Gut Instinct

Firstly, I want to thank everyone who read my latest blog, for all the positive feedback and your lovely messages. I had a couple of people get in touch saying they were going to pass it onto a friend to read, thinking it could help them. This meant so much to me and that’s what it’s really about. Of course it boosts you when you see how many views it has – I’m not fully altruistic! But please continue to share when you come across someone who is potentially suffering with their skin.

In this post, I want to go a little further into what’s really helped my skin in the last year; The amazing probiotic that is goat’s milk kefir.

“Food can be the greatest form of medicine, or the slowest form of poison.” I learned this only in my late 20’s and for me and my body, it is entirely true.

Throughout the years – the last 6 more specifically - I’ve been through periods where my skin has been great on the odd occasions, and then right back to suffering… sometimes sleepless nights of itching and literally tearing through my skin. Everyone knows what it’s like to feel an itch, and then the sweet relief of scratching it. It’s amazing. However, having eczema, you’ll never be fully satisfied after the scratch, and that’s where it becomes a dangerous spiral of not being able to stop even as someone grabs your hand to make you. It’s what I imagine taking hard drugs is like. There’s a bit of ecstasy when it feels so good doing it, but the ‘come down’ is awful. Once you’re done scratching and feeling slightly alleviated, the aftermath of broken skin has often brought me to tears. I’m not looking for sympathy here, but just want to create an awareness to those who haven’t been through this.

But until recently, I never had more than a few days of good skin. I’m talking 3 or 4… it would literally be that short a time before it would get worse again. In March 2017, I tried out the Whole30. It’s a 30-day non-diet diet, where you basically eat paleo, cutting out sugar, wheat, dairy, grains and alcohol for a full 30 days in an attempt to re-set your body. After the 30 days, you re-introduce certain food groups to see how your body reacts to them. This way you can pin point what’s causing the problems, whatever those problems might be. This helped to a certain extent (I already knew I was allergic to dairy and wheat so hardly ever ate them anyway) and cutting out sugar really helped with my acne, but the eczema was still rearing its ugly head.

In May 2017 I met up with some friends for a lovely spring walk/climb at Brimham Rocks, and got chatting to someone about all my allergies and eczema. He suggested I try goat’s milk kefir, as it really helped with his skin (and IBS too). At this point I thought I had tried EVERYTHING under the sun, and was willing to try anything else that could help.

I went to ChucklingGoat and basically read the whole website. The reviews were amazing and when you can see before and after photos, what more evidence do you need? I watched the short video on the website, and downloaded the e-book the founder (Shann Nix Jones) had written called ‘The Good Skin Solution’. Then I placed my order for the kefir. I felt really positive about this, and I think that’s really useful from the off – if you’re half-hearted in whatever you do, you’re kinda setting yourself up for failure.

I won’t go too much into how the kefir works as you can look into that on the website if you want to, but it’s all to do with the gut. In your gut there are billions of bacteria that make up your immune system. You need the good bacteria in there. Amongst many things, antibiotics wipe out the bad bacteria – that’s what they’re used for when you really need it to get rid of infections. But unfortunately they also wipe out the good, and that’s where our problem lies. Live goat’s milk kefir is a PRObiotic, and puts more of the good bacteria back into your gut. Many ‘probiotics’ don’t work as they are not strong enough to survive the digestive process and your stomach acid. As the kefir is live and unpasteurised it can survive digestion, and with it being goat’s milk, it’s not as harsh as cow’s milk – which a lot of people have allergies/intolerances to.

There’s one main point you should know if you try kefir – avoid sugar. It kills the good bacteria and the kefir won’t work. Use alternatives like stevia. If you really need to make a change, giving up sugar should be worth the sacrifice for the benefits you’ll see after taking the kefir. The website says if you have really bad skin, you should do a minimum of 9 weeks (170ml every day), and it was actually around the 9 week mark that I noticed a big difference in my skin. It wasn’t reacting as much as it normally would and it felt and looked so much better. I carried on taking the kefir for around 7 months, and finally stopped in January 2018.

