Clear for Life

Do you often have ‘bad skin days’? Those days you just don’t want to go out because of acne.

What if I told you those bad skin days are just in your head? That you create all those bad feeling, and you could just stop doing it.

That everyday could be what I call a ‘happy skin day’. I don’t mean that your skin would be perfect everyday but that no matter what your skin looks like you could be happy and optimistic. That you could face people with confidence and look them into eyes - even if acne carpet bombed your face the previous night.

Would you smack me on the head and call me an idiot, or would you want to know more?

If you want to know more, read on. If you choose to smack me on the head… well… luckily you can’t find me, but feel free to use the comment section to express yourself.

OK, I realize that may sound like a ridiculous claim. That you could be happy no matter what your skin looks like. If so, let it be ok. Because I’m going to tell you something 99.99% of the population doesn’t know.

All emotions are self created.

Whatever you happen to feel you created it yourself. Maybe it happened unconsciously. You may not know how you did it. It may have happened so quickly that it looks like the outside events caused those emotions. It may have happened against your conscious will; you may not want those emotions.

Nevertheless, you created those emotions and feelings.

You probably think I’ve smoked way too much pot lately and hallucinate these crazy theories.

Well, despite what you think of my drug habits, do this little thought experiment with me. It shows you that you do create your emotions, and a bit of how you create them.

I want you to think of a time when you were out in a public place and started feeling bad because of the way some stranger looked at you. You know just from the way they looked at you, you knew they were looking at your acne. And that made you feel bad.

We’ve all been through a situation like that. So just allow one to pop into your mind. And if you can’t think of any, just imagine one. Just imagine that you are in a public place and some stranger just looks at you a bit too long. And you know they look at you because of your acne.

How does thinking of that situation make you feel? Pretty bad I can bet.

Now let’s twist things around a bit. Imagine the same situation, but in that case imagine that the person was checking you out. That they were interested of you. Of course make sure that the person is of legal age and attractive to you.

How does that feel? I bet it feel different. Maybe even good.

So here we have two identical situations with completely opposite emotional outcomes. One made you feel bad; the other made you feel good.

You know what was different about these two situations?

Assumption = meaning = feelings

If you said your assumptions about the situation, good thinking. In one case you assumed the person was disgusted because of your acne, while in the other you assumed they were attracted to you.

“But I know they were looking at my acne“, you may object. “I just can’t hallucinate through my life that everyone who looks at my acne is attracted to me.”

Well, did you really know they were looking at your acne? I mean, did you go and ask them ‘Hey are you looking at my acne? Is it really that horrible?’

No you didn’t ask them. You just assumed they were looking at your acne, or to use your words, you hallucinated it.

And you don’t have to imagine everyone is attracted to you - though it might do good for your self-esteem since most of us imagine strangers think we are ugly. To stop creating bad feelings you just have to stop hallucinating those bad things.

Let me explain how this works so you’ll understand it a bit better.

Most people think emotions work like this: event –> emotions. Meaning something happens and that something causes the emotion(s).

How you create your emotions

Well that’s how it looks, but there’s one more step. Here’s how the process really works: event –> subconscious filtering –> emotion.

In reality all external events have no meaning. They are like a blank canvas. In our example the event was some stranger looking at you. Stop, the end. That’s what happened, and that has no meaning until you assign meaning to it. And that’s what these subconscious filters do (among other things). They assign meaning to whatever happens to you based on your past experiences.

I call these filters your Internal Map of Reality. That’s a term I learned from Bill Harris at Centerpointe.com. Your beliefs, values, ethics, language and memories are examples of these filters.

Without going into detail how these filters work they delete, distort and generalize whatever happens to you so that it confirms to your beliefs, past experiences and image of yourself.

You couldn’t go through life without this subconscious filtering. Here’s a simple example of how they help you.

Say you check into a hotel room in a city you’ve never been to, perhaps even in a foreign country. Could you open the door to your room? Of course you do. Because even though you’ve never seen that door before your mind has plenty of experience with doors. So it generalizes, and it could go something like this ‘This is a door. Doors usually open like this. Nope, didn’t work. OK sometimes they open the other way. Great that worked’.

It can also work the other way. Let’s say you had a problem with an authority figure while you were young. If it was dramatic enough, or happened many times, you concluded that authority figures are potentially dangerous. So when you see one, a cop for example, you get a bit stressed. You feel there’s something you need to watch out for. Your mind pulls those past experiences to warn you about this potentially dangerous situation.

