Do you believe you can’t get over acne because ‘it’s in your genes’?
Well take a look at the study Dr. Dean Ornish did at University of California in San Francisco.
Dr. Ornish and his team studied 30 men with low-risk prostate cancer. The men opted out of the conventional medical treatment such as radiation, surgery and hormone therapy. Instead, for three months, they made changes in their diet and lifestyle. They ate more fruits and vegetables, less animal products, less fat, less processed foods and more whole foods in their natural state. They also exercised moderately.
As expected their health improved. The risk markers for prostate cancer came down, they lost weight and lowered their blood pressure.
But what’s really interesting is that also their genes changed.
The researchers took biopsies before and after the lifestyle changes.
After only 3 months of eating living in a healthier way 48 genes that promote disease were turned off and a whopping 453 genes that protect against disease were turned on. Turning genes on and off is also called gene expression.
Dr. Ornish commented in an interview with Reuters
It’s an exciting finding because so often people say, ‘Oh, it’s all in my genes, what can I do?’ Well, it turns out you may be able to do a lot. ‘In just three months, I can change hundreds of my genes simply by changing what I eat and how I live?’
Dr. Ornish further continued by saying that the implications of the study are not limited to men with prostate cancer.
I can bet that among those 501 genes were also genes that regulate a host of other diseases as well.
In Acne 101 I talk about how the cells in your body react to their environment. If the environment is healthy the cells thrive, and if it’s not the cells suffer. Gene expression is one way that process works.
From Dr. Bruce Lipton I learned that genes are wrapped in sort of a protective sleeve. When the sleeve is on the gene cannot be read, in other words the gene is turned off. When the sleeve comes off the gene can be read, it’s turned on.
Dr. Lipton explained that gene expression (sleeve on or off) is determined by the signals a cell receives from its environment. Some of those signals are hormones and other chemical messengers; nutrition; emotions; and toxins and bacteria. We know that your emotions, how you feel and what you think affects your genes. Though there is some dispute of the exact mechanism. Some people say it happens via hormones, while others say the medium is energy and vibration.
Regardless of how it happens Dr. Lipton proves that your emotions and thoughts do affect your genes.
It’s really exciting to see scientific evidence that people are not victims of their genes. That anyone that is willing to pay the price (change their diet, lifestyle and mental poise) can take charge of their health and get over pretty much all health problems.
I sure as hell do. I love scuba diving (in fact I’m studying to become instructor), and I really hate to see the world’s most beautiful diving sites turn into marine deserts.
So I do whatever I can to live as sustainable way as I can. That’s also one reason I love helping people get over acne. Because the more people I get ’sold’ on this lifestyle, the better it is for the environment.
Bet you didn’t know that.
As it happens what’s good for health is usually good for the environment also.
On the top of my head here are few ways living the clear skin lifestyle described in Clear for Life helps the environment also. This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Less land dedicated for farming.
Fruits and vegetables yield far more calories per acre than grains. According to some sources you need 10 times more land to feed the same population with grains than you would with fruits and vegetables, (see: Can My County Feed Itself? Part 2. The Land Requirements, scroll down to about halfway down the page where it says ‘Area required for population’).
And the figures are far worse for meats; red meat yields about 48 pounds per acre where as you can get 30′000 lbs of bananas or 40′000 lbs of oranges from the same acre. We could probably cut our land use in half if we would just stop or drastically reduce our meat consumption.
Less farming land of course means more land for humans and the wildlife.
Regenerates the soil.
Our industrial farming, along with excessive livestock farming, is the main reason our once lush farming lands are turning into deserts. Single crop farming and extensive use of pesticides destroys the microbes in the soil.
These microbes are vital for our health and the health of our planet. For example they produce many of the vitamins and nutrients that plants then pick up from the soil. The reason plant foods have so little vitamin B12 is that we have killed these microbes that produce it with fertilizers and pesticides.
These microbes also turn biomass back into nutritious topsoil. Growing only single crop (such as wheat or corn) doesn’t return much biomass back to the soil. And to make matters worse the land is left barren for large part of the year. Without vegetation to protect it wind and erosion strip away the topsoil. Without topsoil you cannot grow anything on the land. In many parts we only have few inches of topsoil left, where there earlier used to be 6 to 8 feet.
