Acne and Giving Up Dairy

I'll admit, I feel slightly apprehensive about writing this one because I know once I've hit that publish button and it's out there on the internet I'll feel obliged to stick to this, even if nobody reads it. The problem is I don't want to do it. I freaking love cheese and milk, I know a lot of people that find the idea of drinking milk a bit gross but I'll drink glass after glass after glass, until the cows come home (ok....I couldn't help it...terrible, I know..). Cheese is also a big part of my life, SRSLY. So you might have guessed from the title and this little introduction, I'm giving up dairy. I'm not saying for forever but for the next few months I plan to at least try my best. This may not seem like a hard feat for some but for a girl who often finds herself thinking 'I can't wait to get home and have some cheese and hot sauce' this is going to be tricky. FYI Enocoda hot sauce is the bomb diggity and belongs on everything.

So why am I giving it up? Well over the past year my skin seems to be returning to it old spot ridden self and I'm not happy with it at all. I've always had acne, since I started getting spots when I was about 13 I've had it and ever since then I can't say I've ever had a day where I've not had at least a few pimples on my face. For the majority of that time my face was covered in more than just a few pimples, I had full blown painful acne some of it cystic. It was unpleasant and really effected my confidence badly and for years all the doctors did was give me the same useless anti biotics over and over and the same harsh creams that burnt my skin and bleached my pjama tops (never a good sign!). Then a few years ago in my early 20's I finally asked for a referral to a dermatologist. I won't go too much into the ins and outs of it but I ended up going on roaccutaine after reading lots online about it. The side effects were horrible, really unpleasant (cracked lips and flaky snake skin mmm) but I knew they were just temporary and after a few months or however long I was on it (I think it was more like 6 but my memory is terrible with these things) my skin became the clearest it had ever been. It was definitely not what many people would deem as clear skin but for me a girl who'd always had a face covered in spots just having a few and some red scarring made me feel a whole load better.

Fast forward a few years and my acne has really begun to flare up badly again. My skin is especially problematic because any spot I have will result in a red mark left on my skin and they don't seem to fade at all or if they do it's at a ridiculously slow rate, as there are marks on my cheeks from years ago that are still visible. Some of these buggers won't even cover up with war paint style concealer, they are THAT stubborn. I'm working on finding ways to fade these, this includes wearing facial sunscreen everyday and not just one contained in a moisturiser. I only ever thought to do this in the Summer months but it turns out at all times of the year UVA and UVB rays can do damage to the skin, I guess this should have been obvious to me it's not like the sun just disappears all together... but yeah exposure to these rays will prolong my scarring from fading, so like Baz Luhrmann famously reminded us 'Wear Sunscreen'.

Now for a while I'd been reading about the possible connection between consuming dairy products and problematic skin. The NHS website does not support this claim but I have gone on to read countless other articles on the good old interweb that have lead me to believe there could be some truth in this diaryaintsogoodforyoskin thang.

Click on any of these if you'd like to read more here here and here

I'm not saying dairy will have caused my acne full stop, not at all, I know it would be a problem either way but I am at least a bit curious to see if giving it up makes a positive difference to my skin, like it has for so many other peoples who's stories I have read about online. I figure what have I got to lose? APART FROM LOTS OF BEAUTIFUL CHEESE. I'll just have to suck that one up, won't I.After all I've tried sorting out the problem with cosmetic products and now I want to look at what I'm actually putting into my body and the kind of effect that could be possibly having on my skin. If I'm doing this I should probably address also cutting down on sugar, I don't have a lot of it but I could certainly make sure eating a sweet treat becomes just that, a treat, every now and then. At least I will always have peanut butter, peanut butter will never leave me, we're in it for the long haul.

Here's to hoping I see some results soon and if not at least it will be a good way to see how disciplined I can be with my diet, my guess for far is that this is going to be a struggle, when it comes to food my belly takes over my brain. To keep myself semi on track though I've taken a few before photos and I plan on taking photos throughout this process so I can log any changes I see and work out if there's a big enough correlation between the two and to just generally keep me on track. It's almost like science. Almost.