing to your goal of achieving clear skin. =)

So that is end of PART 5, drink CLEAN water, by what ever means.

Back soon with more!

Peace,

The Anonymous Guru

©2010 TheAnonymousGuru. All Rights Reserved.