Now let’s say you have some self-esteem issues (like we all do). Perhaps you don’t think you are that attractive or lovable. You might even think acne makes you unattractive or unlovable. So when you see some stranger looking at you your mind takes that information and deletes, distorts and generalizes it until it fits the way you see yourself. If you believe you are unlovable your mind fits the external event your belief by assuming they were looking at your acne. Out of the thousands of possible interpretations it picks the one that fits your beliefs.

Any evidence to the contrary is immediately deleted and distorted. So if (s)he actually comes and talks to you, you immediately assume the worst.

This is the exact same process people use to convince themselves that aliens have taken over their fridge, urging them to prepare for the arrival of the mother ship. If there’s a scratch on the milk carton the aliens made it - no matter that there’s also a cat in the house.

This same process fuels all the food fights, politically correct term is diet debates, that rage in forums and in the media. People have gotten their heads so wrapped around the idea that their diet is the only right one. Whenever a supporting study comes out they parade it like it would be the definitive word of God. Whereas opposing studies are immediately accused of having serious flaws and biased researches who fudged the numbers. Therefore such studies cannot be trusted. No matter that the same flaws and bias probably apply to the study they believed.

You only see what you believe.

So how does this relate to your acne and happiness?

If acne makes you feel miserable (even a little) it’s because of your Internal Map of Reality. Something that happened to you in the past caused you to form unresourceful beliefs about yourself. Those memories often have a lot of emotional charge (I like to call it emotional garbage). When triggered your mind drags that emotional garbage from past memories into your current experience. And you get the benefit of feeling lousy.

You know the saying pushes his/her buttons? This is the meaning behind it. We all have these buttons that the world just keeps pushing. Those buttons are ‘wired’ (in your subconscious) into negative memories. When pushed your mind drags the emotional garbage from your past into now, and you act accordingly. That’s why some people can get very angry from seemingly small things. It’s not that the event was such a big thing, it’s the fact that the button was wired into lots of emotional garbage.

The same thing happens to you when you make yourself feel bad.

The event that ‘made’ you feel bad is often not such a big thing. It’s that it triggered so many emotional memories from the past. Taking cue from those memories your mind then layers the event with negative meaning so that you can experience even more of that emotional garbage.

OK, so far this has been interesting theory, but let’s move onto how to use this to make yourself feel better. Into creating those happy skin days.

Theory into practice

With few reasonably simple mental processes you can ‘deactivate’ your buttons, clip the wires. So that even if something pushes the button it doesn’t lead to all the emotional garbage and your mind layering negative meaning on the events. Instead the event remains neutral. Someone looking at you and nothing more. And you don’t have to go through all the bad feelings.

The detailed explanation of this is just too much to cover in a blog post. Just the bare boned and practical how-to explanation took me 40 pages. And few audio-files to guide you through the mental processes. That’s essentially my upcoming book. It doesn’t have a name yet, but maybe I’ll call it Happy Skin Days: How to be happy and optimistic before you get clear. Few of my customers are currently testing the draft version and getting great results.

Anyway, this is not just a sales pitch for the new book. I’m going to give you something very valuable here.

The root of the problem is that this whole thing happens unconsciously. As long as it happens unconsciously there’s not much you can do about it. Your first challenge is to know it happens. And then to start noticing when and how it happens. To start noticing the situations that make you feel bad.

Your focus creates your feelings. When you focus (think) on someone looking at your acne and feeling ugly you get to feel bad. Focusing that you are attractive and lovable makes you feel good. Luckily your focus is always under your control. Most people just don’t exercise that control. Their focus runs on autopilot.

Your biggest challenge is to notice when the autopilot drags your focus on something negative and then consciously choose to focus on something positive.

Practical steps to happiness

Here’s a good way to do it. Carry some 3 by 5 cards without all the time. When you start feeling bad make a note of the situation. Look at what was going through your head that time (what you were thinking) and make a note of it. Do this every time you start feeling bad.

Since your focus runs on autopilot initially you won’t catch yourself very often. But as you keep up with it you train your mind to recognize these situations and bring them to your awareness. Once in your awareness you can consciously choose what to focus on. Little by little you start gaining more control over your emotions.

