conquer my skin issues

of being here in Kentucky, and already a comment on my bright red face. And here I thought it was looking so much better, more muted and more normal looking. I guess not. ):

anyone who happens across these posts who has acne, here is a good article on natural remedies for acne for you, via Facebook’s Natural News page.

I’ve put this off because I don’t know where to start. I’ve done a lot of digging and delving into what that pdf told me. I felt so clueless and stupid afterwards, too.

I’m sure you’ve all been told how important vitamins and mineral are for your body, but so often amino acids are overlooked. Can anybody name offhand any of the 20 amino acids? I couldn’t before. But I can name vitamin A, vitamin B complex, C, D, E, K, and minerals iron, zinc, and calcium right off the top of my head. Thinking a bit more I can name riboflavin, thiamine, beta carotene, and folate; and potassium, sodium, magnesium, selenium, and manganese.

But amino acids? Nope. I draw a blank.

I had heard of lysine before, but of the other 19 amino acids, I’d only heard tryptophan in passing. (Here is an article on amino acids. It’s pretty standard, but you get the idea.)

But it is lysine that is important in this post. Apparently, lysine is the amino acid that rosacea sufferers are deficient in.

From here

It is required for growth and bone development in children, assists in calcium absorption and maintaining the correct nitrogen balance in the body and maintaining lean body mass. Furthermore it is needed to produce antibodies, hormones, enzymes, collagen formation as well as repair of tissue. Since it helps with the building of muscle protein, it is useful for patients recovering from injuries and recovery after operations, and there might be use in lysine to help maintain healthy blood vessels. It also seems to assist in fighting herpes and cold sores.

Next point:

Those with rosacea often lack sufficient hydrochloric acid, which is basically the stomach acid that breaks down food.

So before I rushed out to the health food store and stocked up on both of these in supplement form, I did a check to see how safe these are for breastfeeding.

L-lysine needs further study to be determined just how safe it is, but the first thing I found when I did a google search for the safety of supplemental hydrochloric acid really stunned me.

I found this on google books. The book is “For Women Only!” by Gary Null and Barbara Seaman.

Pregnancy and lactation are times when women need iron supplementation. During the childbearing years, many women experience anemia caused by an iron deficiency.

Supplementation may not solve the problem because many people have difficulty absorbing iron. They lack enough hydrochloric acid, the stomach acid that helps assimilate iron.

!!!!!!!! IS THAT WHY I WAS SO ANEMIC WITH SHAWN?

I did a big post on what I’d learned about iron absorption, but I really didn’t think that my rosacea had anything to do with my iron deficiency!

The book goes on to list Vitamin B12 and Folic acid deficiencies as other reasons for being anemic, as well as some really fascinating facts about blood, menstrual cycles and pregnancy. Fascinating to ME, lol, but they aren’t relevant to this post. So, anyway…

Another thing is that Omega 3’s are especially important to help with rosacea, but NOT Omega 6 and 9, so the pdf encouraged more fish meals.

That’s great, I like fish, but… what about all the mercury and other heavy metals found in so many fish? Thanks, but there is a reason I refuse metal cocktails “vaccines” – I’m kinda sorta trying to AVOID poisonous metals, kwim?

I don’t know how I stumbled on it, but somehow in the course of my worldwide web itinerary, I came across this wonderful site. I can’t stop lauding its praises. I don’t agree with everything that is mentioned on this site, but WOW has it been a treasury of information to me.

Hellllo chlorella! Super food, cancer warrior, immune system booster, and heavy metal detox agent. I think I am in love!

So I look deeper into these super foods. I find spirulina. I google “spirulina lysine”. I find this.

I sign up for the NaturalNews e-letters and within days I’m sent information on dry skin brushing.

I’d never thought of it before. I mean, it makes sense – we brush our teeth, our hair, why not our skin? – it’s just not something that I’d ever considered before.

Halfway down the article, I see

Skin Brushing and Cellulite

Wait. What?

It says:

It is thought that around 90% of women suffer from cellulite. The little dimples that form on the thighs and buttocks are due to the accumulation of fats, proteins and other waste products that are not being excreted from the body efficiently. These unwanted products are usually carried out of the body by the lymphatic system, which is the body`s personal waste disposal unit. When the lymphatic system isn`t running smoothly it can cause many health and skin problems, including cellulite. Dry skin brushing can help kick start the lymphatic system by stimulating the lymph canals, which helps detoxify the blood and reduces the toxic build up that can cause cellulite.

