The birth control pill was no sustainable solution

For me, as I reached puberty, acne was my pain point. My skin condition had me spending hours obsessing over my skin and squeezing pimples. I used various skin creams that just dried my skin out. To cover up all the red spots in my face, I used concealer sticks. Embarrassed about my skin, I was very self-conscious. So in this time of my life I hardly took any pictures and didn’t find myself beautiful. 

Later I took the birth control pill to suppress my acne. I wasn’t even thinking about my health at this point. In order to live my life without shame, I just wanted my acne to go away. This ‘pill’ solution seemed simple and effective at first. But it soon became clear that it would be unsustainable long term. It was really only dealing with symptoms and not getting to the root cause.

What concerned me for long-term use of the pill were two main points that I couldn’t ignore: the first being the undesired hormonal side effects such as water retention and weight gain. And the second concern was that if I were to ever come off the pill, the acne would come back with no lessening symptoms. 

At some point I decided to get off the pill to see what would happen. As expected the acne came back and was worse than ever before. The problem clearly remained in me and was unsolved. Once I outgrew puberty and acne continued to plague me, my concerns only grew since I thought it would go away naturally once puberty passed. 

This is me in 2011, when I was still on the pill. My skin was clear, but I didn’t feel good about my body as I struggled with the side effects of the pill.

 

 

I started to experiment with diet and tried Paleo

My story starts when in a particularly strong case of my skin flaring up, I consulted a dermatologist. He advised me to avoid white flour, sugar and dairy products. It was the first time I had encountered a possible solution in the form of a diet. This was interesting and also scary. White flour, sugar and dairy were ingredients in foods I loved at the time. Above all, cheese was one of my favorite foods. So I really wasn’t that excited about doing it, but since I was at my wits end at this point I decided to give it a try.

I steeled myself to be disciplined to eliminate these foods for several weeks to see how the elimination would affect my skin. When I was looking for recipes without white flour, sugar and dairy products, I came across the Paleo diet, also known as the Stone Age diet. This diet focuses on natural and unprocessed foods with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and daily meat and fish consumption.

Paleo strictly excludes highly processed foods such as sugar, white flour and dairy products. So the Paleo diet seemed like a perfect fit for me. I followed the Stone Age diet strictly for several months and my acne improved dramatically and almost disappeared completely. As a nice side effect, I also lost 5 kilos. I felt accomplished and happy and thought this was the end of the problem. 

 

Daily meat consumption wasn’t right for me

There was however one new problem that crept up that I couldn’t ignore. I noticed that I had less and less drive and hardly any desire to do sports. Of course there could be many reasons for this. But at the time I felt that the timing of this problem had to do with diet more than my mental state or any other reason. This is why, despite the desired results in my skin, I had my doubts as to whether the Paleo diet was right for me long term. The thing is, the results from the Paleo experiment kicked the door to diet as a path to follow for health solutions, wide open.

One day as destiny would have it, I had an Airbnb guest who had come to Berlin for a convention. He worked in cancer research, which I found very exciting and intriguing. Cancer was a disease that ran in my family, taking my grandfather’s life and attacking my grandmother three times. So I asked him point blank his opinion on how one would best prevent cancer.

His answer was short and clear: he recommended a severely limited meat consumption and avoiding red meat altogether. Since I ate meat almost every day on my Paleo diet, this was a shocking piece of information! I went from what I thought was solving one problem to feeling like I created a much bigger one. Was I on the wrong track? Did I have to choose one problem or the other to solve? Was there a diet that would solve both problems?

 

I went on a plant based diet with only fruits and veggies

Following the conversation with the cancer researcher I quickly decided to give myself a week of eating no animal products – only fruits and vegetables. With no real agenda for the outcomeI I wanted to see what would happen to my body.

This was my first step into open experimentation with my body to measure and observe any results whatever they may be. Exploring the unknown in my body. This allowed for the unexpected to happen – which is exactly what happened.

I experienced an unprecedented boost of energy and a great sense of lightness in my body which really blew me away. I could not have foreseen this! But the pimples returned again, which muted the win.

I was back at the crossroads again. On the one hand, I trusted the cancer researcher and loved the immediate daily results as well as the long term cancer-free aim. On the other hand, I wanted nice and healthy skin as well. Was there a way to have both a diet that avoided cancer and and the same time was skin friendly?

The positive changes in my body from the diet change were encouraging. However, the returning skin problems made me doubt if I was on the right path. My acne had increased to a point that my co-workers were asking me about it. And to add insult to injury, I had a constant pounding headache.

 

I started ‘detoxing’ my body

Since the door to diet was already open, I looked up what was going on with me. After doing a little online research it was mildly relieving to read that my symptoms were apparently typical ‘detox’ symptoms. Apparently my body was in the process of cleansing itself on the inside, shedding acids and waste products.

The meaning of detox is a short term dietary intervention eliminating toxins from your body (2). I didn’t really know what detox meant in terms of how long or short time-wise the symptoms would last. How long or short should I continue the type of diet to get desired results? 

Whether this was exactly happening or my body was simply transitioning and or getting used to a completely different diet didn’t really matter. To get where I wanted to be, I knew the experimenting was a necessary process I was going to have to go through.

 

I discovered a new life energy

What was happening to my body fascinated and shocked me, but most of all I was excited about the new energy that flowed through my body. This gave me the push to continue with only fruits and vegetables for another month to give it a full chance. I had to know if where I was going was really going to be long term and sustainable.