Lily’s success story

And once those buttons are gone incredible things can happen. Lily has been testing my upcoming book, and here’s what she wrote to me.

well, the incredible has actually happened! I am very happy to say that I managed to change my belief about how embarrassing it is to have skin problems and having to hide from people! I tried the folder swapping technique on Friday evening (before going to be) and I felt a bit relieved afterwards, which at the time was a bit weird to think about. I wrote down an affirmation about that particular belief and it’s like I woke up a different person the following day.

I am not even thinking about my skin’s condition anymore, I wear clothes without considering that I have to hide my chest behind big jumpers/coats etc and for the first time in years I refuse to cover up any spots/redness with makeup. It’s like I don’t care about it anymore…or rather I am accepting who I am with my flaws and everything! And what’s more, I don’t even get worked up or depressed when I see other women around me with flawless skin…I think they are lucky but it does not get to me! I just look in the mirror and smile regardless of what my skin looks like… The last time I remember feeling/behaving in such a way was when I was on Accutane (it did really produce some amazing results at the time).

All I’m saying is that for the last 4 days I have felt liberated and relieved…not only because I don’t obsess about my skin (I am following the clear for life guidelines because we all want to be cleared of acne in the end-I’m just not letting this affect me and make me miserable) but also because I feel happy with who I am!

Be well,

Seppo

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

In my earlier posts about Candida I’ve often referred to Dr. Graham and what I’ve learned from him. Now you have an opportunity to hear it from the man himself. Naturalnews published an excerpt of Kevin Gianni’s interview with Dr. Graham.

Dr. Graham explains the blood sugar issue and how fat affects it perfectly. I really recommend you read this. This is reprinted with permission from naturalnews.com, and the title of the interview links to the original article at naturalnews.com.

Author Dr. Doug Graham (Part II):
Fats, Sugars and Your Body

by Kevin Gianni, citizen journalist

 

(NaturalNews) This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Renegade Roundtable, which can be found at http://www.RenegadeRoundtable.com. In this excerpt, Dr. Doug Graham shares on fats, sugars and the body.

Renegade Roundtable with Dr. Doug Graham is a lifetime athlete and 27-year raw fooder. He’s been an advisor to top performers including tennis legend Martina Navratilova. He’s also the author of the lifestyle book 80/10/10.

Kevin That was a great answer to that question. I want to move into fat, because there’s a lot of talk in the raw food community where there’s more than one camp. One will say high fruit, low fat, low protein. Another one will say no fruit, greens and high fat. What are some of the challenges with eating a high fat diet?

Dr. Graham: Well from a medical standpoint we know that high fat diets have been linked to cancer and heart disease, diabetes and chronic fatigue. Even candida and most digestive disorders are all linked to the over consumption of fat. I agree, too much fruit is bad for you. People ask me all the time, “Isn’t too much fruit bad for you?” Yes, of course it is. Too much of anything is bad for you. That’s what the phrase means, is that you have a problem. As does the phrase, “Too little.” Part of the problem with too much fat is that you invariably also get two few carbohydrates, so you end up with a double whammy. As soon as you end up in that ‘too’ category, meaning too much or too little, you’ve got both sides of that seesaw swinging out of control. When you don’t eat enough carbohydrates you invariably end up with cravings. This is why over 70% of all of the eating disorders in the United States are associated with binging on complex carbohydrate foods. Because when you try to reduce your carbohydrate intake below that from which we are designed as a species, which is 80 plus, you invariably start to crave that for which we are designed. It would be like holding your breath. If you try to hold your breath you’re going to invariably really start wanting to breathe, a lot, soon.

So in the Standard American Diet where we’re eating about 40% of our calories from carbohydrates, we still see a tremendous number of people with disordered eating. But when we go to the standard raw approach, when the carbohydrate intake is halved again down to 20%, then we see massive challenges with binging, people going to refined sugars, relentlessly going to candy and alcohol and dried fruits and chocolates and anything that’s a refined sugar source, in order to make up for the lack of carbohydrates that they’re not eating through fruit.

Kevin You mentioned candida, let’s talk about that. There’s all sorts of approaches for this. One is to starve the candida with no sugar and the other is eliminate the fat.

Dr. Graham: Well, I think there’s a variety of approaches. We have to understand enough about candida to at least make some sense. Candida is a microorganism that has a very short lifespan. We’re talking hours, days is not even common. We’re talking hours. If you have a candida problem and you’re trying to get rid of it and you’re trying for more than a couple of days, you’re not trying an approach that’s working because it shouldn’t take more than a couple of days. You’re still feeding the candida.

