Blog - The Love Vitamin

From Feeling Alone and Ugly to Free & Clean Faced – Leah’s Story

by Tracy Raftl 4 Comments

Leah

The following is an interview with reader Leah about her journey to clearing her skin holistically.

If you’d like to fill out your own clear skin interview to be featured on the blog, then just click here.

What was your experience with acne? How many years did you have it and how did it make you feel?

My acne started in high school and continued through my early 30s.

Acne made me feel alone and ugly. I envied everyone who seemed to have perfect skin.

I wanted to hide my face during my breakouts and was willing to try anything and everything to rid myself of acne.

What kinds of things did you try prior to holistic healing that didn’t work?

As soon as I started to get acne in high school, I begged my parents to let me go to the dermatologist.

They struggled with acne in their teen years, so they were sensitive to my feelings about it.

The dermatologist put me on antibiotics and prescription creams that dried my face out horribly. [Read more…]

5 Ways To Kickstart Your Day When You Have Acne

by Celine Harleaux 5 Comments

A morning routine should be tailored to you: your needs, your wants, and your likes.

What do you need in the morning – a cup of coffee or a green smoothie?

How do you feel in your body and mind, when you wake up?

What helps you get ready to rock’n roll the day?

You know this: what you do in the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day.

Especially when you have acne…

Because let’s be honest here: acne absolutely sucks.

And when even a simple look in the mirror can throw us out of balance, it is necessary to learn to take care of ourselves, from the very moment we open our eyes.

So check out these powerful ways to kickstart your morning for an awesome day 🙂 [Read more…]

Everyone Thinks I’m Disgusting and I Can’t Stop Picking at My Skin

by Tracy Raftl 10 Comments

Body dysmorphia and skin picking

Serra asks:

“I’ve been struggling a LOT with the state of my skin / skin picking compulsions.

I have body dysmorphia so I feel like a lot of my skin issues are fear based, and I make matters worse by picking things that weren’t too bad to begin with. Leads to a lot of self loathing and unable to leave the house at times.

Any tips on how to stop skin picking? I’ve tried just about everything it feels like from distractions to wearing gloves.

Also if anyone else has BDD (body dysmorphia disorder) please reach out, I’ve yet to find a community/ forum to help me with this.

My Answer:

First of all, big hugs! Not an easy thing to be dealing with.

Here’s some stellar advice from fellow Love Vitamins on how they managed to tame the picking beast.

I think the overall thing with any of these behaviours (both compulsive skin picking and BDD obsessing) is that there is a strong emotion behind them that is driving it. Without addressing those anxieties that drive it, there won’t be much progress.

And believe me — don’t feel like you’re alone!!! I think the majority of women here have dealt with this to some degree or another. [Read more…]

Are You Taking Too Many Supplements for Your Skin?

by Samantha Lahonen 3 Comments

When you’re dealing with any kind of skin issue holistically you are likely addressing nutrient deficiencies or hormonal imbalance.

You may also be working to heal other secondary symptoms like anxiety, depression, irritable bowel, food sensitivities, fatigue, or stress.

Sometimes it feels like you would do anything or take anything to heal your skin. The “magic” pill.

So… you read about how magnesium can have a calming effect for stress reduction and positively affects pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS). And so you get yourself some magnesium capsules.

Then you start reading about hormones and come across another supplement. And then another. And yet another.

Soon you find yourself taking pill after pill yet aren’t getting the results you wanted. Maybe it helped at first but the healing has levelled off. Or you’re frustrated because your acne is now worsening.

You may be taking too many supplements or ones that aren’t benefiting you.

I totally get it. When someone has gone through a similar experience to yours with their skin and sees benefits from taking a certain supplement, you want those benefits too. [Read more…]

How to Get Rid of Hormonal Acne on the Chin

by Tracy Raftl 6 Comments

For years, hormonal acne on my chin was the most frustrating, stubborn acne on my face.

Me way back when, having fun with my hormonal chin acne that makeup could not contain. I didn’t really wear hats like that, btw.

You probably know what I’m talking about … stubborn pimples that don’t respond completely to external skin care or a diet improvement. They come and go throughout the month to torment you.

And believe me, they definitely tormented me into more than a few tears!

For me, the improvement of my hormonal chin acne came in layers. The addition of each of these things reduced the acne, until these days I don’t get any zits on my chin all month! Not a single lick of makeup required!

Pretty much a dream come true, tbh.