You mean to tell me my “famine reserves” aren’t inevitable? That the same reason I have cellulite is the same reason I have rosacea!?

Holy! What else do I have wrong with me?!

Here is a good link on the dry skin brushing technique.

Whew. I’ve got to close this up now, but I do have a few other points I haven’t covered yet, so eventually I’ll be back. In the meantime, I did say this would be a big post, didn’t I? :P

I’ve been quiet on this. Did the pdf help any? was it worth it? what did I find out? – I will have an entry on this shortly… and it’s gonna be big.

Tonight my mom, little sister, Gabe, Shawn and I went out to eat. At one point these two nice women approach us to gush over Shawn and Gabriel, and the one asks me (probably against her better judgement) “How old are you?!” I told her and she looked a bit shocked and said “You look 15!”

I got that another time when I was grocery shopping, and as I was checking out, the cashier told me I was “too young!” to have had Gabriel (who was a baby). I said “I’m 21!”

(I know women are generally waiting til they are older nowadays, but come on!!!)

I suppose this should be flattering, but I kind of wonder if it’s my bad skin that makes me look like a teenager.

I happened to go to my old geocities site the other night – good thing too, coz geocities is closing at the end of the year so now I’ve moved all my old files – and I didn’t have this when I was 15-18. What happened? Even in my wedding photos I don’t have this. It was only afterwards. Am I allergic to Tommy or something? (Did losing my virginity have something to do with it!? lol!)

Not that I’m by any means ugly now, but I was SO PRETTY back then! I WANT THAT BACK! Here is an example from when I was 17.

And then the other day my mom sent me an email with a link to someone’s blog about her experience with rosacea. She related that she had spent over $5000 on treatments for her rosacea, from creams and pills to laser therapy. Either nothing happened (don’t I know how that feels…) or it made it worse. She was promoting this website here.

I got the pop up box that offered me $10 off and I mean, you see these kind of websites around, and I always rolled my eyes at them… but this time, I thought oh why not! I spent double that on a stupid “acne” cream that did absolutely NOTHING. Maybe this is finally “it”. I’ve become increasingly distrustful of doctors and Big Pharma in general, and the line “conventional treatments do nothing to fight the root cause of rosacea – they merely “patch up” the problem and try to reduce severity” sold me. I’ve been a supporter of homeopathic medicine for as long as I can remember, and that is exactly how homeopathic medicine works.

So I bought the pdf!

I’m not promoting the website QUITE yet… but what I read (the pdf isn’t even 30 pages long and most of it is his own experience) makes TOTAL sense. This might just be “it”. I’ll keep you posted. (:

5 months ago and since then, my face has been pretty decent to me. A bit of dry skin here and there, but it was winter after all. I wonder if I’ll have the same hormonal outbreak as I near the end of the pregnancy, or was that a one time, only with Gabriel thing?

This has been thankfully very far from my mind, and it’s not bothering me. I hope it keeps up this way.

Some thoughts:

First off, any WoW fans out there? (World of Warcraft to all of you going ”...no?” lol)

In the game, the race known as the night elves have facial markings that vary. Some are just around the eyes, some are more on the cheeks. I happened to be thinking about them one night… and it kind of hit me. I am going to pretend my rosacea is simply a throwback to my elven heritage!

Okay, not really, but take a look and tell me what you think.

(Cute story to anyone who might read this and get a kick out of it: Once I was playing on the Alliance side, at a very low level, when out of nowhere this level 60 Undead comes around the corner and we practically ran into each other. My character was female, and he was a male, so I thought ”...why not…” I stripped off all my armor and clothes down to my underwear and top and started “dancing” with him. He didn’t kill me, though it would have been so easy for him. Instead, he blew me a kiss and ran off down the road in the direction I had just come. LOL!!! I couldn’t believe a bit of harmless flirting worked!)

I’ve caught the cold that seems to be going around mercilessly right now. It seems to have affected my rosacea, too, because my skin was really itchy and flaking last night, and then later it was sore.