What you have to look at is what does it do, what does it feed? It feeds on sugar, no question. It feeds on sugar and fats. All the cells of the human body are fueled by sugar. All the healthy cells, all the sick cells, all the cancer cells, all the damaged cells, all cells of the human body are fueled by sugar. Which means that there has to be a fuel delivery system to all the cells and that fuel delivery system is the blood stream. This is why doctors can measure what is known as your ‘blood sugar.’ All humans carry blood sugar. If your blood sugar level was zero, you would be dead. Therefore it is actually impossible to starve the candida of sugar by not eating sugar. If you’re on a diet of strictly olive oil, if you’re on a diet of strictly protein powder, or if you’re on a diet of strictly powdered sugar, if your pancreas is healthy and the rest of your system is healthy, the doctors should be able to measure your blood sugar and find out that it is within normal limits, in the normal ranges. It’s going to be the same whether you’re on a fast, not eating anything, or whether you’re on the Standard American Diet. It’s going to run, in American numbers, somewhere around 90-100. What we see is that everyone always carries blood sugar, that’s always there.

At that point we have to look at why does blood sugar rise and how does that affect what’s going on in terms of the candida issue? Essentially it’s like this, we have to bring sugar to the cells of the body. We do so through the delivery system of the blood stream. When we want to get more sugar to the blood through the blood stream, out of the blood stream, to the cells, this is done through a carrier system, essentially a doorman, that we call insulin, produced by the pancreas.

When the pancreas gets tired or when the pancreas isn’t working fast enough, it will receive assistance by a backup system called the adrenal glands. The adrenal glands, for instance, you’re walking up a hill and walking up the hill from the other direction is a bear. You both get to the top of the hill at the same time and whoa! You get a surge of adrenaline because you need fuel like crazy. You don’t actually have to outrun the bear but you have to at least outrun the other people that you’re with. So off you go, a surge of adrenaline. The adrenaline causes the pancreas to squirt out even more insulin and bam, you get an extra dose. What the insulin does is it attaches itself to the sugar in your bloodstream, helps it cross the membrane out of the bloodstream, helps to cross the membrane into the cell and it becomes essentially a doorman that opens the way for sugar to get out of the bloodstream.

When there is excess fat in the bloodstream, we bump into a problem because fat functions as an insulator. That’s what it does. It insulates us from jarring, it insulates us from electricity, it insulates us from hot and cold, it insulates us from bumps and bruises, it insulates in a wide variety of ways. Fat’s primary role is as an insulator. Does it have other purposes? Sure. But it’s primary role is as an insulator. It’s actually what creates the waterproof barrier of each cell that allows the contents of the cell to stay in the cell and the contents of whatever is outside, the extra-cellular fluid, to stay outside the cell. Fat is the essential barrier, an insulator.

If you pour a thimble full of fat, a thimble full of olive oil, onto a swimming pool, it will coat the entire surface of the swimming pool, creating a barrier. It’s a Please really good insulator. If you had a huge tube full of marbles and you poured in a little bit of oil and shook it up just a bit, that oil would coat every single marble, completely. It does the same thing to the cells inside the bloodstream. The fat starts functioning as a barrier as it coats itself around the insulin and coats itself around the sugar molecules, it makes it less effective for the insulin to find the sugar, for them to hook up. Now you’ve got a situation where there’s sugar in the bloodstream but it’s not getting out of the bloodstream. So the body produces a little bit more insulin. But the fat is blocking it. This is what’s referred to as insulin resistance. It’s actually not that the body is insulin resistant it’s that there’s too much fat in the bloodstream. Take away the fat and the insulin resistance goes away instantaneously, 100% of the time.

If the pancreas can’t produce enough insulin then we have a type I diabetes situation. Occasionally what will happen is that the adrenal glands will come in and they’ll kick in and try to help out the pancreas. That works fine except we can’t do that all the time or the adrenals become fatigued, what we refer to as chronic fatigue. Eventually what you end up with pancreas in the hole, adrenals in the hole, everybody falling down on the job and you’re still ending up with blood sugar levels that are too high.

Fortunately, our bodies are redundant in their design and there is a backup system for the backup system. There is a microbe that lives in the blood stream that literally consumes the excess sugar. The beauty of it is that in a one-all situation the microbe consumes the excess sugar and then as all species do when there’s an excess of food, it then blooms. The bloom creates a massive increase in population but there’s no more food supply so they just as quickly a die off. This is referred to in science as the balance of nature.

