My Acne Journey

Happy Saturday lovelies! So this week I’ve finally managed to sit down and write a post you’ve asked for a few times, my acne journey. Just putting this out there now, this is my journey with my skin and what has worked for me, this may work for you, this may not work for you; so please don’t assume all of the products I talk about in this post will or will not work for you. Also, I’m definitely not saying my skin is the worst ever or best, I’m just sharing my story.

Skin is such a personal thing because everyone’s skin is different and needs to be taken care of a certain way to suit that person. After all, skin care is very important since the skin is the largest organ in the body and protects us from so much. So why wouldn’t you want it looking it’s best!

Let’s get into this; so, my journey with my skin has been a long, stressful emotional journey and is by no means over yet. When I was younger I had little to no problems with my skin, being a carefree kid I never did anything to it and lucky for me, that was what worked. Then puberty hit, and again I was lucky enough to only suffer with a spot every now and again, nothing major.

I wish I had appreciated those day more now that I’m a bit older. Especially because as soon as I hit my 20s I developed adult acne, rosacea and my psoriasis began flaring up. Not great for someone who was already a little insecure because she wasn’t happy in her own skin anyway.

I’m now 22 and I’m happy to say that my skin (touch wood) is at a point where I’m reasonably happy with it, I still get the odd angry spot (or mountain/volcano/crater, you decide haha) ever so often but it’s ok.

For my skin to get where it is today, it took a lot of trial and error. To begin with a tried doing face masks about 3 times a week because I thought that maybe something was clogging up my pores and that they might make my skin less red and calm down a bit. For me, this didn’t work. That was when I bought the ‘La Roche-Posay Effaclar 3-Step Anti-Blemish Kit’ in the hopes that this would clear my skin up..long story short is that it made my skin a million times worse.

Which led to me deciding in February this year to finally decided to go to my doctors to get some medical help with my acne. So, here’s what my skin looked like before I did anything and after starting the ‘La Roche-Posay Effaclar 3-Step Anti-Blemish Kit’; also, please excuse my facial expressions in these photos as you can imagine how having acne makes you feel as also, I took these before bed over several weeks to document my skin journey! (It took around 6 months from starting my acne journey to where I am now)

Also, just thought I’d mention that it was at this point that I decided to drink pretty much only water from then on; that was hard at first but after about 2 weeks of making myself do it, I didn’t need to force myself to drink water anymore! It just became routine.

Here’s my skin before trying any treatment.

My skin after using ‘La Roche-Posay’ treatment for a week.

As you can imagine, after trying this acne skincare treatment for a week and my skin only getting worse and really irritated, I decided to stop it. Also, side note; I’m not saying that the ‘La Roche-Posay Effaclar 3-Step Anti-Blemish Kit‘ is a bad product, it just didn’t work for me, you never know, it might work for you!

So, After this I decided that I was finished blindly trying to clear my skin up without really any knowledge on what was causing it. So off to the doctors I went! To begin with, I was prescribed a different contraceptive pill called Cerelle, because at the time I was taking the progesterone only pill which has no oestrogen. I was also prescribed an antibiotic topical treatment called ‘Zineryt (erythromycin, zinc acetate)’. I took this for about 2 1/2 months and here’s what happened!

So, after using the ‘Zineryt‘ topical cream for 2 1/2 months my skin was looking a lot better! And I was feeling a little better about my skin and appearance, which was when it stopped working. Which was a huge bummer!!

So back I went to the doctors again in the hopes that they can give me something really powerful to stop my skin re-erupting!! Which is when I was prescribed ‘Co-Cyprindiol’, ‘Adapalene’ and ‘Doxycycline’. I was lucky that I was prescribed this amount of stuff to tackle my skin at once, I will say that I was a little apprehensive about having to use ‘Co-Cyprindiol’ as this had to replace the pill that I was on because it’s so much oestrogen!! 2000mg to be exact and the doctor told me that you usually have about 20mg..

Also, this pill isn’t classed as a contraceptive pill as you can’t take it for long periods of time so all I was thinking is what happens if it works and they stop me taking it and my skin reverts??! The other medication I was prescribed was the topical cream – ‘Adapalene’ to apply every night before bed, the other medication I was prescribed was ‘Doxycycline’ which is another antibiotic that I have to take every morning with breakfast!

If any of you suffer or have suffered with acne then you know how anxious switching up your skincare and medication can be. Which is why when I switched to these new medications and my skin started reacting badly, I freaked out and called the doctor asking to be taken off them.

Lucky for me, the doctor told me I had to give the medication longer to work and to give it 3 months to see any effect on my skin; because after about 3/4 months of taking all these meds my skin started to clear up!!

I’m so so so glad I stuck with the medication, because after taking everything for a few months, the doctors allows me to continue all of these meds for longer than typically recommended because I wasn’t having any side effects and my body was reacting well.

Now, I’m on a lower dose of ‘Co-Cyprindiol’ in order to continue the treatment safely alongside the other meds. An important note with this is that I do have to go for regular check ups with these pills in order to stay on them. But this is just so the doctors know how my body is coping with the hormone levels.

I also use a microdermabrasion skin care machine once a week to exfoliate and remove any blackheads. I got my machine from amazon for £20 when it was on offer and it’s rechargeable so I haven’t got to worry about paying out for batteries. Here’s the link to the machine I use!

And here is my skin now!

As you can see from my face here, I’m a lot happier with my skin now than ever before!

