Know thyself: The torments of acne...and the elusive solution.

The problem

| Puberty.... thy heartless bastard! |

Before high school I was fresh faced, a bit chubby, full of confidence and ready to tackle the world. I had heard of rumors of this puberty thing but I figured that I was a special child and that nothing could possibly go wrong with me. But after hearing stories of what my older siblings had gone through I had decided to brace myself for the onset of puberty, I mean it wasn't all supposed to be bad right : the package came with a deeper voice, more facial hair, growth spurts and all so I kinda needed it , always being the shortest man in the room and all. But no one and nothing could have ever prepared me for for what was about to happen. Circa grade 10(2007) I started to cross the chasm, into the deep dark abyss known as puberty, all the other upgrades were really great but the only thing I couldn't handle was the acne, oh dear Lord why did you give me the acne....

In search for a solution

So there it was my greatest enemy for the past 6 or so years, acne, acne, acne. Cursed with weird/sensitive/reactive skin, at times I couldn't even tell if I had oily, dry, or mixed skin because it exhibited each quality at different points in time. And I tried absolutely everything. Honestly, you name it and I've tried it, the following list contains just some (rain drop in the ocean) of the products that I had tried to no avail:

1. Clearasel.
2. Young solution.
3. Oxy.
4. Clean n clear.
5. Acnet.
6. Garnier.
7. Zinplex
8. Epizone.
9. Eucerin.

And these are just a few of the well known brands that I tried, in times of deep distress I even ventured into the unknown. The following is not something I am extremely proud of but once, desperately in need of a solution I went to a pharmacist in Swaziland and he told me to use  vaginal cream on my face (yes...really...). Not the greatest decision I have ever made in my life, the fact alone that I was actually using it was weird enough, but now imagine having to explain to a bunch of macho male teens in a high school hostel why I had a tube of vaginal cream in my cupboard, as if the pimples weren't enough stress :( . I'm sad to say that this brave experiment didn't work at all, if anything it just made it worse and the issues just got deeper and deeper from there. 

Psychological effects

In the world that we live in, beauty plays a big role in our daily lives, with the media bombarding us from all angles, we have a preconceived notion of what it is to pretty, to be beautiful,to be attractive, to be normal. And high school is a time when everyone is trying to outshine everyone else, the cool kids are getting girlfriends, the pretty boys are receiving their first kisses etc etc. This is a very difficult time to be suffering from something so trivial as pimples and bad skin. But this plagued me throughout and it has such a deep rooted effect on your psych. Something that I haven't really shared with anyone was the fact that for the purposes of a self-induced delusion - There were many occasions where I used to go a whole week without looking at myself in the mirror, it sounds weird but I swear this is true. My reasoning was that if I can't see how bad my face is...then its not that bad..right?. And this helped me sleep at night, but it didn't stop the eyes wandering around my face during face-to-face conversation, so to counter that I developed the habit of looking away when talking to people (or just not talking to people at all :) ). So I'd be staring everywhere but at your face cause I didn't want to see myself through your eyes....quite deep hey, deep, sad, but very very true.

Depression, anger, sadness, fatigue, short-temper, lethargy...these were all bi-products of my disastrous face.. Every day became a challenge for me, a challenge to make it to the end, to survive, to refrain from breaking down in public, in-front of friends, in-front of people. Its such a traumatic experience and I don't think any one that hasn't suffered from prolonged acne really knows how this feels.You see, your face is the entrance to your soul, because your emotions, your thoughts, your feelings are all expressed through your face. When you meet people, first they see your face and then they analyse the rest of your body. Its analogous to living in a house that's falling apart on the outside. No matter what the situation is on the inside, all the judgments are passed long before entering the front door. And this left me constantly searching, searching for acceptance, seeking approval and always looking for love. Because when you don't accept, approve and love yourself, you obviously have to depend on someone else to.