In this case what we see is that they’ll be a surge candida that eats the excess sugar quickly. It multiplies, it blooms, but now there’s no more excess sugar. The situation is resolved. There is candida in all human blood.

It’s a matter of how much candida. There’s no way to prevent sugar from being in human blood, so you can’t literally starve out the candida in that way. What you can prevent however is blood sugar becoming excessively high.

Since 1959 when the first studies came to light on this issue of ‘what is it that allows sugar into the bloodstream but does not allow it out of the bloodstream,’ it has been taught in science, in medical school and in health class that the problem is one of fat functioning as an insulator, preventing sugar from exiting the bloodstream. By lowering the fat we invariably allow the sugar out of the bloodstream and resolve a potential candida issue.

The funny thing is that the different approaches that we’re seeing are actually all the same approach. The approach used by some people for candida is to go on a fast, on a water-only fast, consume absolutely nothing for week or two, and give the adrenals a chance to recover, give the pancreas a chance to recover. While the candida issue itself goes away within 48-72 hours anyway and then doesn’t return.

The second approach is to go on a diet of eating almost nothing but greens, in which case blood sugar levels remain the same, the amount of fat in the bloodstream goes down and at the end of the week or two of eating nothing but greens you no longer have a candida problem. Unfortunately, you also don’t
have a healthy eating plan to follow through on.

The third approach is to eat all the fruit you want, eat all the vegetables you care for, but avoid the consumption of overtly fatty foods for a week or two, and allow your body to heal itself because you’re no longer causing the problem.

To read the rest of this transcript for free as well as access a full archive of information by health experts on abundance, optimum health, and longevity just like Dr. Doug Graham, please visit http://www.renegadehealth.com/inner-cir… for a free 30 day trial.

—End of article—

Though this is just an excerpt of the interview it does cover everything there was about Candida. I listened to the interview and after that they went to other topics.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

Time to strip off the layers of make up and see what the celebrities really look like.

People at Zug started a celebrity acne Photoshop contest. The idea is to pimplify a celebrity photo. Here’s my take on Jessica Simpson with acne - aka what happens when Proactiv doesn’t work.

Go check out the contest. Most of the entries are not very good, but there are few good ones. Here’s the link.

http://www.zug.com/live/80421/Celebrity-Acne-Contest.html

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

In this post I want to touch on Candida in bowel, how it affects your acne and health and what I think is the best way to deal with it.

I haven’t talked about Candida in bowels because I don’t think it’s an issue you should concerns yourself with. Not because I dismiss it but because it takes care of itself when you follow the diet and lifestyle guidelines in Clear for Life.

This was probably a mistake because it left some unanswered questions. Here’s one comment I got few days back.

As I wrote on one of your blogs, you dismissed some valid concerns a few candida sufferers have about following the method of upping carbs and reducing fat. In one lesson I was informed that insulin resistance due to high fat diet was really the culprit of candida, however later this was proven to only be applicable to the naturally occurring candida in the bloodstream- the back up plan our body has as you said. In another lesson you discussed the concept of leaky gut syndrome that could arise in individuals whose intestinal flora is unbalanced, increasing harmful parasites and yeast such as candida. The candida (as i have confirmed through extensive research) then morphs into a more invasive fungal form, and compromises the integrity of the intestinal wall allowing toxins (and quite possibly the fungal candida itself) to enter the bloodstream. Your reply to my query was that sugar has no effect on the growth of candida and the only chance of eliminating hostile candida was to go on a low fat diet…which makes absolutely no sense b/c if as you said the insulin is unable to (at the moment) stabilize blood sugar, blood candida will have to do the job and the sugar will also feed the candida in the gut…so really you are asking all of us with Candida infection to give the lil buggers a feast.

 

Two Candidas - one solution

There are two issues here.

• Insulin resistance and other blood sugar problems that allow, or demand, Candida in the bloodstream to multiply.
• Overgrowth of harmful bacteria, Candida and pathogens in the digestive track, also called gut dysbiosis. This can lead to leaky gut syndrome, where toxins from the bowel leak into your body and increase inflammation and overload the elimination organs.

Both of these are important for acne sufferers. If you want to permanently cure your acne you need to deal with both of them. Blood sugar problems lead to constant stream of hormones that increase sebum production. Leaky gut syndrome leads to constant stream of inflammatory toxins into your bloodstream. Both must stop before you can get clear.