In the weeks that followed, my headaches and acne did in fact fade away but the lightness and life energy remained. I also continued to lose more weight which I was happy about since I had put up with excess weight for years and had basically given up on losing it.

After about two months, my weight-loss stabilized and I achieved a weight where I felt energetic, fit, and beautiful. I had lost a total of about 20 pounds in two months! It could’ve been a scary experience but I felt confident that all was right because of the constant energy my body felt.

In this photo you can see how fruit and vegetable fasting has changed me physically. Although I still had skin problems, I was generally happy with my body.

 

 

I decided to eat plant based on the long run

At this point my experiment had convinced me. I felt the evidence and the results were too strong for me to go back diet-wise to where I was before. Armed with the information that I had learned about the connection between meat consumption and cancer growth combined with the results of weight control and skin health, I became vegan.

Since eating vegan means eating anything that is not animal related, one can easily eat pasta, rice and lots of grains. But I wanted to continue eating mainly fruits and vegetables, going deeper than the skin and aiming for complete body health.

However, my skin wasn’t as clear as it was when I was on the Paleo diet. Believing I was still going through my ‘detox’ period, I patiently waited for my skin to improve. I was convinced that I was ‘detoxing’.

 

I went raw vegan to complete the ‘detox’

A week turned into a month which turned into a year. After a year, I really had a deep desire to complete what I thought was a detoxification process in my body. I finally wanted to solve my skin problem. Frustrating times.

During this phase, I was eating up to ten bananas a day. ‘Freelee the Banana Girl’ on YouTube inspired me to go on banana fasts and mono diets for further detox. I also consumed lots of avocados, nuts, tomatoes, and also foods I didn’t know about before, such as seaweed, which I thought would really get my body’s detoxification going.

To improve my intestine health, I even fasted regularly and did a number of other things. For example, I did a gut cleanse with sulfur and fermented my own raw vegan sauerkraut and made my own kombucha.

 

My skin condition got worse on raw foods

Unfortunately, my skin not only didn’t improve during my raw vegan phase but it got worse. Again I attributed my ongoing skin problems to what I thought was my ongoing detoxification. So I assumed that I just needed to keep going long enough for my skin to eventually become totally clear. But it didn’t get any better.

I wondered how toxic my body actually was, as the detox I suspected just wouldn’t end. My husband had thought that his eczema would always be there regardless of what he did. So he just accepted it as something that occasionally flared up due to lack of sleep or stress. He thought that his eczema wasn’t curable but I was still thinking there could be a solution for me.

 

I started experimenting on raw foods

So I continued to experiment within the raw vegan diet. For example, I tried the 80/10/10 diet and eliminated all fats from nuts, seeds and avocados. My skin improved, but was still blemished and I lost more weight by cutting out fats.

Following the recommendation of Anthony William (Medical Medium), I also fasted regularly with celery juice. But after the juice cleanse the acne just came back and the cleanse didn’t have any long lasting effect.

By regularly fasting and cutting out fats, I lost even more body weight and friends and relatives began to worry about me. Some even accused me of having an eating disorder and predicted that I would lose my fertility. There was a lot of social pressure to just give up and go back to eating ‘normal’ as I wasn’t making any progress with my skin anyway. This was really tough to go through but as I mentioned before, I knew too much to turn back now.

 

I started thinking in a completely new direction

Luckily the break-through I needed to continue was just around the corner. That summer my husband and I visited my in-laws in Canada. In and of itself this was nothing special except for the fact that my mother-in-law was a certified dietitian for over 30 years.

After telling her about all my experiments, she gave me a book on food intolerance, which I devoured with curiosity. It was the exact spark I needed that got me thinking in a completely new direction. What if what I thought was ‘healthy’ wasn’t right for my body? In the chapter on histamine intolerance, I found a list of all my favorite foods that I ate almost every day. Devastating and relieving at the same time.

 

I discovered the real trigger for my acne

Did I have a histamine intolerance? It was certainly a big hypothesis now. To confirm my suspicion of histamine intolerance, I avoided all foods with histamine for the next four weeks and ate mostly potatoes. Even though I’m German and potatoes are basically our national vegetable, I think it was fairly obvious my motivation to find this result was pretty big.

After just a few days, my skin became clearer and after four weeks my acne was completely gone leaving me with the best skin of my life. I felt peace, excitement, relief and vindication for my journey!

From then on, I continued to eat a vegan diet with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, but I integrated cooked foods again and concentrated more on avoiding foods containing histamines. I invented many new recipes and got creative within my limitations.

This whole process was the inspiration for this project. It showed me the value of experimenting and pushing through failures to get results I was looking for.

This is me on my wedding day in Canada with completely clear skin – no makeup necessary. What a lovely gift!

 

 

Healing my histamine intolerance

However, that’s not where my story ends. I started digging deeper to find out what the root cause of my histamine intolerance was. For that purpose I did a blood analysis, which showed that I had a lack of magnesium, which could be a possible root cause, so I started supplementing.

I also examined my intestinal flora through a stool analysis. It revealed that I had a candida fungal infection and a weak immune system, which could also be a possible cause of my histamine intolerance. I also had a lack of healthy gut bacteria. However, taking probiotics was a costly endeavor in the long run. It also didn’t solve the problem permanently, as the problems recurred as soon as I stopped taking the probiotic capsules.

At the moment I’m focused on working on my mental health, since ongoing emotional stress can also be a trigger for histamine intolerance. My journey is for sure not over yet and I want to invite you to accompany me on my further healing journey, as well as I would love to accompany you in finding the root cause of your skin condition!

Warm greetings from Nicole