Next sop...varsity

Going into varsity, the situation only got worse, and now this affected my academics, because instead of focusing on my work during lecturers, there I was thinking about my face.And the thing is that it's not all restricted to the psychological level even, because when you have inflamed skin, you can literally feel the puss pushing out against the boundaries of the pimple, and trust me that shit hurts! So not only did I wake up and feel like shit, I was reminded the whole damn day that there is a war happening all over my face, all day everyday. And to make this objective situation ten times worse there are so many pretty people in varsity, so one can't help but compare... :( As I walked around campus on the daily, I used to curse people that had perfect skin, cause they looked like they bath in milk while I looked like a destitute prisoner of war. I even wanted to see less and less of my own friends, locked up in my room for days, hiding behind the books and the course work - wondering why life is so unfair?

Searching for the underlying problem

What I didn't understand throughout this period is what actually caused this problem, all this time I was trying to fight it from the outside in: more face washes, more toners, more creams, if this doesn't work try another one, if that doesn't work try another one use a face mask, try a steamer, more more moreee!!!! I think my face was even tired of me, it probably almost threw in the towel as well. Early into varsity I stopped dairy, since I discovered that it was a contributing factor, after this change my face did improve..ever so slightly. 

Because of the effects of alcohol (high in sugar and toxins etc), throughout varsity I had many on and off periods with that as well, thinking that alcohol=bad, but that never lasted long.There were way too many parties to attend and not nearly enough self-discipline. I had managed to stop junk foods completely, so no sweets, chips, chocolates and the like. And people around me would often ask me why? But I would simply tell them it was due to 'health reasons', not exposing the reality of the matter : the fact that I was fighting to get control of my life back. 

In high school I got into the unnecessary bad habit of smoking as well , having such great friends as an influence (face palm) but I stopped that for good, early during my first year of varsity and haven't touched a cigarette since. This had some sort of effect, but then there was nothing to take my mind of the stress that was being caused by my face... So for the following years my love hate relationship continued with my face, I had good weeks, bad weeks, good days, bad days, ups and downs, ins and outs throughout and I eventually just conceded that this was my life, this was my journey. I decided to accept my fate....

The revelation

This continued up until this year(2014) the year after I completed my honours degree in varsity. Since I had started working I had a fairly routine schedule so I started going to gym on the daily after work with a group of work mates. What my workmates did was, they ate oats an hour or so before going to gym, for the carb-loading benefits. So I did the same, every day for about 3-4 weeks I had a nice bowl of oats (with sugar), sometimes even twice a day. After some time I started to notice that after I ate oats I used to get this bloated uncomfortable feeling in my stomach (which I actually used to get often) , this got extremely awkward over time. On top of this I also started getting this horrible acne by my jawline, and not just a lightweight whiteheaded pimple, it was deep cystic acne, those hard painful bumps that take oh so long to go away. Furthermore I also used to have a distinct weird feeling, like some sort of anxiety, but I didn't take much cognizance of it (i passed it off as fatigue). So this all continued to happen for a few weeks. 

At first I thought "o.k just some more retaliation from my face" but after consistent irritation and further annoyance it eventually lead me to do some research on our loyal friend Google, and after a few searches I came across this life changing article by Jenifer Blanchard. Her story was basically the same as mine: acne from a young age, trying every acne product on the market, staying indoors cause she was afraid of the world, hatred of staring in the mirror, feeling ugly and gross, despising other fresh faced teenagers, feeling of anxiety at times.. and halfway through reading the article I was like "woah, this is my story!". Then the part where she mentioned the jawline acne, I knew that I was onto something.

"Now the ACNE had started migrating downward, showing up along my jawline and neck as well as on my face. Deep-rooted, cystic acne that never seemed to go away. I didn’t know what to do anymore."

I carried on reading and she mentioned that after trying all products and even getting expert advice (which i did as well,and it was a complete waste of my time and money), she decided to take matters into her own hands by signing up for a nutrition course.