To be clear, this is what worked for me. But everyone is different, so there is no guarantee here. I hope it can help you get some relief though. [Read more…]

Acne, Healing… And Self-Love? (Celine’s Journey)

by Celine Harleaux 4 Comments

Hi!

My name is Celine Harleaux, and I am 24. Like many of us in the TLV community, I have suffered from heavy, cystic acne for about 5 years (and I am 95% healed now!)

This blog post isn’t intended to give you the details of what helped my body heal (in short: wean off the pill, and change my diet), but rather to emphasize that self-love is rather bloody essential to attain our goal of clear skin.

Because clear skin can be a long journey, sometimes even a utopia! I know it has been the case for me.

Mostly because I focused hard on getting clear skin overnight (and if not overnight, then SOON!), and I didn’t see how self-love could help.

When I joined Tracy’s Naturally Clear Skin Academy, I just wanted acne to go away.

Having acne is so embarrassing.

Especially when you’re dating.

Don’t get me started on the pains of dating with acne 😉

I knew from Tracy that self-love was important, but I was unable to do any of the exercises, or look at myself in the mirror, and tell myself something like: ‘I love myself just the way I am today’. I just couldn’t. [Read more…]

Love Vitamin Readers Share Their Hard Won Advice on How to Stop Skin Picking

by Tracy Raftl 3 Comments

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll probably know that I am a BIG advocate to leaving your skin alone.

That means chilling with the crazy amount of chemical cleansers, toners, and creams. Quitting with the the over-washing, and insane amounts of pore-clogging makeup, primers, and powders.

And instead switching to gentle natural skin care.

But it also means stopping skin picking, popping, and squeezing. The damage it does is not worth it. It prevents healing of active acne, and it invites more acne to show up in and around the area that was picked at.

However… that’s a tall order if this a habit for you that doesn’t want to unravel easily! It can often feel like an actual monster that follows you.

In this blog post, I’m sharing the personal real life advice from Love Vitamin readers (actually, Naturally Clear Skin Academy members) on what helped them the most to kick this difficult habit.

Check it out: [Read more…]

Milica’s Acne Journey, a Before and After

by Tracy Raftl 11 Comments

This is a fantastic, detail filled interview with reader Milica on what worked for her in regard to finally healing the dreaded breakouts.

If you’d like to fill out your own clear skin interview to be featured on the blog, then just click here.

What was your experience with acne? How many years did you have it and how did it make you feel?

My experience with acne was an emotional rollercoaster. There was cystic acne, whiteheads, blackheads, and redness all over my face as well as on my back.

I had an unhealthy relationship with myself, with food, and with my friends and family. I was always insecure about my skin and how it looked.

Not a day went by where I did not look in the mirror and hate myself even more.

However, I am blessed to say I defeated my battle with acne after 5 years, through research, experimentation, and devotion to health.

What kinds of things did you try prior to holistic healing that didn’t work?

With my desire to “cure” my acne, I tried all sorts of diets and topical treatments [Read more…]

How to Avoid Acne After Quitting the Birth Control Pill

by Tracy Raftl 5 Comments

For many women with acne (especially hormonal acne), the birth control pill can be a total god-send.

What it does is completely override your natural hormones with the synthetic ones that it provides, forcing your cycle into a steady state. Without fluctuations, there is much less opportunity for hormonal acne to be triggered.

However, as we all know, the birth control pill can have a huge range of unpleasant side effects.

And for a good chunk of women, they are going to have to stop the pill at some point in their lives, either because they want to have a baby, they can’t stand the side effects any longer, or just because they feel like they’ve been on it a little too long.

But What Happens After Quitting the Pill?

Hello. More pills please.

Well, most women, if they were suffering with acne before, then the acne is going to come back, and often much worse than it ever was. After all, the pill is just a band-aid cover up, not an actual remedy that gets to the root cause of acne.

And for some women, coming off the pill can cause acne in itself. Women who never had a problem with acne are suddenly breaking out in droves after coming off the pill.

This is because your body got so used to the powerful synthetic hormones, that once those are suddenly withdrawn, your body just doesn’t know how to “listen” to its own natural rhythm anymore. This can cause crazy hormonal fluctuations and a stable full of spots.

For most women, the heightened breakouts will naturally subside within six months to a year and a half after stopping.

But for anyone who has ever suffered with acne, that’s an unacceptably long time, and understandably has a lot of women running back to the pill and feeling trapped!

So what to do? How do you get off the pill successfully, while avoiding a serious acne breakout after? [Read more…]