8 Changes I Made That Finally Gave Me Clear Skin

Acne is a complex inflammatory condition that, more often than not, requires making several changes to your lifestyle, diet, and skincare habits. Sometimes, these changes come in the form of implementing more nourishing foods, getting enough sleep, keeping your hormones in check, and saying goodbye to habits that destroy your skin from the outside, such as wearing a lot of makeup and using a ton of skincare products that cause irritation.

As someone who has dealt with severe cystic acne for a good portion of my early and mid-twenties, I have finally found the combination of changes that has done wonders for my skin. I’m here to share with you the eight changes I made that finally gave me clear skin and why they worked.

Cutting Out Processed Foods

Processed foods and snacks can harm your skin and overall health due to their highly inflammatory components. Perpetual and prolonged inflammation in the body will eventually manifest in various health conditions, including diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and, yes, even skin problems. This happens because inflammation in the body leads to hormonal imbalance, and since hormones are the primary regulators of pretty much every bodily function, this imbalance can cause a whole host of issues. Logically, once you start cutting out the inflammatory factor and replacing it with healthier food, you will notice a difference in how you feel, look, and of course, how clear your skin is.

In my case, I started by cutting out sugary and processed foods that were the main cause of inflammation in my body. I replaced them with whole foods and healthy snacks, like nuts that satiated my cravings and added good fats to my diet, and various types of berries, which supplied my body with antioxidants and vitamins. Additionally, I introduced more vegetables into my diet, which helped stabilize my blood sugar levels and added more fiber, aiding digestion and eliminating toxins.

These changes were the beginning of the road to clear skin for me, and if there's anywhere you need to start when trying to improve your skin health, it's with what you put into your body.

Swapping Coffee for Green Tea

Swapping coffee for green tea is something I did a long time ago, and my skin expressed its gratitude by starting to clear up a few days after I made this decision.

Skin reacts so badly to coffee because caffeine tricks your body into secreting adrenaline as a stress reaction, which gives you a false sense of energy in the morning but also influences your skin's oil production, which is one of the main causes of acne, as excess oil gets stuck inside the pores and becomes food for the acne-causing bacteria, enabling it to proliferate.

But, since many of us need something to kick-start our day and get us going, green tea is one of the best alternatives as it has a less stimulating effect on our body while still giving us the much-needed energy boost. It also contains powerful antioxidant components that can help reduce the damage caused by free radicals, which are one of the primary causes of skin aging and inflammatory conditions such as acne.

Caffeine tricks your body into secreting adrenaline and influences your skin's oil production.

Now, while I certainly had to make many more changes to clear up my skin completely, these first two were perhaps the most significant since they’re the ones I did first, which gave me noticeably less inflamed skin almost instantly. So, if you're dealing with skin issues and don't know where to start, give these two a go, and you should begin to see improvements pretty quickly.

Drinking More Water

While drinking a lot of water won't directly clear your skin, it will help your body filter out toxins from your system, which could help improve your complexion over time. Toxins such as unfiltered bacteria, viruses, artificial hormones, and certain chemicals in cosmetic products that can find their way into our bloodstream and lymph nodes can create a lot of damage to our cells, which could lead to imbalanced hormones and inflammation, and eventually acne.

So, while there isn't a study directly relating drinking water to clearer skin, it certainly serves a great purpose in improving our overall health and well-being, so it's definitely worth incorporating into your routine.

From personal experience, I can say that if you focus on drinking enough water daily and make healthier lifestyle choices, you will see a noticeable difference in your skin health and your complexion's appearance after some time.

Eliminating Alcohol

Alcoholic beverages like red wine are known to have some benefits when it comes to improving blood circulation; however, all alcohol comes with more harm than good most of the time. This is because alcohol is a toxin with little nutrient value and can contribute to the decrease of general health and lead to issues that can manifest on the skin as inflammatory conditions such as acne.

For example, alcohol affects liver function, reduces immunity, contributes to hormone disruption and cell damage, and of course, due to the high amount of sugar it contains, it can also cause an increase in blood sugar levels, which are all factors that can lead to skin problems through complex chain reactions that can take years to unravel. Additionally, alcohol is a diuretic, which can make you lose plenty of skin cell-loving water from the body quite rapidly, leaving your skin dehydrated, dull, and sallow-looking.

Consuming alcohol in excess can also lead to permanent skin conditions like rosacea, which can be controlled, but is notoriously difficult to deal with, and it requires special care and attention at every given moment.

Alcohol can cause an increase in blood sugar levels, which can then lead to skin problems.

While I was never a heavy drinker, I used to enjoy alcohol when I was in my early twenties, which, coincidentally, was the time I started dealing with severe cystic acne, so eliminating alcohol was one of the major changes I made to my skincare routine that helped clear my skin.