When you grow fruits on the land the exact opposite happens. The trees and bushes protect the land from the wind and their roots bind the topsoil into the earth. Plus trees generate large quantities of biomass for the microbes to turn into fertile topsoil.
Here I have to say that livestock, when grown and grazed correctly, can also benefit the land.
Encourages biodiversity
Single crop farming doesn’t encourage much biodiversity. And the use of pesticides pretty much makes the land hostile for wildlife.
When there’s nothing growing on the farmland it pretty much looks like a desert.
Quite the opposite with fruit trees and bushes. They provide shelter and nesting grounds for a wide variety of animals. Ever seen a forest of a garden that looks like a desert?
Less fertilizers and pesticides
Grains are some of the most heavily sprayed on crops.
This is one big reason why meat eating is so bad for the environment, and I mean eating commercially grown meat. Most of our grains are fed to livestock. Cutting or drastically reducing meat eating we wouldn’t need to grow so much grain, hence we could probably cut fertilizer and pesticide usage by half.
We could go even further by taking simple steps to regenerate and remineralize the soil. Combine that with growing a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and we could practically eliminate fertilizers and pesticides.
Bring back the fish
Because of intensive fishing methods nearly all major fish stocks in the world are in decline. Some are in the verge of extinction.
Less we eat fish, the better it is for our health, and less we need to fish them.
So go get Clear for Life and put in your two pennies for the environment.
Let’s end with a bit of humor. Mike Adams at Natural News just solved our energy crisis.
(NaturalNews) When it comes to the energy problem facing Western civilization today, there’s a lot of talk in Washington about doing something. But that’s all it is: Talk. Senate talk. Congress talk. Presidential talk. Yabbing, jabbing, jawing poppycock and jibberish… none of it adds up to any useful solutions that would actually end our dependence on oil or embrace revolutionary ideas on renewable energy.
In fact, in observing all this, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only sure way to generate enough renewable energy to power the Western world is to install wind farms in front of the Senate podium, then focus those giant propellers on the constant stream of hot air spewing forth from the mouths of over-enthusiastic, under-informed politicians who insist on talking about eco-friendly ideas they have no intention of ever voting into law.
This strategy would at least turn the Senate floor into something useful: A hot air renewable energy machine powered by otherwise useless politicians.
Thinking outside the box on renewable energy
There are other valuable for renewable energy, however, such as capturing all the greasy farts of Taco Bell customers and funneling them into a methane bioreactor that generates unlimited electricity. You could install them right next to the drive-through windows at fast food restaurants, so you’d have the drive-through, followed by the fart-through, and as long as people keep eating greasy burritos, it’s all renewable!
For other fast food restaurants, when all the frying grease in the kitchen is too contaminated with acrylamides to use for human consumption, even that can be poured into the diesel engines of cop cars, so every time a cop chases some speeder down the highway, it smells like extra crispy KFC.
Of course, let’s not forget the idea of taking all the waste paper created by the U.S. tax code and fermenting it with cellulose-cracking microalgae that produce hydrogen gas as a byproduct of eating paper. Using this new technology, every April 15th could produce enough excess paper to power the entire planet three times over. This is also why we must keep the tax code intact, because any "reasonable" reforms would eliminate so much paper that there wouldn’t be enough left to digest into fuel! (See, the tax code really does have a silver lining!)
There’s also some merit to the idea of harvesting the extra hair oil from all the people who eat cheese and butter and somehow manage to choke down snack foods fried at high temperatures in dirt-cheap corn grease. When all those extra oils aren’t clogging their pores and producing runaway facial acne, they could be drained into large barrels, collected by horse-drawn buggies and turned into biodiesel fuel using secret military petrochemical technologies that are currently only limited to the production of baby shampoo.
Real energy solutions are well within our reach
You see, America’s energy problem (if you can even call it that) can be solved right now by simple ingenuity. We don’t need to fight wars over oil, all we need to do is engage a bit of clever thinking and our energy problems are solved!