I’m so much happier with my skin now then ever before, it’s something that I had struggled with for a while and it really got me down to the point where I didn’t feel comfortable going outside at times! And if you’ve ever suffered with acne or currently do, you know what it can feel like and what it can do to your mental health.

I know that with my acne journey I have been pretty lucky in being able to find a treatment that works for me and that not all people are as lucky as I have been. Moral of the story is that if you are struggling with acne or any skin issue, go see your GP because they will be able to help you; and if something isn’t working for you, keep going back and eventually you’ll find something that works. It just takes some trial and error.

Hope this helps any of you suffering with acne or skin issues!! Have a great weekend lovelies! Love,

I Took An Intolerance Test!

Hey everyone!! So this week I’m going to be talking to you about intolerance tests. Why you’re asking? Well because my mum and I have suffered with annoying coughs for months on end for no apparent reason (the doctors said it’s nothing) and we both suffer with psoriasis which can be triggered from certain foods, stresses and other things! And to be honest, we both love sending stuff off to get health results!

So, the labs we used are called ‘Test Your Intolerance Labs’ or ‘TYI Labs’ (very creative name I know..). Also, just for the record, this isn’t sponsored, but if any labs wanna send us away for health tests feel free!!

We bought the ‘essentials’ test, partly because they were on offer for £29 instead of £39 at the time. Also, if you recommend the test to a friend you get £5 off so that’s what my mum did for me so it was even cheaper which is also a bonus.

So how did the test work, well, it was super easy and wasn’t painful at all; all they needed from us was around 5 strands of hair, ideally from the root (so we gave a few more just in case). Then we had to send off the hairs to the lab’s address ourselves; we’d recommend putting your hairs in a small clear bag and writing your order number on it just to ensure it doesn’t get lost (we wanted to make sure we got our results as quick as possible so took all precautions to make sure it didn’t get lost!), and then we put it in an envelope with our order sheets and send them off!

After a few days we got emails to letting us know that the lab had received our samples and then after that it took about 10 working days for the results to come through, online it said between 7-10 working days for your results to come through so we were prepared for having to wait a bit. The good thing is that they email you your results so you get them as soon as they are ready in a pdf; and it helps the environment by not sending out paper!

I will admit that I was a bit impatient waiting for my results but that’s because I sent them off just before a bank holiday, so I had to wait a little longer for my results because we had a 4 day bank holiday which is obviously non-working days!

Once I got my results it was pretty surprising what I am intolerant to, and it was the same for my mum! We found out that foods and ingredients in foods we were eating everyday we are intolerant to and that may actually be causing our psoriasis to flare up and these annoying coughs!

Here’s my results:

My Intolerance Test Results

Here’s my mum’s results:

My Mum’s Intolerance Test Results

So, this is what we found out! Turns out my mum is intolerant to basically all plants near us which definitely explains why she has all year round hay fever. Also, turns out she’s intolerant to buttermilk and mustard which she eats ALL THE TIME. So that has been a fun thing to try and cut out for her..(I’m joking, it’s been a struggle but she’s finally used to it!). And we did find it funny how my mum is apparently intolerant to gin, just because she loves a G&T every now and again!

For me, we found out that I’m intolerant to pears, which I absolutely love! That was disappointing but I figured I could manage a few weeks without them to see what difference it would make to my health. I’m also intolerant to butter lettuce which was something I was eating nearly everyday as well as pears; so it’s no wonder why I was feeling bloated and coughing all the time alongside my skin flaring up. One thing I couldn’t believe was that I’m intolerant to cat hair; especially because I’d never even considered being intolerant to certain pets and I love cats and my boyfriends cat seems to love me!

After getting the info back, we decided that it’d be a good idea if together we gave up all of our food intolerances (well at least for a while as an experiment). For my mum it meant changing a huge amount of her diet, you’d be surprised at how many things mustard is in!! It’s in everything!! And it’s the same with buttermilk, also in everything! Gin and everything else was easy for my mum to cut out just because she wouldn’t have that everyday anyway, so that was no big deal. My mum began taking antihistamines in the morning to help with her other intolerances and that has definitely helped her a lot.

For myself, I cut out butter lettuce, which was pretty easy because there’s so many other salad leaves you can have instead! Pears were also pretty easy to cut out, but I definitely miss eating them because they’re so good when in season. Everything else on my food intolerances list didn’t really make any difference to me luckily just because I don’t like those foods in general (I’m a fussy eater, and for once it’s a good thing!). Obviously I’ve not cut out my boyfriend or his cat haha.. I love them both way too much to do that!

So… how has cutting these things out helped us? And how long did it take for us to feel a difference?

Well, for one, it took about 4 weeks for us both to feel a difference in ourselves. Cutting out these foods made a big difference for us both! For me, it actually stopped my annoying cough altogether! For my mum and my own skin, it definitely helped with our psoriasis flare ups, obviously it isn’t a cure for it (partly because there is no cure unfortunately) but it was something we found that helped a little. And now that I think about it, my mum hasn’t been coughing as much anymore either to be honest!!

So what should you take away from this weeks blog post? I would definitely recommend taking one of these tests if you’re suffering with a health issue that doesn’t appear to be caused from anything; and then trying out something like this to see if it makes a difference! And if it doesn’t, keep going to you GP until its resolved.

I think I’ve babbled on for long enough now so I’ll let you get back to your day; but I’ll ask you this, have you tried any health tests? If you have, which ones? And finally, do you want my mum and I to try some more to see what we find? Have a great weekend everyone!!

Love,