5 Foods I Eliminated for Crystal Clear Skin
You want to know one thing I never expected to battle in my 30s?
But there I was, skin in full revolt, in a tiny London flat, perched over a makeshift medicine cabinet packed with all the prescription lotions, potions, and pills guaranteed to get it to gorgeous––or, at least, to get it to clear.
With a deep, resounded breath, I threw them all away.
Let me tell you, that was the best thing I ever did for my skin. It took me off an endless cycle of Doctor visits, prescriptions, flare-ups, let downs, and heartbreak and tears, and onto the path of true healing.
Within a week my skin showed a noticeable improvement. Within a month, it was clear.
What did I do? I turned away from my medicine cabinet and towards my kitchen pantry and eliminated five key items from my diet. In today’s blog we are going to discuss what those items are and exactly why eliminating them helps to heal your skin.
Table of Contents
• Endocrine Disruption and the Foods We Consume
• Xenoestrogens and Our Skin
• 5 Foods I Eliminated to Heal My Hormonal Acne
• Is Soy Bad For Your Skin?
• How Long Did it Take?
• Conclusion
Let’s get to it!
Endocrine Disregulation and the Foods We Consume
It’s the cliché of all clichés: You are what you eat. But let’s get real here, what we eat makes up the cells of our body and directly contributes to how it functions. Everything you consume can either help or hinder your body's natural processes, and when it comes to inflammation in the body and our hormonal health, times this truth by twenty. If you’re a woman, times that by a thousand.
Hormone specialist and cycle synching pioneer Alisa Vitti writes:
“If you’re a grown-up combatting skin issues, you have to know what you’re actually up against: an endocrine imbalance.”
Our endocrine system is our body’s hormonal system. When that system is facing a disruption, the imbalance affects our entire being, including our skin. When it comes to acne, testosterone and estrogen play a major factor.
Alisa goes on to explain that excess estrogen in our body leads to estrogen dominance and skin inflammation, and extra testosterone causes our sebaceous glands to produce more oil. The result of this excess hormone accumulation is acne.
And, in women, we may notice a pattern.
When I really started to pay attention, I noticed that my skin would act up as I was entering, and during, the luteal phase of my cycle. Turns out, this is not a coincidence.
Back to Alisa:
“If you’re like most women who get hormonal acne, then you probably notice pimples crop up around ovulation (mid-cycle) and/or right before your period [the luteal phase]. This isn’t a coincidence; these are the two points in your hormonal cycle when estrogen and testosterone are peaking, and if your body isn’t processing these hormones correctly, eliminating the excess, and detoxifying your system. That extra estrogen and testosterone accumulates and results in acne.”
Notice how Alisa says, “…if your body isn’t processing these hormones correctly, eliminating the excess, and detoxifying your system…”
That’s the key. That’s why you can be prescribed all the medications in the world and the second you go off them, or sometimes while your still on the them, your skin goes haywire. It’s because you’re not addressing that underlying issue, reducing inflammation in your body and healing and restoring your body’s ability to process, eliminate, and detoxify appropriately, particularly when it comes to processing and eliminating estrogen and testosterone.
This is even more important because we are not only dealing with our bodies natural production of estrogen. Our modern society is packed with endocrine disrupting xenoestrogens.
Xenoestrogens and our Skin
Xenoestrogens are man-made chemicals that mimic the effects of estrogen, are structurally similar to estrogen, and can bind to estrogen receptors. All this man-made mimicking estrogen disrupts the delicate hormonal balance in men and women.
We are exposed to xenoestrogens everywhere, including, but not limited to, pesticides, skincare products, household cleaning products, processed foods, furniture––even our air. All of this needs to be eliminated from our body properly. If it’s not, these toxic estrogen mimicking chemicals stay in our body circulating and disrupting, disrupting and circulating.
Our biggest organ of elimination––our skin.
It works in a unit with our liver, lymphatic system, and large intestine.
And if this system, this unit, this group, is not eliminating properly, eventually, those xenoestrogenic toxins show up on our face as acne (and in our bodies as fibroids, endometriosis, PCOS, PMS, and more).
As Alisa says, “When your liver and large intestine are working at a subpar level, your skin steps up and tries to eliminate the toxins, resulting in skin inflammation and acne.”