For example, instead of trying to prevent illegal aliens from crossing our borders, we could require that they each bring a gallon of gas with them as a cost of entry. And since a lot of them eat at Taco Bell, we also get the farting biofuel benefit from them as well! (Double benefits. Brilliant, huh?)
We could also require all television sets to be bicycle powered, so that couch potatoes who watch a lot of TV have to pedal their way through the Home Shopping Network and other quality programming. These pedals can be wired to generators that turn physical movement into enough electricity to electrify refrigerator door handles, providing a gentle, Taser-like reminder for people to stop eating so often, or shocking them into a coma if they open the door too frequently.
There’s also the rather shocking idea of rounding up all the people with silver fillings and forcing them to stroll beside commercial microwave ovens, capturing the electrical arcs shooting across their teeth with lightning harnessing devices resembling Tesla coils. This could turn silver fillings into free energy devices and finally bring to light one possible benefit of filling people’s mouths with mercury!
So you see, we really don’t have an energy crisis in America today; we only have a lack of imagination. From strapping tiny generators to the thumbs of Xbox addicts, to harnessing melting glaciers to drive paddle-wheel processed food grinders, we have lots of energy solutions at our fingertips! We only have to be open to these simple, but ingenious ideas, like training crows to pull tiny ripcords that generate electricity to light street lights. Or using solar power to heat frozen bank accounts, freeing up new capital for economic abundance! There’s no limit to what we can do if we all simply agree to ignore the laws of physics!
And why not? We’ve already agreed to ignore the laws of economics, and that created a generation of apparent abundance, did it not?
I just hope we solve this energy crisis before we run out of the energy that’s keeping the Earth spinning, because if the Earth stops spinning, we’ll all fall off the bottom of the planet and find ourselves floating hopelessly towards the sun. More massive people will be pulled by the sun’s gravity more quickly, of course, meaning the only folks left near Earth will be the raw food vegans, bulimic teenage girls and whacky scientists trying to extend their lifespan through extreme calorie restriction.
Hi Seppo… I am completely baffled. I have eaten no processed foods, just fresh fruits, veggies, raw nuts, and basic staples like rice. However, every morning I wake up to find more and more acne. It doesn’t make any sense. I am not on any medications or things. Is there hope? What is my problem? Thanks…hope you can help.
I’m sure many other people are in a similar situation, so I decided to answer this in a bit more detail.
First, don’t worry, most likely there’s nothing wrong. There can be a million and one explanation to why your acne is not getting better.
First, please understand that acne is a chronic condition. In Acne 101 I explained that acne is a result of blood sugar metabolism problems and chronic inflammation. It took years, possibly even decades, for these conditions to develop to a point where you got acne. They are not going to go away immediately, not even next week. Even if you eat perfect diet and live the healthiest life possible.
You can get blood sugar issues under control pretty quickly, but inflammation takes more time to cool down.
Next, getting clear is far more than just diet. In Clear for Life I explain the six elements of health, and how they together help your body to rebuild your health and clear your skin.
Most acne victims just focus on diet and forget about the other elements of health. That’s a dangerous path that can lead to frustration. As you’ll see from this article: Why anti-acne diets don’t work.
From the little you told me, your diet looks ok. You have to be careful with nuts, because they contain so much fat. Too much fat, leads to blood sugar issues and acne - especially if you eat lots of fruits.
Food allergies is one possible explanation. Maybe you eat something you are allergic to. Allergens activate the immune system, which leads to more inflammation and possibly more acne.
Maybe you are just going through a detox and that breaks you out. As toxins and poisons leave your body they increase inflammation and can lead to breakouts. The breakouts will get less intense over time and eventually stop altogether.
According to Randall Fitzgerald, the author of ‘TheHundred-Year Lie: How Food and Medicine Are Destroying Your Health’, we all carry a body burden of 700 synthetic chemicals. We know that almost all chemicals increase inflammation and many cause blood sugar issues. See this article at Natural News: Chemical Causes of Diabetes: Overeating Is Not the Only Problem.
It’s going to take some time for the body to clear the chemicals from your tissues.
