Entries from October 2008 ↓

Over time I’ve had quite a few forum postings from people claiming their skin has changed a lot after a move to a new city. This move is usually dramatic, like moving to a completely new country. And the move has broken them out big time.

I’ve been traveling a lot around the globe over the last six months so I know better than anyone how a physical location can change the skin, and how it can make acne better or worse.

I can even tell you what cities I’ve been in that made my skin awesome, and what cities made my skin break out or go blotchy.

My skin was definitely the best in Las Vegas. I was there in summer so I’m guessing the searing dry heat had something to do with it. It was so hot and dry that my skin just could not produce enough oil to keep hydrated. The heat was too dry to even sweat!

My skin was great in Fiji too. I spent a few days lying around in a resort by the beach so my skin must have loved the extra sleep and relaxation I was getting. The pollution in Fiji is relatively low too, especially on the island I was staying.

Air pollution and acne

I’m a big believer in air pollution causing acne. With a heap of dirty air particles flying around settling on our skin, getting into our pores and irritating our skin. It’s the perfect set up for blocked up pores and spreading bacteria for making a pimple.

The worst city for my skin so far has been London, interesting enough where I’m currently located. For the first time in six months I’ve been concerned about my skin. I’ve had three small pimples on my jawline and my forehead has become very blotchy and almost orange-peel-like. It’s as if a bunch of spots are deciding if they want to make their way out or not. Continue reading →

You lucky, lucky Londoners. I’m in London this week and just happened to stumble past the Wholefoods Market while touring through Kensington.

I absolutely had to go in and take a look, partly because I wanted to stock up on a few organic basics so I had some snack foods to carry around with me, but also to check out the skin care and chocolate aisles - my two favorite sections in any health food store of course.

Well, what can I say. Wholefoods Market in London is by far the most amazing Wholefoods I’ve been in yet. You Londoners are very lucky!

The highlight of course was the chocolate. Never before have I found such a range of healthy and sugar-free chocolates. Usually I’m struggling to find just one, but standing out proudly in the healthy confectionery section were three brands of healthy raw and sugar-free chocolates, each with their own vast range of flavors.

Even better still, I found another brand of sugar-free (but not raw) chocolate in the not-so-healthy confectionery section. This one went straight into my shopping basket because it’s sweetened with xylitol, one of my favorite sugar alternatives!

Plamil no added sugar chocolate with shelled hemp seeds

I found this Plamil branded chocolate in the confectionary aisle at Wholefoods, next to Green & Black and the zillion other organic and fair trade brands of chocolate you can usually find in health food stores.

What caught my eye was the huge “no added sugar” text on the front of the packet. Usually when I look at the ingredients list on a product that claims to be sugar free, I find the sugar alcohol maltitol listed. But this Plamil product is different, it’s sweetened with xylitol. Continue reading →

Occasionally it’s nice to hear from the certified experts …I know a lot about the skin and acne but I don’t have a certificate or degree to prove it. My friend Carmina is a nutritionist / registered dietitian and a licensed esthetician and very kindly volunteered to write a guest article for High on Health on her experiences with her own battle with acne. Here is her story and her acne cure-

*****

Acne is a condition that is often considered as solely a skin problem. Unfortunately it is far more complex. It is also a condition that announces itself by it’s mere presence. Women may try to hide it with heavy make-up and men generally are just naked with it. In either case, acne can result in self-consciousness, decreased self-esteem, physical and emotional scarring.

I know, I’ve been there. As a teenager I had terrible acne - face, chest, back…I put out so much oil on a daily basis, I used to joke that you could fry an egg on my face. Just like others plagued with this condition, I tried everything that you could buy at that time to treat it. I would wipe straight alcohol across my face multiple times a day in a desperate attempt to strip off the oil and dry-up the zits - but I always smelled like a first aid kit and shone like a flashlight.

The treatments I underwent at the hands of dermatologists have had long-term effects on my health and included: really strong birth control pills (which left me with blinding migraines); facial X-Rays; long-term doses of antibiotics; massive exposure in UV lamps (skin cancer anyone?); the first generation of Accutane - and no…they didnʼt know about the liver damage it caused way back then. Then there were the painful extractions, the dry-ice treatments and finally it was after having my first baby that my skin began to “act normal”.

I wish I knew then what I know now. Continue reading →

I’ve know about healthy ice-cream for a while now and how popular it is within the raw food community. But I thought if I wanted to sample some of it myself I’d have to either hunt down a raw food restaurant or figure out how to make it myself. So I was ecstatic when I found a raw, organic ice-cream in Edinburgh that contains no dairy, refined sugar or soy!!

The ingredients list on Booja-Booja’s Hunky Punky Chocolate ice-cream are simply amazing. If you can believe it, this ice-cream contains only four ingredients - water, agave, cashew nuts and cacao powder.

It seems impossible to make ice-cream out of these few ingredients (especially considering it contains no dairy or dairy alternative) but I’m willing to bet that if you served this ice-cream up to someone who didn’t know that it was a “healthy” alternative, they wouldn’t know the difference at all.

The sweetener is agave which I’ve talked about before. Agave is high in fructose which some people don’t like, but it has a low enough GI to be safe with diabetics so that makes it safe enough for the skin. Apart from the cashew fat content, this stuff is so healthy you could eat it for breakfast. It certainly beats a bowl of cocoa pops anyway.

The hunky punky chocolate ice-cream is great frozen because it looks, feels and tastes like ice-cream. I don’t know if I’m breaking the rules here but I actually love it melted. I pop it in the fridge instead of the freezer and it turns into chocolate mousse (the ultimate comfort food).

If you’re not a chocolate lover like me, you can get Booja-Booja’s stuff in a tub in four other flavors - Smiling Vanilla M’Gorilla, Pompompous Maple Pecan, Coconut Hullabaloo and Feisty Winjin Ginger.

Oh, and just to prove that other people like it too (apart from the fact that my travel buddy ate a whole tub himself in less than 3 days), Booja-Booja’s ice-cream has won an award for best organic food product in 2007.

If you want to get yourself a tub of Booja-Booja, unfortunately you have to live in the UK …or at least be visiting. And you have to find it in Wholefoods or health food stores because they have a “no supermarket” policy (I’m assuming for ethical reasons so kudos for that Booja-Booja!).

Exfoliation is simple right? Well, there are a couple of rules you can follow to make exfoliating the skin on your face a little more comfortable, and ways that you can use exfoliation to prevent any new acne from forming.

How to use exfoliation to treat comedonal acne

I have already written an article about this, but it’s worth a revisit or a first time read if you haven’t seen the article yet - How To Get Rid Of Whiteheads.

A few months ago I screwed up my skin big time by cleansing with too many oils and the wrong types of oils during the hot and humid summer months in Australia.

The result was a face full of clogged pores and comedonal acne - blackheads and whiteheads. It was so bad that my cheeks felt bumpy to touch. I hated washing and moisturizing my face because patches felt so rough and bumpy. This was just oil and dead skin cells trying to [unsuccessfully] make their way out.

I must have tried just about every natural treatment to cure it, but nothing worked. The comedonal acne gave me persistent inflammations that although mild, where enough to drive me to try something strong - salicylic acid.

Here’s the link again to the article I wrote about how to cure whiteheads and my experience with salicylic acid - http://www.highonhealth.org/how-to-get-rid-of-whiteheads/

How to use exfoliation to treat inflamed acne

Continue reading →