Entries from March 2009 ↓

I felt very qualified to record this video and give this advice because I’m usually a very easily stressed out person which means I’ve been learning how to minimize stress for the past 29 years of my life.

Does stress cause acne? Simple answer – if you have acne prone skin then yes it does. But I explain more in the video.

Have you had any experience with stress and acne? And what do you do to chill out? Write a response in the box below to let us know about it

Getting enough courage and planning time to start the Body Ecology Diet (BED) has been a bit of a challenge for me, so I’m starting to ease into it by gradually adding some of the concepts into my diet.

One of the most dominant principles of the BED is to stop eating all sugars, including natural sugars. This includes fruit, milk (the lactose in milk is a sugar), and most grains. Sugars feed the Candida, yeast, fungus and mold in your body and make it worse. You also need to make sure that your body is getting enough minerals to support the amount of sugar you’re eating, because even natural sugars can be quite a lot for your body to cope with.

So what I’ve decided to do in leading up to the BED is -

• Reduce the amount of sugars in my diet
• Ensure my body is getting enough support to process the sugars that I am eating. I’ll be doing this by taking minerals and vitamins through supplements and prana though yoga

What I started this morning, and what I’d like to continue doing every morning, is eating a savory breakfast. Normally I’ll have either soaked oameal sweetened with milk, fruit or honey OR I’ll make smoothie sweetened with honey or agave. So this morning I left my oats in the cupboard and the milk in the fridge, and instead I made a beautiful breakfast of eggs seasoned with dulse flakes and steamed vegetables.

The BED tells you to make eggs with mostly the yolk only because that’s where all the goodness is. But I feel bad about disposing of the egg whites and I’m not sure what else to do with them so I just left them in. And I scrambled these eggs over the stove without adding anything else. So no milk, no butter, no cream. And you know what? They tasted just as good. As long as you don’t let them dry out they’ll still taste great. Continue reading →

The other day a friend of mine asked me to write an article about organic food – what foods in particular are the most important to consume as organic. And while I’ve never really thought about it because I buy everything that I possibly can organic, it did make me think about people who can’t access or afford organic foods and what specific foods they should be avoiding or trying harder to source as organic.

First I thought I’d start off with a few tips on how you can better afford organic foods.

1. Get yourself to a farmers market

You’re saving a significant amount of money when you shop at farmers markets. Really there’s not much of a price difference between organic market food in comparison to store bought produce. You’ll be surprised.

I had trouble visiting farmers markets when I was living in Toronto because I didn’t have a car and I felt like I had to travel really far to get to one. But in Brisbane it’s easy. Lucky for me there’s a huge organic farmers market each Sunday just a short drive from where I live. The great thing about this market is it’s local, everything is organic and it’s a lot cheaper than buying organic produce in a store.

And if you’re lucky, the organic market will have a stall that sells non-perishable items too. The one that I go to has a couple of amazing stalls that sell things like superfoods, grains and legumes, sea salt, raw chocolate, sauces and oils etc. No need to go anywhere else really.

2. Aim to buy seasonal foods and don’t be picky with what you get Continue reading →

The contraceptive pill would have to be one of the most common prescribed medications for acne in women. I know of quite a few cases where young girls have been prescribed the pill even before they’re sexually active, just to clear their skin.

I’m in two minds about using the pill as a treatment option. I know from personal experience that the pill can have a lot of nasty side effects, and it can in some cases make it a little more difficult to conceive a child later on in life. I also think the pill is over prescribed, especially for non-cystic acne which can quite easily be treated without the use of medications.

However, if the acne is very severe and cystic, I realize that the frustration and depression of the condition can make the pill a desirable option. And perhaps in the short term it’s okay. It certainly helped me twice in my life when I did take it for short periods. BUT, you must keep in mind that it’s very, very important to treat your acne holistically even if you’re taking the pill. Because you don’t want the condition to come back after you stop taking it. And you definitely don’t want to take the pill over many years for all the reasons I listed above and in this video-

As with antibiotics, taking the pill can make an overgrowth of Candida worse which in turn can make acne worse, or can make acne easily aggravated by simple foods such as natural sugars. So that’s something to keep in mind. I know for a fact that I still have a Candida problem from a history of antibiotic and contraceptive pill use, and a diet high in sugars and carbs. Continue reading →