I struggled with acne for years, and tried just about everything to heal it.
I was on a birth-control pill, took month-long rounds of antibiotics, used topical creams and tried different face washes. I even paid over $100 for some sort of exfoliating gel with crushed diamond particles in it.
I gave up dairy and then I tried going vegan. Nothing worked until I addressed my digestive health. Poor digestive health contributes to inflammation and, for many of us, inflammation creates acne. The good news is that with the right dietary and lifestyle tweaks, you can heal your gut and get clear, glowing skin like I did!
Is your gut leaking?
The stomach gets a lot of credit for digestion, but other organs in your digestive tract do a lot of the heavy lifting. Your large and small intestines are two superstars that are responsible for extracting a majority of the nutrients from the foods you eat. Together, the small and large intestines are about 25 feet long, and the interior lining of these organs is just one cell thick.
This lining of single cells can be damaged by a number of things: chewing your food poorly, eating a lot of processed foods, eating foods you may be sensitive to and eating too much sugar. Studies also show that oral contraceptives and antibiotics, as well as NSAIDS like Tylenol and Advil, may also compromise the gut lining.
When the cell lining is damaged, it becomes permeable. This is called Leaky Gut Syndrome, and when it happens, toxins and partially-digested food particles leak out of your digestive tract and into your blood stream. This, in turn, triggers your immune response. Part of your immune response is inflammation.
This inflammation starts in the gut, but it can quickly trigger systemic inflammation that reaches your skin. This is partly due to a mechanism that some researchers call the gut-brain-skin-axis. Acne is part of the skin’s inflammation response. So, your leaky gut could be a major factor behind your skin issues.
Your gut bugs are helping or hurting you.
So, we’ve covered your intestinal lining. Inside your intestines, there are trillions of bacteria, and also some fungi. Collectively, these gut bug, as I affectionately like to call them, comprise your microbiota, also referred to as your microbiome. These guys help to digest your food for you and help you to make certain vitamins.
However, antibiotics kill these helpful gut bugs along with the bad guys. This leaves your digestive system impaired, and can also help to create the leaky gut issues I’ve mentioned above. The birth-control pill and NSAIDs also harm good gut bacteria. It’s a terrible twist, but it seems that the very things you take to manage your acne—the pill and antibiotics—make you more susceptible to it.
Furthermore, when the beneficial bacteria die off, they leave space for harmful varieties of gut bugs, leading to things like candida overgrowth. The Standard American Diet, somewhat appropriately given the acronym SAD, also helps to feed harmful gut bacteria and fungi like Candida.
When you don’t have enough good gut bugs, or when you have too many bad gut bugs, this is called gut dysbiosis. This is also a leading cause of inflammation, compromised immunity and poor digestion. Furthermore, when Candida takes over, the Candida in your skin cells can flare up and cause acne. This is why many of us break out after eating sweets or processed foods; these foods feed the Candida living in our pores and cause inflammation.
Follow these 4 steps to heal your digestive tract (and clear up your skin!).
So, what’s a girl to do? Heal your gut! Here’s how you do it:
1) Take a break from inflammatory foods.
Cut out things like sugar, dairy, corn and soy for a while. Go easy on the caffeine and alcohol as well. This will look like your typical anti-acne diet, but if you follow this and the other suggestions for a while, it will give your gut some time to heal. Once your gut is healed, you will probably find that you can eat these foods in moderation without any consequences.
2) Try an elimination diet.
If you feel like you might be dealing with a food sensitivity, an elimination diet is a pretty easy way to find out. To do an elimination diet, cut out all possible triggers for a week and then add them back into your diet one day at a time and take note of any symptoms like breakouts, disrupted digestion or feeling tired after meals.
If you find that this is the case for a certain food item or food group, you may want to steer clear of it for a long time (or possibly forever). Your gut and skin will thank you for it!
3) Eat healing foods.
During your inflammatory food break or elimination diet, you will also want to incorporate more healing foods into your diet. These include fermented foods like sauerkraut and kefir (an exception to the dairy restriction). Cultured coconut water is also a good one to try. These foods will help to replenish the good gut bugs. You may also want to consider a good probiotic supplement.
Another healing food is bone broth, which contains a compound called L-glutamine which will help to patch up the holes in your digestive lining.
4) Take a chill pill.
Stress is a major contributor to both Leaky Gut Syndrome and gut dysbiosis. We’ve all heard of the ‘fight or flight’ response that can hijack our bodies during times of acute stress.
This system-overwhelm can also become chronic. The fight or flight response trumps the lesser known ‘rest and digest’ response. So, stress will make it impossible for your body to rest and repair itself or to properly digest your food an assimilate nutrients.
Focus on mindfulness, take some deep belly breaths before you begin to eat and chew your food! Incorporate time for mini-breaks into your schedule and, if you feel yourself getting too tense, return to some deep breathing or open up a Google Doc at your desk and do a bit of impromptu journaling. We all need breaks!
Healing your gut to clear your skin is not an easy fix, but it is a permanent one. As an added bonus, healing your gut with dietary and lifestyle changes will also give you more energy and may help you shed a stubborn pound or two. So, if you’re committed to creating a clear, glowing complexion from the inside out, give it a try and let me know how it goes!