How Acne, A Concussion, and A Blog Changed My Life

After a long, painful and scarring fight with adult cystic acne, I finally figured out what was causing it and it was an item in my everyday life. Something I consumed every day without much thought as to what it was doing to me.

How Bad Was It Really?

I have suffered from deep cystic adult acne my whole entire life. I have had antibiotics, retinoids, and painful chemicals put on my face–with little to no results.

The picture above shows the awful scarring that was left behind. At one point, my skin was so bad, as soon as a blemish would raise it would instantly scar and flake up making it impossible to cover up with makeup.

There were even days where I was so defeated by my breakouts I would call into work sick just to avoid people.

I have missed numerous events in my life because I couldn’t face people because my acne took away all my self-pride and confidence.

Why I Started My Blog

With the bad comes something good.

I felt defeated, but I wanted to showcase my knowledge of makeup product for acne sufferers. Lidsandtricks allowed me to network and communicate with others who were in a similar boat.

My readers helped me out too. I ended up leaving my job after sustaining a serious concussion (crossing something off my bucket list). I felt alone and useless but my blog community rallied and gave that encouragement back. This is when the focus went from just makeup to beauty and lifestyle as I learned to heal (and let my brain “reboot”).

I never thought it would lead to the success that it is today.

The Cure

When I was learning to be healthy from my concussion I could see my skin getting better some days and going back to its normal freak out mode (not on hormonal cycle).

This was my first tip off it was something to do with my diet.

There’s that famous phrase “You are what you eat”, and for a good reason!

My boyfriend was in dead season and was VERY inspired by the Food Network. Thus, pizza making ensued (seriously, never ate so much god damn pizza in my life).

I could see my skin freaking out so I knew it was something related to the pizza. After research, I thought it was candida (acne caused by yeast).

However, as I was researching continued to research I came across a study about the rise of adult acne caused by gluten.

I took a leap of faith and went gluten free. A part of me wanted it to work and the other half wanted to fail so I could still enjoy the food.

Within 4 days, my skin had started to clear up. I was astounded.

Turns out the cause of my acne was something in my diet–gluten. There are different types of acne; some are caused by hormones and some are caused by digestion.

Since the abolishment of gluten from my diet, I have been acne free.

You are what you eat after all.

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