Introducing Supplements into My Daily Routine

Omega-3 is one of the most important supplements you should take, as our bodies cannot produce it naturally and don't usually get enough of it through our diets. And the reason why it's so important is that the benefits of this particular supplement are endless; just a few of them include reduced inflammation, healthy skin, and a fortified skin barrier, thanks to the ability to promote the production of lipids that will protect you from environmental aggressors and bacteria that already live on your skin but can become problematic at a certain pH.

Introducing a supplement with omega-3 fatty acids into my skincare routine was one of the major changes that contributed to achieving clear skin. I noticed reduced inflammation and improved my overall skin health days after supplementing with omega-3.

Additionally, adding zinc, magnesium, vitamins D and E, and probiotics to my daily routine gave me a more balanced skin microbiome that helped clear up my complexion. Vitamin A is another great supplement to consider; however, since it's a powerful antioxidant, it can be quite challenging on the liver if taken in excess and is not recommended to be consumed by expecting mothers, so it's important to discuss this particular option with a health provider who knows your medical history before introducing it into your daily routine.

Keeping Good Sleeping Habits

Our skin regenerates and repairs itself while we sleep. If sleeping patterns are disrupted or not enough hours of quality sleep are achieved, our skin won't have the opportunity to repair itself and regenerate new healthy cells.

Additionally, when we lack sleep, our bodies produce more cortisol, a hormone that mediates how we respond to stress and can contribute to an increase in inflammation in the body which will, in turn, be reflected on the skin in the form of inflammatory conditions such as acne, eczema, and even psoriasis, an immune-mediated skin condition known for its potential to flare up in times of stress.

Making sure I had a good night's sleep every day was another significant change I made that helped clear my skin. And while I don't have a strict sleeping schedule, I do my best to keep the same hours of sleep every night to ensure my body and skin can always repair themselves and that my hormones are kept in check without unnecessary stress hormones being released.

Simplifying My Skincare Routine

Many of us have fallen into the trap of trying out aesthetically pleasing skincare routines that consist of layering multiple products to achieve that sought-after "glass skin" effect. However, many of us have also been faced with the bitter reality that these routines are not only the most annoying thing to do after you've had a long day and all you want to do is go to bed, but they also don't work, and more often than not, end up disrupting your skin barrier and causing breakouts.

Most skincare products contain over 10 ingredients, and you’ll use at least three products in your routine.

This happens because most skincare products contain over 10 ingredients, including the active ingredients (the components that provide the advertised bioactivity) and other inactive ingredients like fragrances, preservatives, emulsifiers, etc., the latter of which can be pretty harsh for the skin barrier. Now, imagine exposing your skin to five, six, or even 10 products containing up to (or over) 20 ingredients each. It's no surprise that this cocktail of chemicals can end up causing more damage than good.

So, since my skin (and my wallet) were already suffering with my previous skincare routine, I decided to go back to basics and simplify it. This included cleansing, hydrating, and protecting my skin from harmful UV rays. This simple and efficient routine will work for the vast majority unless you are dealing with a specific condition requiring special ointments prescribed by a dermatologist.

The results? My skin started to look and feel healthier, my breakouts started to become fewer and less severe, and while I might not have achieved the "glass skin" I so desperately wanted, I learned to be content with having healthy skin that's not constantly dry, irritated, and broken out in painful cysts.

Giving My Face a Break from Makeup

Giving my face a break from makeup was probably the scariest and most challenging change I made in order to achieve clear skin. I had grown so used to covering up my blemishes with a heavy concealer and foundation that I was mortified by the thought of going out makeup-free and exposing my less-than-perfect skin to the world.

But, after dedicating a long time to deep conversations with myself in which I focused on figuring out where my insecurities truly come from and what I could do to start loving my skin and myself again, I decided to give it a try as it made me realize that the very thing I am using to cover up my insecurities is what's causing most of them in the first place.

Makeup products are loaded with clogging and irritating ingredients that throw your skin into a vicious cycle of experiencing more severe acne while trying to cover it up. By allowing my skin to take a break from clogging silicones, irritating fragrances, drying alcohol, and other components found in makeup, my skin ended up regulating its oil production and balanced its microbiome that helped keep the acne-causing bacteria in check and at bay.

Closing Thoughts

Breaking away from a routine might not be the easiest thing to do, but changes are necessary when our old habits are causing us harm. So, if you’re dealing with complex skin issues such as acne, which is a condition that usually requires tweaks and changes in multiple areas of your lifestyle, I highly recommend giving these tips a try and seeing how your skin responds to them.

Just remember, the goal is not to achieve perfect skin overnight but rather to give yourself a chance to accept your skin while making small changes that will help you achieve healthy skin capable of doing its primary function: protecting you from the external world.

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