My Battle With Acne

My skin has never looked clearer.

Not even kidding. I’ve never seen my face look this healthy since I was a child. Anyone want to know what I’m doing?  Well, wait, first… let me give you some back story.

When I was in middle school, I got acne. It wasn’t so bad I was embarrassed all the time, but I always had many pimples on my face. And some of them, though you couldn’t really see them, were cysts, beneath my skin. The dermatologist suggested accutane, but I declined because of the toxicity of the medicine and my mother supported me.  Their second runner up medicine was tetracycline. So I took it.

An UN-Natural Remedy for Acne:

Tetracycline is an antibiotic. I really didn’t think anything of it. When I was in middle school, we were at the peak of the whole “antibiotics are the greatest thing ever” mindset. There weren’t all of the antibiotic resistance issues.  Nobody told me about candida and how antibiotics tied in with that, but in retrospect, some of my sugar craving issues and bloating issues make a lot more sense.  Tetracycline seemed perfectly safe. So, I was given a low dose of antibiotics and was on it every day for a couple of years. I was warned about not going out in the sun with them, and I did suffer one horrible sunburn, where my face became a giant blister and then turned hard, like plastic. It peeled several days later. In the meantime, we were concerned that it may have been a bad enough sunburn to actually cause scarring.  All in all though, from my perspective, it worked. I got a couple of good years out of it. But then, it stopped working. Which, I now understand happened because the bacteria causing my acne became resistant to tetracycline.  When it stopped working, I stopped taking them.

My Initial Natural Remedy for Acne:

After that, I became a guinea pig for nearly every acne system I could find. Nothing really worked at all until I found tea tree oil. That worked awesome. (Though it’s awesomeness has not been evaluated by the FDA. Tea Tree Oil is absolutely not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition, because only drugs can do that.) Except that, using tea tree oil for acne got expensive. See, I knew you couldn’t over dilute tea tree oil because if you do, similarly to tetracycline, bacteria becomes resistant to tea tree oil if you dilute tea tree oil more than 4%. I explain all of that in a previous blog. Even though it was costly, it worked awesome, so I kept using it until money got tight.

My next idea: Clove Oil!

My New Favorite Natural Remedy for Acne:

You barely need any clove oil to be enough for an entire face. Clove oil is so strong! One drop in a carrier oil would be enough for an entire face, I thought.  First I tried clove oil mixed with virgin coconut oil and that worked awesome on my complexion. However, now it’s summer, and having virgin coconut on your face gets kind of slimy. So I kind of gave up on it for awhile. Meanwhile, my complexion paid the price.

One day, while putting makeup on, I saw my liquid foundation sitting right beside the clove oil on a shelf. (I imagine this is probably how the first peanut butter and jelly sandwich happened.)

Freakishly excited about my new invention, I dropped 15 drops of clove oil into the bottle of foundation and mixed it vigorously by shaking. I then, put my foundation on my face like normal and started my When I washed my face that night, my acne was far better than it was when I started my day.

I’ve been at this for some time now, and one thing that the tea tree never did manage to fix all the way that the clove oil does is the deep down cysts. Which, is not really of much concern for my vanity because you can’t really see them much, but those are the ones that hurt the most.

Almost twenty years into this battle with acne, that I assumed I would grow out of, I finally can say I have clear skin. The other day a complete stranger told me I had beautiful skin. When I was a very, very young girl, I was told that often. Then, the acne came. I don’t believe I’ve been told that I have beautiful skin in nearly twenty years.

DISCLAIMER ABOUT NATURAL REMEDIES FOR ACNE:

It’s important to note that clove oil is so strong, it has to be put in a carrier. That is straight from me and very true. You won’t explode or anything, I have done it myself, but it burns like you would not believe if you put it right on yourself.  (It’s also what makes it my cheap natural remedy for acne, because I hardly use any at all.)

The FDA would have my hide if I didn’t tell you that clove oil is not an FDA approved medicine and that I am not a doctor. Clove oil, cannot be regulated as a drug and is, of course, not a drug. They want me to tell you that it’s not a medicine at all. So, apparently, it’s not a medicine at all. It can not, of course be used to treat or cure any actual medical condition, because only drugs can treat and cure medical conditions. They also need me to make sure you know that clove oil is not FDA approved to treat acne. They pretty much want me to tell you not to even bother trying it. So, don’t even bother trying it. I of course didn’t write this so that you would try it, I just enjoy writing about my repulsive personal challenges and exercising my freedom of speech within the guidelines of the law.