I haven’t separated these issues because the same solution works for both problems.

I’ve beaten the issue of blood sugar problems and the role of fat to death, but I’ll touch on it briefly here since she (the person sending the comment) was still concerned about it.

First, high-fat diet is not the only reason behind insulin resistance. Your other lifestyle choices affect it also. Anyway, cutting out fat from your diet is one of the best ways to increase insulin sensitivity. This inevitably means eating more carbohydrates. And since fruits are the healthiest source of carbs, it means upping your fruit intake.

 

Keeping blood sugar levels stable with high-fruit diet

Second, I never said that sugar has no effect on Candida. Obviously it has. But you need to understand that the key is blood sugar levels, not how much sugar you eat. High and erratic blood sugar levels = Candida, stable blood sugar levels = no problems. And as you’ll see eating sugar doesn’t lead to high blood sugar levels, contrary to what 99% of Candida websites tell you.

In her comment she said that upping carb intake makes no sense because insulin cannot transport the glucose to cells. If this were true it eating more fruits wouldn’t make sense. It would be a very stupid idea.

But it’s not true. As you eat less fat, and fix all the other lifestyle choices that affect insulin sensitivity, insulin starts working again. Yes, you have to go through a transition period, but for most people it’s very short. Like few days. New Clear for Life customers frequently email me telling that the oiliness of their skin reduced almost overnight after switching to Clear for Life diet and lifestyle. A clear indication that their insulin sensitivity improved.

 

19 bananas a day, no effect on blood sugar levels

When your insulin receptors work well glucose won’t stay in the bloodstream long enough to feed Candida overgrowth. You can eat all the fruit you want and your blood sugar levels remain stable. Steve Pavlina commented about this in his raw food diet trial. Here’s what he had to say.

I monitored my blood sugar using a blood sugar testing device, the same kind diabetics may use. It showed no discernible spikes in blood sugar throughout the trial whatsoever — absolutely none. In fact, my blood sugar remained incredibly steady throughout the trial. My highest blood sugar reading of the trial was 94, which is still medium-low. All that sweet fruit in my diet simply did not have any adverse effect on my blood sugar.

Eating this way gave my blood sugar more consistency than ever. I couldn’t spike my blood sugar on this diet if I tried. Even eating 19 bananas in one day made no difference.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/02/raw-food-diet/

19 bananas a day, and no effect on blood sugar levels! All that evil sugar and yet where’s the spike on blood sugar and insulin levels all those Candida websites claim will happen? It flew out the door with the fat.

So you are not giving the lil buggers a feast by eating lots of fruits. And neither are you feeding the Candida in the bowel, as I’ll explain later.

Note, processed sugar is still evil. It has no nutrients and eating it forces the body to dip into its reserves to digest it. So stay away from processed sugar but eat all the fruit you want.

 

Candida in the bowel

Now let’s talk about the other issue of Candida. Candida in the bowel.

The prevailing wisdom is that Candida turns invasive because the harmful bacteria in the gut overwhelmed the probiotic (beneficial) bacteria. The solution to the problem is to help probiotic bacteria grown and ‘rebalance’ the colon micro flora.

Bowel dysbiosis can happen for many reason, such as:

• Frequent use of antibiotics and other drugs
• Pesticides and other chemicals in food and water
• Poor diet and lifestyle

I want to focus on the diet aspect here.

 

Indigestion = leaky gut = Candida

In the Acne 101 lesson where I talked about leaky gut syndrome I explained that indigestion is the main dietary cause for leaky gut syndrome. Undigested food enters the gut where the bacteria ferment and putrefy it, which leads to many toxic compounds. What happens in the gut depends mainly on two things:

• Substances (foods) available for fermentation/putrefaction; for example when bacteria feast on meat they create different toxins than when they feast on vegetable matter. As a rule of thumb, fiber from fruits and vegetables supports the beneficial bacteria, whereas most other foods help the harmful bacteria grow.
• How long the food stays in the gut. Obviously the longer the food stays in the gut the more time the bacteria has to feast on it. Also if the transit time through your digestive system is 48 hours the bacteria have more food than they would if the transit time would be 18 hours.

So your goal is to give the beneficial bacteria as much food as possible and to make sure that the bad stuff doesn’t stay there too long.

 

Raw food diet helps probiotic bacteria

This just screams for increased consumption of plant fiber. More fruits and vegetables.