She continues to explain that during a lecture on food allergies the doctor started listing symptoms produced by gluten allergies and law and behold...one by one the truth was reveled and I saw the light.

"I was listening to a lecture on food allergies, and the doctor who was teaching the class started listing off all the symptoms that gluten and dairy allergies produce: anxiety, heartburn, GERD, ACID REFLUX, stomach pain, ear infections, sinus infections…the list went on."

Connecting the dots

My mother will be quick to tell you that I was terribly sick throughout my childhood and my parents had no idea why. But looking at this list and taking into consideration all my issues from birth to now, it all starts to make sense.. maybe, just maybe I was sensitive to gluten. On the one hand I was extremely  happy to come to this realization but then again I was also like REALLY?REALLY?? REALLY!!!!! The universe waits for me to go through high school AND varsity fighting a constant battle with myself before telling me that I shouldn't be eating gluten? After all the bread, the scones, the buns, the oats, the pasta, the beer! NOW you tell me that I'm gluten sensitive, now when i'm 22...well done! I kicked myself after reading this but it also all made so much sense, because looking back the times that my acne was at its worst correlated to times where I had a lot of wheat/barley/rye.

• Hostel and res -> the food is ridiculous, so you just end up making sandwiches to supplement everything. I'd go days eating like +10 slices of bread.

• High school going into varsity -> in high school your status of being a cool kid depends on whether you drink beer or not (which tasted disgusting) so what did i do? I drank a whole lot of beer!. In varsity... well, we all know what happens in varsity, you are either studying, sleeping or drinking. 

• Varsity self catering -> living in a house, without being catered for, not knowing how to cook to save my life- what did I eat most? bread, pasta and more bread!!!!!! and that's when I started my oats habit as well - 'just add boiling water' they said...curse you Jungle Oats!.

And what does bread, pasta, beer and oats all have in common? Gluten, gluten gluten!!!

Looking back it should have been more obvious but I mean its really hard connection to figure out and honestly up until this year I didn't even really know what gluten was, but now I know and I'll never forget. I've stopped eating all forms of gluten and the results are truly amazing (especially considering where I am coming from).

Postmortem 

With all this said and done, I'm not saying that I have photogenic face with smooth silky baby bottom skin...yet! I am however clearly on the road to recovery and it really feels great, being able to walk out your house and face the day (pun intended) in confidence is one of the greatest feelings in the world. I'll have to follow a strict diet of course, but it's for a good cause, I really do miss my craft beer, but honestly I'd choose smooth skin over a hangover any day.

Know thyself

Now this definitely isn't a proven cure for the millions of other acne sufferers out there, but it is worth a try. The point to take out of this is to always look for the root cause of your problems. I am a strong believer in logic,  reason and rational, and in as much as we may live in a random universe, not everything is random, things don't 'just happen' especially if the observations are consistent, one needs to look for the correlation and search for the true cause. It is extremely important to know yourself, your body, your allergies and your sensitivities both physiological and psychological, else you will spend your whole life fighting in a losing battle. 

Take some time, do some research, experiment on yourself, make some sacrifices. Life is too short to suffer, when the solution to your problems could be one simple insight away.

T4aM

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Know thyself : There is no rush.

I had the most interesting impromptu conversation last night with a group of friends. The topic was basically that 'there is no rush...you'll get there when you get there'. And I think its something that I needed and something a lot of us in our generation need as the future leaders of Africa and the world as a whole.

This ties in with something that I heard at a conference this past week as well. An Interesting statistic that the average age for successful founders of startups in silicon valley is about +-34 years , and all this time I had been thinking that it's just a bunch of 20 year old hoodie-wearing straight out of varsity (if they even finished) kids that are running the show - yes these people do exist but they are not the majority.The issue is that the media does a great job in telling us about the Marks, Bills and Steves of the world. Personally every time I hear about another 15 year old Summly-creating kid I think "what am I doing with my life?.