I still do some things to keep my gut strong including other probiotics like Kombucha, which I make at home. It literally costs pennies, unlike the store-bought versions which are so expensive! Kombucha is a fermented tea, which you do actually have to make with sugar, but the bacteria feed off that during the fermenting process and there’s a minimal amount when it’s ready. Miso, kimchi and sauerkraut are also probiotic.. you only need a little bit each day to help replenish the bacteria in your gut.

Vegans and vegetarian - cover your eyes now. Bone broth is amazing. The collagen helps to heal the walls/lining of your intestines and helps prevent or repair a leaky gut. Your intestines let nutrients pass through the walls, but when you have leaky gut, other things can pass through too, such as undigested food, bacteria and waste. This can cause allergic reactions when these things enter your blood stream, causing you to react to things you might never have been allergic to. However, if the bone broth makes you feel a bit queasy, you can buy collegen powder and add that to smoothies. It does contain gelatine so it’s not vegetarian/vegan friendly unfortunately.

Pre-biotics help to feed the good bacteria that already exists in your gut, so eating more of these foods is also really beneficial. These include bananas, onions, garlic, oats, apples and flaxseeds to name a few.

Bacteria is not only in your gut; it’s also on your skin. Your skin absorbs everything you put on it, so in theory you should only put on what you’d be willing to eat. I take this with a pinch of salt as contrary to popular opinion coconut oil cannot be used for everything. I use the sensitive soap and moisturiser from the Chuckling Goat range.

If you’re interested here are some links to the other products I use:

Eye cream/gel

Argan oil

Shampoo and conditioner bars from here. With the added benefit of no packaging!

And I order other various natural/chemical free products from Pure Nuff Stuff.

And then coconut oil to remove eye makeup… and that’s all. Aldi sell it for about £2.50.. so cheap!

I really try to avoid too many chemicals in the products I use… we don’t really know the long term effects of these so going as natural as you possibly can is best for your skin and health. SLS is in a lot of products, especially shampoos, and it helps to make the product foam up when using it so you feel like it’s doing a better job of cleaning. However it’s actually what they use in labs to cause an irritation, to then test a product on how it affects that irritation. How mad is that!

Finally, hydration is key. Both moisturising after bathing/showering and drinking lots of water every day helps me so much. There’s only so much you can do topically, but the big difference you’ll notice is when you change what you eat and drink.

I hope this has been useful for anyone who needs it, and please do get in touch if you want to ask any questions.

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Skin Deep

It’s been 5 years since I wrote my first blog about my skin. I probably should have been more frequent with my updates, as now I’ve got a few years worth to catch up on. Consistency is not my forte.

2013

After my last blog, I thought I had discovered the root causes of my eczema and how to handle it. Back then, I found that I’m allergic to perfume (and all products with any kind of synthetic fragrance) and nail varnish, so stopping using these products worked for a while, but not in the long term. It’s a pretty shit feeling when you think you’re doing everything right and yet still suffer the same symptoms.

During 2013/2014 I went through another course of skin patch testing through the NHS, and they found nothing more than what they had the previous time. Anyone who has had patch testing done will know how delightful the process is, but I know people go through worse so I’ll just leave you with this photo of my back after the patches were removed. I also had to have the patches on my upper arms and my stomach.

2014

In 2014, my mum read an article in the newspaper, about a top London Dermatologist who specialised in skin issues such as mine, but her approach was plant based rather than the harsh steroid medication most doctors and specialists prescribe. At this point, I had been through the mill with the NHS, and they didn’t seem to have any answers other than the standard steroid treatment. For anyone that doesn’t know about steroids for skin and thinks they need to use them, please do your research. Topical steroids thin the skin - I would recommend avoiding them at all costs and trying out alternative options. However I know from experience, sometimes flare ups are so bad that using them for a few days to get your skin back on track is what’s needed. In my experience, I’ve used steroids and it’s like a miracle cure… however, quickly after stopping using them my skin returned to how it was. Surely this goes to show it’s never a long-term solution, yet the doctors/specialists and NHS dermatologists haven’t offered much in the way of an alternative.