One more thing.
It sounds to me that you are very obsessed over your skin. I maybe wrong, but that’s the feeling I got from your comment.
I know you want to cure your acne, but staring at it everyday just gets your frustrated and depressed. And it’s just going to extend your suffering.
Here’s a radical idea.
Stop trying to cure acne and start building your health. That puts your focus on where it serves you. I know it’s not easy, but in earlier post Zen of clear skin I explained why you should do it.
So instead of looking at your skin for signs of progress, focus on how you are feeling otherwise. Do you have more energy? Do you sleep better? Are you happier and more optimistic? All these and many other are signs that your health is getting better, and that means your acne is on its way out.
So just relax, ride out the healing process and watch your health improve.
And while you are at it, grab a copy of Clear for Life, it shows how to turbo-charge your progress and get clear faster, plus you’ll make me happy : )
I’m a big believer in linking the health of your skin to your overall health. The better your health gets the better your skin usually looks.
Occasionally I get emails from people who say they’ve been so healthy and eat such a good diet, but still their acne keeps getting worse and worse. When I ask them tell me the foods they actually eat and describe their lifestyle it quickly gets obvious their idea of health and healthy diet is a bit off the mark.
So of course these people have problems getting clear.
Here’s a bit of a test for you.
I listed 5 common diet myths/mistakes I see repeated over and over. See how many hit home for you.
Whole grains are healthy
How many times have you heard or read about the benefits of eating whole grains? It’s one of the most pervasive health myths in our society.
I just finished reading Dr. Graham’s book ‘Grain Damage: Rethinking the High-Starch Diet’ and it gives quite a bleak picture of the "staff of life". Here are just few negative points about grains (whole or processed):
Highly allergic, especially grains containing gluten. Allergic reaction always involves the immune system, and that means more inflammation and more acne. Dr. Graham: "All of us respond adversely to gluten consumption. Celiac disease affects everyone who consumes gluten, to some degree."
Irritates the digestive track and may lead to nutrient deficiencies. Grains contain insoluble fiber which is not compatible with the human digestive system. We need soft, soluble fiber from fruits and vegetables not the coarse and sharp insoluble fiber from grains.
Absolutely tasteless and unappealing. To make grains palatable you need to add spices and eat them with other foods; usually fat or protein.This creates a terrible food combination where neither grains or the food eaten with them is digested completely. Further difficult food combinations require huge amounts of energy to digest even partially, leaving you drained.
Addictive. How often do you crave fruits and vegetables? Probably never. But how often you get cravings for starchy foods? Probably very often. Gluten grains contain addictive chemicals that cause withdrawal symptoms once you stop eating them. "The peptides from gluten and casein are important because the react with opiate receptors in the brain, thus mimicking the effects of opiate drugs like heroin and morphine. These compounds have been shown to react with areas of the brain such as the temporal lobes, which are involved in speech and auditory integration." http://www.greatplainslaboratory.com/gluten-casein.html Also see: Celiac Notes: Opiate Withdrawal from Gluten and Casein?
Easy to overeat. Complete carbohydrates in whole grains take long time to digest. Since they take long time to affect blood sugar levels our brains don’t get the signal that we have eaten enough. So we often eat until we are stuffed. Overeating leads to insulin resistance, weight gain and other health problems (including acne). On the other hand, it’s almost impossible to overeat with fruits since they are digested quickly and the brain gets the signal that we have eaten enough and turns off hunger.
This was just a small sample of dangers of grains. Hopefully it’s enough to get you thinking the next time you want to get a sandwich.
Sugar is evil
This is another pervasive healthy myth, and a dangerous one because it scares people off fruits. Instead of fruits we should eat more complete carbohydrates (such as grains) and fat - or so we are told.
I admit there’s a grains of truth in this myth. Refined sugar is bad for you, but that’s about as far as it goes.
Riddle me this. If glucose (the simplest sugar) is the fuel for all of your cells, how can it be bad for you? It’s like saying petrol is bad for your car. Of course that makes no sense at all.