I remember when I was pregnant with Gabriel it REALLY hurt a lot, especially toward the end months. In fact, during the baby and bridal shower thrown for my sister and I a week before Gabriel’s birth, there is a photo taken of me where my face is just so red it hurts to look at it even now.

And yet that wasn’t ENTIRELY the pregnancy. During pregnancy, a woman’s body IS warmer than other times (one more reason to have a spring baby… keeps you warmer during the winter! :P) but for a few months before Gabe was conceived, it finally got bad enough I grudgingly went to see a doctor for the dermatologist reference. If anything, since then it has went down… I’m starting to wonder just how much pregnancy DOES factor into it, if at all, because up til now… things were behaving surprisngly reasonably. (Granted I’ve been too tired to keep track of what day it is… but still, lol.)

This is certainly the thorn in my side, but I remind myself how many other things I could have, and, given the option to choose what I’d like “wrong” with me, I can’t come up with anything else I’d like in place. I could have a weight problem, I could have diabetes, I could have depression or other mental issues, I could be infertile… Yes, please, I’ll take the rosacea!!!!

Tetracycline is out. According to Safe Fetus, tetracycline is positive for causing birth defects during pregnancy.IF it was life threatening to go off the medication, it is an acceptable risk, but because rosacea is hardly life threatening, I can’t risk it. I’m not intending to get pregnant, and NFP works great, but accidents happen regardless, AND it is excreted into my breastmilk.

Oh well… How does Marvin the Martian put it? “Back to the drawing board…”

I think I’ll still go to a doctor and ask about my other options… or just wait until I can afford the seabuck thorn, and perhaps some foundation to cover it up on my bad days.

Still… how disapointing!

My coworker and I were talking last night. Her husband has rosacea and has been on – I might spell this wrong – tetracycline, an antibiotic, for years for his rosacea. It hasn’t cured him, but it keeps his skin clear. He takes two pills a day, one in the morning and one at night. I absolutely loathe the idea of being on an antibiotic for literally the rest of my life, but my coworker explained that it is a very very gentle antibiotic _{(so I don’t have to worry about recurring yeast infections)} and has no side effects at all.

She explained that in the long run I couldwill develop a “bulbous” nose. Not maybe, but will, and that is just a long range effect of having rosacea. She said it is frustrating how many people don’t know what it is, and by that she meant DOCTORS, too! She was very kind and encouraged me to see a doctor and get on it.

So… I don’t want to be on an antibiotic for the rest of time, but I also realize how much this hurts me. It’s irritating, tight and even painful at times. What I thought was acne on my chin isn’t, but actually another aspect of my rosacea. If I was diabetic, I would absolutely NOT hesititate to take care of myself and take whatever medicine I must. If I had depression, I would RUN to the doctor and pursue whatever alternative measures, too. So no more hesitating. It’s off to the doctor for me.

I know that there is a natural treatment called Sea Buckthorn (Or Seabuck Thorn, not sure on the spelling) available at the health food store… but it is currently out of my price range. Maybe once I am on this tetracycline and I can afford it, I can also encourage healthy skin with the seabuck thorn, too.

Wow… the prospect of having good skin is intoxicating! I’ve always been very pretty, and I’m not camera shy, but with rosacea I haven’t had a photo taken since last November. Regardless of my (very high) self esteem, rosacea has certainly taken its toll on my confidence.

I can hardly wait…

I restarted on medication and then decided it wasn’t worth it, so I stopped using it again right away.

I also looked around for some of the other treatments that had been mentioned to me in my comments by the kind 43Thing users that know what I’m going through.

And then… something funny happened.

I stopped using shampoo, using the baking soda method known as (and I still shudder when I refer to it as this) “no ‘poo” and… miraculously my face improved.

I would also splash a bit of the baking soda liquid across my face, and I noticed that almost immeadiately my face was softer where it was always rough and sore.

I still have flare ups, for sure! I just got over one, but it goes down faster and more surely now. At first I thought it was just spring time, an “in between” time, just like in October.

I can live with this. It’s not bad at all. I’m still not ready to mark it off my list as completed… but I can see where it will be soon. That feeling, if nothing else, of hope is comforting.