So I booked a consultation. With a Harley Street Dermatologist. At £180 per appointment. I had a lot of doubts about openly sharing fees/prices regarding this Harley Street Dermatologist, but to be honest when it comes to my health, I personally would be willing to pay pretty much anything I could afford if it was going to help me.

They carried out various tests and took blood samples, looking at everything from liver function to cholesterol and body fat percentage. I found out I was very anaemic and this wasn’t helping the situation. They also did blood tests to find out what foods I was allergic to, and I was prescribed a couple of internals and a couple of externals:

Externals:

Shampoo 1

Shampoo 2

Body wash

Body oil

Cleanser

Toner

Moisturiser

Internals:

Iron

Vitamin C

Vitamin D

Amino acids

Herbal Tincture

Just a few.

2015

Skip forward a month or two after that first appointment, and I’m looking and feeling great – the best I’ve felt in a long time actually. The problem was, every few months I would go back for a checkup and usually a week before my appointment they would call me to rearrange it, as the Doctor was out of the country, at a conference (insert any other excuse here). When it happens once, it’s fine, you deal with it and rearrange. But when it happens for three appointments in a row, you wonder why you’re giving your money to someone who can’t seem to keep to their schedule.

And all this got me questioning where my money was going to. Those internals and externals I listed above were not cheap. The herbal tincture alone was £100 and it lasted a month. And the thing is, it didn’t have a list of ingredients, so I had no idea what I was actually ingesting. All I knew was it tasted pretty gross. I wanted to see how my skin would hold up without these supplements, so my dermo agreed that I could stop taking the internals.

2016

Here’s me thinking I’ve been cured and I can crack on with my eczema-free life! But as the pattern in the last few years has gone, my skin slowly started to get worse. This coincided with a very stressful time in my life; a long term relationship ending, work stress and moving house all happening at the same time. Regardless, I forced myself out of the house everyday, red puffy eyes and all, and tried to get on with life as best as I could. I know eczema is pretty low down on the serious health issue scale, but I was so unhappy in my appearance during my worse skin times. Your face is the first thing people see and no matter what people say to you, for example, “nobody notices/cares” etc, it’s still not fun being self-conscious about your appearance when you know what you used to look like. With that comes the discomfort. Constant itching, breaking the skin when you give into the itch, and infected eczema that hurts when you shower/wash. For those of you out there who have beautiful, clear skin that is itch-free, please be grateful for that. 

In the Summer of 2016, I went on a yoga retreat in Majorca and had a consultation whilst I was there, with a woman who practices Ayurvedic medicine – an ancient Indian system which is focuses on the natural healing powers of food and plants. This introduced me to healing myself from within with food, rather than topical treatments and tinctures that you need to take a mortgage out for.

2017

Then in the Spring of 2017, a friend suggested I try goat’s milk kefir. I did a lot of research and read all the reviews on the website and had so much hope for it. And I’m glad I did – it was life-changing. Kefir is a probiotic which replenishes the good bacteria in your gut. I’m a firm believer that skin conditions are not just ‘skin conditions’ that can be treated topically. Especially in my case and experience, I do believe that healing your immune system is going to have such a positive effect on eczema and a ton of other conditions. I won’t go into this too deep now, I could talk for a while on this subject, but I’ll share more on this in another blog – hopefully not in another 5 years, more like 5 weeks let’s hope!  

After a 9-week course of the kefir, my skin was entirely different and so clear. I carried on for a few months, and finally stopped taking it in December, but the effects have stayed. I’m still trying (but not always succeeding) to avoid sugar, cow dairy and wheat, as I know these really do have a big negative effect on my skin. It’s a constant journey that I’ll likely be on for my entire life, but I feel I’ve got good control over my skin right now and I’ll always strive for better.

I feel I need to get my story out there, so other people suffering similar conditions can first of all know they’re not alone – it’s more common than you think. And secondly, to show that there is another way that isn’t steroids or expensive dermatologists, and a much more natural approach to your health. If just one person reads this, and can take something away that helps them with any skin issues, that would make me happy.

Thanks for reading
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