Sugar and carbohydrates have bad rap because they’ve said to cause blood sugar problems. But that’s not true. The real problem is insulin receptors. Insulin is the hormone that escorts glucose from the bloodstream to the cells. People with insulin resistance these receptors have desensitized to insulin. So the glucose levels remain too high and the pancreas must pump more insulin to get them down.
Insulin resistance is not caused by eating sugar or carbs. It has many causes, but eating too much fat, overeating, sleep deprivation and chronic inflammation are among the main ones. I explain this in detail in Clear for Life.
Remove insulin resistance and fruits are no longer a problem. As has been demonstrated by Dr. Graham, who has been treating diabetics with high-fruit, low-fat diet for over 25 years, Pritkins Longevity Institute, with impressive track record on healing people with low-fat diets, and other doctors.
And closer to home, people who follow Clear for Life program show remarkable improvements in their skin within the first few months.
Bodybuilders and athletes require more protein
Many people believe they have to eat lots of meat to get enough protein, especially if they are athletes of bodybuilders.
This is the ‘protein myth’ and is not supported by science or real life experience.
First, yes athletes need more protein, but they also need more calories. Since all whole foods contain calories, more calories also means more protein. As long as you meet your calorie needs from whole foods it’s impossible to be protein deficient.
Institute of Medicine/Food and Nutrition Board conducted an extensive study on protein requirements. Here’s what they say:
"There is little evidence that muscular activity increases the need for protein, except for the small amount required for the development of muscles during physical conditioning. In view of the margin of safety in the RDA (10% of calories from protein), no increment is added for work or training." Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids (Macronutrients) Food and Nutrition Board INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES
Aside from studies athletes in real life have shown that it’s possible, and even recommended, to eat a diet high in fruits and low in fat. Few examples of athletes who have worked with Dr. Graham are tennis legend Martina Navratilova, NBA pro basketball player Ronnie Grandison and bodybuilder Kenneth G. Williams.
If they can do it, I’m sure you can too.
Drinking fruit juices is healthy
What? Didn’t you just say that fruits are healthy and we shouldn’t be afraid of sugar?
Yes, I did. And sugar as such is not a problem. It becomes problematic when blood sugar levels raise too high.
Fiber in fruits slows down the absorption of sugars. Juicing removes the fiber from fruits. When you drink fruit juices the sugar goes into your bloodstream almost instantly. And this spikes up the blood sugar levels and leads to massive insulin spike.
Combine this with insulin resistance and you start to get major issues.
Best source of a nutrient is the food that contains most of it
When it comes to exercise and sunlight we understand that more is not always better. We need both of them in sufficient quantities, but too much is bad for us.
The same concept applies also to nutrition.
Getting more of a specific type of a nutrient is not always better. What you need is enough of a nutrient to meet your requirements, and in correct balance with other nutrients. Too much of one nutrient can lead to imbalances and deficiencies in other nutrients.
This is why I don’t recommend supplements. Nobody knows for sure the correct balance of every nutrient, and we probably haven’t even discovered all the nutrients yet. So a pill by definition cannot meet your nutritional requirements.
Only healthy, whole foods can do that.
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So how did you do?
Already knew all 5? Then congratulations, you know more about diet and nutrition that 99% of the population. And your chances of getting clear are pretty high because of it.
On the other hand if that left you scratching your head and you’ve struggled to get clear, you may need get up to speed about diet and nutrition. There’s so much BS and misinformation floating around that it’s easy to waste years trying to sort it all out. Unfortunately it’s something you have to do if you want to get over acne.
Or you can choose the easy way and let me tell you.
Get Clear for Life, go through it, and you are up and running in two hours.
With these constant cravings turning this into torture I don’t think I’m going to get anything useful out of this. Sure it was still great for my health. My eyes got much brighter and inflammation levels dropped drastically.
I planned to keep up with this for few more days, but it’s not worth torturing yourself with.
Usually by this time I have no problems with cravings, in fact I don’t even feel like eating, have lots of energy and generally feeling great. Today I’m still miserable and lethargic.
Let’s try again next time.
I think I made few mistakes that lead to this failure. Hope this is something you can also learn from.