To heal the root cause of acne, singling out the skin alone doesn’t work. To heal the root cause of acne, we must work with this unit––our skin, liver, lymphatic system, and large intestine––together.
One way to do this is through the foods we do, and don’t, eat.
That’s how, and why, my skin improved when I eliminated these items. Because I eliminated inflammatory foods, and foods that were causing my liver and large intestines to operate at a subpar level, interfering with my body’s ability to process, eliminate and detoxify excess hormones.
So what are these foods whose elimination had such a positive impact on my skin?
5 Foods I Eliminated to Heal My Hormonal Acne
The Dairy Dilemma
First on my list was dairy. Dairy is known to contain hormones that can mimic human hormones, potentially throwing your own hormones off balance. It also contributes to increased levels of insulin which can trigger your skin to produce more oil, leading to clogged pores and breakouts.
We’re going to go more into the problems with increased insulin next with sugar. When it comes to dairy, cutting it out was challenging at first, but the positive impact it had on my skin was undeniable.
The Sugar Saga
Next up, sugar. Consuming high amounts of sugar can lead to spikes in insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), and can cause insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance is like throwing a wrench in the complex machinery of your hormonal system, and can wreak all sorts of havoc on your body. The fallout: breakouts caused by increased sebum production and major hormone disruption.
One known effect of Insulin Resistance is PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome).
Cutting out sugar, combined with cutting out caffeine, had the most extreme side-effects, which I go into below. But it was still highly worth it.
Going Gluten-Free
Although not everyone is sensitive to gluten, gluten can cause inflammation for some people, which in turn can exacerbate acne.
My body does best when I eliminate, or severely limit the intake of, gluten, and that improvement shows up positively in my skin.
Cutting Out Caffeine
Caffeine was a tough one to let go of. Combined with sugar, it caused the most severe withdrawal with extreme headaches and exhaustion.
However, in addition to potentially causing an increase cortisol levels (the stress hormone), which can lead to an overproduction of oil and more breakouts, caffeine can impact your estrogen levels, which can your affect mood, menstrual cycle, and more.
It’s also a stimulant, so when you’re “on it,” you’re interfering with your body’s natural energy rhythm. When you take a break, you allow your body to relax into it’s organic energy rhythm on its own.
Switching to herbal tea was a difficult, but ultimately, small price to pay for the improvement in my skin's clarity.
Bidding Adieu to Alcohol
Lastly, alcohol had to go. Alcohol has a slew of negative affects on our body. And after listening to this audiobook, I haven’t had a drink in four years. But when it comes to your skin: not only does alcohol dehydrate your skin, but it also can lead to hormonal imbalances and liver overload, making it harder for your body to eliminate toxins. Without alcohol in my diet, my skin became more hydrated and my overall complexion improved.
… and a word on Soy…
I’d already eliminated, or severely cut back on, soy years earlier. It was one of the first foods I let go of when healing my hormones. Here are a few reasons from Alisa:
“Soy products contain high levels of phytoestrogens that actually mimic the body’s natural estrogen hormones. If your body is already struggling to break down what you have - and this is showing itself in estrogen-dominant conditions [then] processed soy will only add to the problem.”
If a soy-based product is also GMO, then research shows this can be endocrine disruptive and can interfere with the fertility of both women and men.”
Alisa notes that not all soy is harmful to your system, and particularly speaks highly of the benefits of organic, fermented soy. But when it comes to GMO soy or processed soy/ soy protein isolate, it’s an immediate and hard no.
How Long Did it Take?
When I gave up these items I saw a noticeable difference with inflammation in about a week. I literally could see that my skin switched from angry inflamed mode, to happy recovery mode. Within a month, my skin was clear.
Conclusion
The truth is, you may not need a cabinet full of harsh lotions and potions and potentially mind altering pills to heal your skin. By eliminating dairy, sugar, gluten, caffeine, and alcohol, I was able to support my body's natural balance, reduce inflammation, and ultimately clear my skin.
If you're struggling with acne and looking for a natural way to combat it, consider assessing your diet. Small changes can lead to big results, and your skin will thank you for it.
So here's to happier, healthier skin! And here’s to a healthier, happier you.
And once you take care of the internal cause of acne––uplevel your results by designing the Perfect Clean Beauty Skincare Routine.
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