Today’s post is another personal story.  This one relates to getting rid of acne, the sans-chemicals way.  I’ve had a lot of people ask me to do a post on it, as troublesome skin is something almost everyone has had to deal with at some point in their life!  I thought I would share with you what has worked for me and what I would recommend to anyone looking for clearer skin.  I think you’ll also get an idea of why my recipes are dairy free. 😉

I was a very fortunate teenager, and didn’t really have to deal with acne much.  (At least, I can’t remember having to, so that makes me think I didn’t.)  You can imagine that when, in my twenties, I started getting more zits than I’d ever had before that I was NOT happy.  Horrified is probably a better description.  Although I’m sure people didn’t really notice, I found myself self conscious about it.  I didn’t have a severe case of it or anything, but I knew something was off because I was used to having great skin.

Looking back, it’s very clear what caused it for me.  However, at the time and I’m sure others can relate to this, I had no idea what it was.  It started gradually, a zit here and there, and then a few more, clearing up occasionally, only to return.  It made it tough to really pinpoint what was causing it.

At first, I decided it was related to the birth control pill, so after attempting a break from it, I went back on it.  Going back on it helped slightly, but still something else was off.   I tried changing face creams a few times, but that didn’t really help either.  When I started my nutrition course and learned more about the pill (more for another post) I decided once again to go off it and as a nutritionist in training, try to deal with my skin ‘naturally’.

Class after class I was in kept linking diet to skin.  It’s embarrassing to say this but before the course, I had never thought of that!  The main culprits were typically gluten and dairy, I learned.  Other than a brief stint being lactose intolerant when I was first diagnosed with Celiac disease, I thought I tolerated dairy well.  I didn’t get any stomach pains eating cheese.  I told myself that I was in the lucky 25% of people that could tolerate dairy. (Yep – a whopping 75% of people can’t!)

Wrong was I!  As soon as I cut out dairy, my face cleared up.  Now, I will say that in general I took greater care of myself overall (started juicing, increased my good fat intake, etc), but eliminating dairy was definitely the most significant contributor to better skin!

For anyone that is still eating gluten but having skin issues, I highly recommend trying both gluten and dairy free as it could be one or the other, or both.  Whenever I accidentally slip up on the gluten free (which is NEVER intentional), my skin usually tells the story.

There are a lot of other reasons that you can have issues with your skin and a nutritionist can help you figure out exactly what it is, however I thought I would share what worked for me as it was such a simple, natural fix!