I love natural health and I love blogging about it too! When I developed severe acne in 2007 I started blogging about my experiences with my skin … which turned into High on Health.
Here are some pics of me with famous healthy people that I LOVE and have managed to give a big hug to (to let them know how much I love and appreciate what they do)-
David Wolfe
James & Laurentine, the “Foodmatters” filmmakers
Bruce and Matt, a couple of celeb raw food chefs!
Don Tolman
Paul Nison
My Story
I first started getting pimples when everyone else does, when I was a teenager. I seemed to only get them on my forehead, but I had a lot of them. Every morning I would wake up and run my fingers along my forehead in the hope they’d disappeared during the night. Of course they hadn’t. I remember going to a hairdresser once and asking for bangs. My hair was all the same length then so I was wearing it scraped away from my face. I remember the hair dressers remark when she cut my hair so that it covered my pimples. She said, ‘There we go, that’s much better now’. All I could think about was how hideous my forehead must look!
After I left high school my parents moved to Malaysia to work so I went with them for a year and had a bit of a break. My skin got a lot better although I always had at least one pimple on my face at all times, and the occasional breakout. The following year I moved back to Australia to go to University. I was only just eighteen and for the first time in my life looking after myself, so you can just imagine how bad my diet was. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to eat junk food, it was more that I didn’t have the right education as to what eating well meant, and how you could do it on a students budget. So my skin responded to the bad diet and stress and I started to break out, a lot worse then I ever had before. It got to the point where I took myself to the doctor and they prescribed antibiotics.
The antibiotics worked really well, but I had to take them for a long time and they made my skin very sensitive. My skin would blush really easily and go red if I was too hot. I still have this problem today, but I never had it before I took the course of antibiotics.
When I went off the antibiotics, the pimples slowly returned. I started to panic so raced back to the doctor but she wouldn’t give me any more antibiotics because she said they were not as bad as they were before. I gloomily agreed. A year or so later I decided to go on the pill. Once again, my skin cleared up completely but my body rejected the pill and I had to stop taking it.
I put up with always having at least one pimple on my face at all times until shortly after my 27th birthday when my boyfriend and I split up after almost eight and a half years of being together. The stress of the split made my face break out really badly. I also got a lot of cystic acne around my jaw line and cheeks which is something I’d never had before. I was horrified to learn that I had what was classed as severe acne. It got to the point where I would stare at my reflection in the mirror literally for hours just examining my face. A few times when I woke up in the morning and looked in the mirror I burst into tears. I was depressed out of frustration. I tried going to the doctor but he just gave me an antibiotic gel that didn’t even work. I tried Proactiv and different cleansers and moisturizers, Chinese Herbs, supplements and vitamins but nothing helped, and some even made my skin a lot worse. My skin was consistently bad, and would be for another nine months until I finally found a solution that worked.
Today I feel as though I’m getting my face back. I look in the mirror now and I can see Fran again, instead of just red spots and pimples. I used to hate staying over at friends houses because they would see me without my make up. Now I can confidently spend days without wearing any foundation at all.
I started High on Health as a natural health blog but I spent so much time researching how to cure my own problem skin that it has turned into a natural acne treatment and skin care blog. Now that I’ve managed to finally fix my own skin, I want to help as many people as I can to fix their own problem skin without the need to take oral medications or use harsh skin care chemicals.