I didn’t prepare properly. I made two big mistakes in preparation.
I eat a heavy (and unhealthy) dinner with my friends the day before my fast.
I didn’t wean myself off coffee before hand. I was very irritable and generally not in a very good mood today. I had a cup of green tea (green tea has a bit of caffeine) and immediately felt better. So my bad mood was caffeine withdrawal. You don’t want to have caffeine withdrawal symptom on top of everything else you are going through on a fast.
I had negative beliefs about fasting. I have always thought of fasting as a bit of torture and something you have to push yourself through. And, surprise, surprise, that’s exactly what I got. Fasting can, and should, be an enjoyable time. So before my next fast I’m going to work on my beliefs so that they are positive. I explain how to rewrite your beliefs in Clear Skin Coach (part of Clear for Life package).
I didn’t prepare anything to do during the fast. So I got bored - big time. And that just made the negative thoughts in my head that much stronger. For me 4 days of idling around was enough. I just couldn’t take anymore. I was too groggy to get any work or anything else useful done. So I just read books, watched few movies and idled around.
Anyway, I’m still happy that I did the fast. It was good for my health, I learned few lessons and it was a major self-discipline exercise.
And I hope you can learn something from my mistakes also. I highly recommend fasting/detoxing as a part of your acne cure arsenal. Just don’t start with water fasting. Clear for Life has plenty of detox diet recipes that you can try. Once you have cleaned out your system by following the clear skin lifestyle and have completed few detoxes you can try water fasting (if you want to, you can cure acne even without water fasting).
I woke up in the middle of the night with a need to empty my bladder. As I made my way back from the toilet I suddenly started feeling dizzy and my eyes started blurring out.
It was not a nice feeling.
It seems that my blood sugar levels went too low.
I made my way to the kitchen and had a spoonful of honey and two small apples. After sitting down for a while it passed and this morning I’m feeling just fine.
This sort of thing can happen during the early stages of a water fast. The body changes from burning carbs (glucose) to burning waste material and fat for energy. It usually happens during days 2 and 4. After the body switches to burning completely fat (day 4 and onwards) you should have less problems with low blood sugar levels.
Anyway, this is one example of why you shouldn’t do water fasts unsupervised. It’s possible to lose consciousness if your blood sugar levels go too low.
So keep an eye on how you feel and in no case should you ignore symptoms of low blood sugar levels (dizziness, eyes blur and feeling weak) and think they’ll pass. Grab a bit of honey or something sweet that raises your blood sugar levels. Simple sugar dissolved in water also does the trick.
This is less of a problem with fasts where you eat something, though still possible in longer fasts (7 days and more).
Evening update
Feeling ok today. Not great, but not bad either.
On the negative side I have to say that I’ve been pestered by constant cravings. I just want to put something into my mouth all the time. It was not as bad today as it was yesterday, but it’s still there.
Very annoying. And it makes it difficult to remain positive. Physically this has been one of the easiest fasts, but mentally it has been a tough battle.
Today has been far easier than I thought. I expected to be confined in bed and feeling miserable. Instead I’ve been up most of the day and feeling… ok.
Sure I’ve been feeling a bit weak, tired and sluggish. Plus it has been a major test of willpower. Still compared to my earlier fasts, and my expectations, this has been quite easy.
I’m sure it’s because I’ve been eating predominantly raw for close a year now. My body has had time to throw a lot of toxins out. So there’s less to throw out.
Still, the bed looks pretty inviting. Better go to sleep and hope tomorrow will be less of a test to my willpower. Detoxes where you can eat something, even if it’s just apples, are definitely much easier than pure water fast.
Ok, I’ve been putting off this for too long. It’s way, way too long since my last proper fast. Not to mention recently my diet and lifestyle have taken a hit. Once a year I come back home to Finland to meet my friends and family. And you know friends. Most of them are not compatible with healthy lifestyle.
So I’ve decided to do a 7-day water fast, starting right now.
To give you an idea of what it feels like to go through this I’m going to share my experiences here.
If you have any questions about fasting or detoxing please post them as comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.