And it is this media-frenzy that contributes heavily towards one of biggest problems experienced by the 'first-world' youth of today. Cause now we get out of varsity and we expect everything to just fall into place, we want to be those CEOs that we read in the news, those high rolling executives that we see in the movies or those kids with IPOs coming out of Silicon Valley/Israel .There is nothing at all wrong with that but...you don't want to end up comparing apples to pears. And the more we compare ourselves to others, the less we feel we are doing with our life. Who knew a UCT graduate living in Cape Town can come out of varsity and feel like they have accomplished absolutely nothing in life, firstly cause it's much harder to get a well paying  first-job in the modern day and age, secondly because +300 other people in the country are graduating with the exact same degree as you are and thirdly because we don't even know what it is that we want from life at this stage.

And then people speak of Passion : another big debate in itself, "what should I be doing with my life"?, "what do I love", "what does my soul long for"? This was also mentioned at this dinner table discussion, basically the dilemma is - "I'm about to graduate and I have no clue what my passions are, I might know what I'm good at...but do I know what I love?" And I can relate to this fully, I think we all can, both old and young alike.  The cognitive dissonance emerging from the inherent feeling that from day 1 you should make a career out of your passion, heart-felt desires and interests.On the one side of the coin we all know that this is more than possible because it has, is being and will be done for years to come. But on the other side of the coin, the side we commonly refer to as reality, the truth is that you have debts to pay off, family to support, food to put on the table, car repayments to complete and an unemployment line to avoid, so money needs to be made one way or the other.

Another problem is that there are expectations set by our parents and those around us to be these perfect finished products by the time we leave varsity and these are the dreams we are sold...  

Dream Formula : [Study a good degree] + [get a good job] 

= [money] 

= [financial stability] 

= [happiness] 4eva!. 

This puts a lot of pressure on us and overtime we too tend to adopt and enforce these expectations as well and when these dreams aren't actualized, our self-worth, self-value and dignity depreciates drastically. As you live out this equation, when you tend towards the end of the 'get a good degree' part your world starts to shake beneath your feet because you wonder what the rest of your life holds for you. And honestly in a world were everyone is receiving an education (now a 15 year old can learn the equivalent of my degree online in a few months), the economy is struggling and job security is a myth - this can be a very daunting and emotional period, so instead of just worrying about your final exams, you are wondering about your future, you're wondering about your life. Personally my 4th year at varsity was the most stressful of my years at UCT, and no not because of academics - that was the least of my worries - I was too concerned about what will become of me after I receive that much coveted degree... what does the future hold, where, who and what will I be? - questions that I am still trying to answer to this day...

With all this said, how does one overcome all these hurdles, obstacles and challenges, that life (and ourselves) place in front of us. Well if I had all the answers I wouldn't be as concerned as the next person :D but I don't have the answers cause life is not a theory exam, the memo isn't in a drawer somewhere and no you won't be marked out of 100 when you die. Life is dynamic, ever-changing, hella confusing and extremely interesting (if you give it a chance to be).

What tomorrow holds I don't know - But I do know the following:

1. It is a long journey and it is my own journey, my own story and my own life.
2. I know I need to figure out myself as a person while I attempt to figure out my place in the world.
3. I need to realize my values, my dreams (not the medias dreams ) and my ambitions (not my families ambitions for me) .
4. I need to assess my skills, interests and abilities going forward.
5. I need to chill the fuuuuuck out. Honestly if there is anything I have learned from my eclectic religious expeditions and daily meditations is that when you listen - the universe speaks. And yes... as cliché as it sounds life tends to direct you when you allow it to, trust me it really does.

All in all its a good mixture of self-confidence, self-belief, ambition, humility, perseverance, constant introspection and of course a bit of good ol' luck as always. Honestly we don't know what the future holds and as Oasis beautifully puts it in Morning Glory -" Tomorrow never knows what it doesn't know too soon".

So remember that there is no rush... but with that said -> keep in mind that God/The Source/The Universe doesn't help folks who don't help themselves B-).

Over and out.

T4aM.