So this is going to be a simple 7-day water fast. No supplements, colon cleanse powders, enemas or anything. Just pure, simple water.
As a word of warning, if you have little or no experience on fasting, please don’t try this at home. Water fast is way too rough for beginners. In Clear for Life I share many different fasts and detox diets that are suitable for beginners, along with how to prepare for a fast. Anyway simple 3-day apple fast, any other mono-food fast or even a raw food cleanse (where you eat nothing but raw fruits and vegetables) are all good for beginners.
As a preparation I ate predominantly raw diet the whole last week. Again catching up with friends messed that up a bit. Anyway, screw that, I’m going to do this now.
Coffee is one of my last bad habits and I drink way too much of it (2 to 3 cups a day). Unfortunately I continued that the whole week. So to soften the blow I’m going to drink a bit of coffee during the first 2 to 3 days of this fast. Not much, about 1/2 a cup a day. I know caffeine withdrawal gives me a blinding headache and that’s why I want to soften it a bit. It’s not ideal but life rarely is.
Kinda like the joke my friend’s boss made of his own wife. "I know she’s not the best possible, but she’s the best of the possible."
Nasty. I know, but we’ll go with the same principle here.
I’ve noticed that especially beginners tend to be very idealistic about detoxing and fasting. They are often afraid that if they slip a bit or don’t stick with it 100% that it’s going to be of no use.
Luckily that’s not true.
Detoxing is not like an on/off switch. It’s more like a dial. Your body detoxes 24/7. It has to because your own cellular metabolism produces toxic waste the body has to eliminate.
The only thing that changes is detox speed. The more stress you put on the body (be it digestive, mental, physical or any other form of stress) the less it has time and resources for detoxing. And if your diet is not that healthy toxins often accumulate faster than the body can throw them out.
So the point of a detox is to maximize the detox speed by reducing the intake or toxins and stressing the body as little as possible.
So my taking a bit of coffee (or any other slip) is just going to reduce the detox speed a bit. But that’s not a big deal because I’m still eliminating far more toxins than I’m putting in.
That pretty much does it for the intro. I’ll post more once the fast really kicks in.
Any questions you have, just post them as comments and I’ll answer them.
Here’s an example of why you should avoid colon cleanses.
One person at acne.org forums posted, I presume, his experience after a colon cleanse. First, he didn’t have a bowel movement for 4 days. And when something finally came out it was so hard it caused fissures. Few days after he got a diarrhea and the fissures are still there. Plus he bleeds every time he has a bowel movement.
Other people chipped in saying they get bloating and constipation followed by a diarrhea after using fiber supplements.
I wanted to write this because many people with acne think they have to cleanse their colon before they can get clear. They’ve been told they have 10 pounds of undigested food rotting in their gut that’s poisoning their bodies. I used to think that, and I even used many of these products.
Luckily I know better now.
First off, the talk about undigested food and mucous plague rotting in your gut is pure BS. They tell you that tale because it scares you into buying their colon cleansing products. At the end of the post I explain why this mucous plaque cannot exist.
Second, while most people get no problems from colon cleansing products and procedures, they are not 100% safe. In the Perfect Health Program Dr. Graham tells a story of a person who, after a single colonic, could not have an unassisted bowel movement. One colonic and you couldn’t have a bowel movement anymore. For life.
Obviously these are extreme and rare cases, but they happen. And it shows that these products and procedures are not as safe as the people selling them let you to understand.
Sidenote. If you are interested of health and want to cut through all the BS, I highly recommend you get the Perfect Health Program. It’s not the cheapest thing, but easily worth the price.
The colon wall is lined with sensitive nerve endings. Harsh insoluble fibers in colon cleansing products and fiber supplements can irritate and damage them. Colonics (where you flush the colon with water) can cause excessive pressure on the colon walls and rupture the colon muscles.
Do yourself a favor and don’t use these products.
And even if they were 100% safe you still wouldn’t need them.
The only thing you need for a healthy colon functioning is a healthy diet and lifestyle, such as one described in Clear for Life. Plenty of fruit and vegetable fiber keeps the bacteria happy. Add some water and regular exercise, and you’ll have a recipe for a happy and well functioning colon.
Finally, let’s see the facts behind mucous plaque and undigested food rotting in the colon.
If it were there, makes you wonder why it never shows up in colon surgeries or autopsies. You’d think that when the doctor opens up the colon he would see this mess of undigested food and mucous plaque.
Funny enough it’s never reported. And some colon surgeons even say that after thousands of operations they’ve never seen it.
That’s because it only exists in the minds of the people who sell colon cleansing products.
When you understand even a bit of physiology, it’s clear your colon cannot house years’ worth of undigested and rotting food.
Think of the colon as a tube. If it were filled with undigested food that pipe would be blocked. You still go to the toilet, so obviously the pipe is still open.
But they say: ‘no, but it’s stuck to the colon walls, so the colon is not blocked, it’s only narrower’.
Interesting. I guess they forgot that the colon wall keeps renewing itself all the time. It keeps shedding off old cells off and replacing them with new ones. It happens so rapidly that every 7 hours the whole lining is replaced.
For something to stick there it would have to reattach itself over 3 times a day. That’s about 1000 times a year.
Quite a feat for a rotting piece of undigested food.
This is just one of the quacks the natural health field is riddled with. Unfortunately many well meaning people both believe into these and repeat them to their friends as solid facts.
I spend 7 years going through the jungle of BS until health and clear skin really opened to me. And I think I’d still be in there cleansing my colon and flushing my liver (and wondering why I’m not getting clear) if it weren’t for Dr. Graham and the Perfect Health Program.
Dr. Graham really cut through all the BS with his rational explanation and irrefutable logic of how health works. After that my results went through the roof.
That’s why I believe it’s so important to have someone explain and mentor you through the whole thing. I highly recommend the Perfect Health Program if you are interested of health.
If you are more interested of curing acne than reaching optimal health, then Clear for Life is more than enough for you.
Here’s another money saving tip for you. Actually two acne books you should avoid. One pure and simple money-making scam and other an honest attempt to help acne victims but still not worth the money.
Let’s start with the scam.
It’s a book called Understanding Acne: Causes, Cures and Myths. The cover is on the left. If you see that, run.
So why it’s so bad.
First, Understanding Acne gives you no useful information on curing acne. None. It just repeats the same old and tired myths and information you can find on any average acne website.
Second, this book is written by marketers with the sole purpose of making money. They have no interest in helping you to cure your acne.
In short, don’t make the marketers who are just out there to make money any richer.
And now for the second acne ebook you should avoid.
It’s called… well… I don’t even know the name of the book. So I just call it Acne Guide: by Sufferers for Sufferers. John Dunne stands behind this book.
Acne Guide is actually an honest attempt to help acne victims. I do believe Mr. Dunne’s intentions are good.
It’s just that the execution falls short on intentions.
I liked the fact that Acne Guide emphasized the connection between health and acne. There’s even something on detoxing.
So it’s pointing to the right direction.
The problem is that the advice is too simple to be useful for anyone. Diet advice is at the level of ‘eat more fruits and vegetables and avoid greasy foods’.
Unfortunately most of the acne books in the market suck. Acne is such a big market that money-hungry scammers gravitate to it like flies on manure. You can see it in the quality of these ebooks.
Besides my own book Clear for Life, I’ve only found one good ebook that I can honestly recommend to people with severe acne.
Acne No More outlines a rigorous fasting and detoxing regimen that, if followed, will cure your acne - no matter how severe it is. Of course the problem is that following such a regimen is no walk in the park. It takes lots of discipline. For my liking Acne No More relies too much on supplements, so following it is going to cost a bit.
Still, despite these limitation Acne No More is a good book and gets you clear. I’d even go so far that it’s going to get you clear faster than Clear for Life. So in that sense it’s better than my book.
On the other hand, Clear for Life is not so difficult to follow. It focuses more on building diet and lifestyle habits that get and keep you clear for the rest of your life. There’s less detoxing so it’s much easier and more practical to follow.
Anyway, if you are looking for a surefire way to cure your acne both Acne No More and Clear for Life will show you how.