First because the fiber in fruits and vegetables contains prebiotics, substances that feed the beneficial bacteria. This article has lots more on the topic (I recommend you read it): http://www.jacksongi.com/DIETS/Colon-Gas-Flatus-Prevention/colon_gas.aspx

Second, plant fiber reduces the time food stays in your large intestine and it scrubs your colon clean of any impurities. So there’s less food for the harmful bacteria.

This is another reason why standard Candida diet advice borders idiotic. By reducing carbohydrate consumption you need to eat more meat and fats - the exact substances that feed the harmful bacteria. And the food also stays longer in the gut. On the positive note they often recommend eating more vegetables, which at least partially corrects this.

Finally, raw fruits and vegetables are the easiest foods to digest. Your meal is completely digested before it enters the gut. Sugar and other things the harmful bacteria and Candida could eat are absorbed before they can get their hands on it. The only thing that’s left is the fiber, which feeds the probiotic bacteria.

Compare that to meats and fats the dominate the standard Candida diets. These foods are hard to digest. Digesting them demands lots of time and effort. And when eaten in poor combinations, which almost everybody does, they are never digested fully.

So standard Candida diet gives plenty of food for the harmful bacteria to produce toxins that just prolong leaky gut syndrome and your acne problems.

 

Conventional Candida diet is plainly irrational

Here we have the standard Candida diet that:

• Perpetuates insulin resistance by saturating blood with fat
• Feeds the harmful bacteria in the gut and allows leaky gut syndrome to continue

Then we have the diet that makes sense. A diet that:

• Helps to increase insulin sensitivity and reduce blood sugar problems
• Helps the beneficial bacteria to kick bad bacteria butt

None of this information is in anyway controversial or difficult to understand. All of this is easily available from public sources, makes perfect sense and produces very quick results.

But for some reason people have just been blinded with the fear of sugar and cannot see these glaringly obvious and very rational points. And so we have saturated the Internet with Candida websites that offer advice that is irrational and borderlines idiotic - and keeps recreating the very problem they propose to solve over and over.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

In this post I’ll answer Mickey’s questions about detoxes and how to use them in a way that helps your skin and overall health in the long run.

First, let’s see what Mickey asked.

Also once you do a detox and you go back to your oldlifestyle habits, even if they are averagely healthy, wouldn’t that just ruinall work you did in the fast in the first place? How does the detox help youoverall health in the LONG RUN?

Excellent, excellent points.

This is the reason I keep saying detoxes alone won’t solve anybody’s acne problems. Detoxes are very useful tool for curing acne when used in combination with lifestyle changes. Alone they, at best, produce short-term results. It’s possible to get clear after a three day apple fast (such as in Acne Free in 3 Days) but the results won’t last if you go back to your old diet and lifestyle - unless the lady luck happens to fancy you a lot.

This is reason I keep saying over and over that for you to permanently cure acne this has to be a lifestyle change. That’s the reason I named Clear for Life the lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin.

Lifestyle is the key. Anything else you add on it is just dressing on top. And detoxes are a particularly useful dressing.

Here’s a good way to think of detoxes and detoxing.

Imagine your body is like a water glass. And the toxin load is like water in the glass. When you keep adding more water at one point it overflows. That’s when you start getting problems, such as acne.

Now this happens to be a special glass because it has a drainage valve. And through that valve water can flow out of the glass. This drainage valve is the constant detox work your body does.

So if more water flows in than flows out the water level increases - and vice versa. Quite simple.

Please understand that you cannot directly control the amount of water flowing out. How fast the body detoxes is up to the body. But as a general rule the less toxins enter the body, and the less stress it faces the more resources it can put on detoxing. And both of these things are to a large extend under your control.

In the long-term they are both tied to your diet and lifestyle choices. By making healthy choices you minimize the amount of toxins that enter your body. This allows the body to crank up the detox work. So over time the water level in the glass comes down.

Going on a detox is just a way to temporarily allow the body to throw toxins out even faster. You do this by eating as simple diet as possible (to reduce digestive stress) and reduce all forms of stress (by giving your body as much rest as possible).

Going on a detox and then right back to your old diet and lifestyle is pointless. Sure during the detox the water level comes down, but as you return to your old diet and lifestyle it starts to increase again. And who has the time and patience to detox every few weeks? And it’s not good for your body anyway.

That’s why it always comes down these three things: lifestyle, lifestyle and lifestyle.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

 

You like the effect of healthy diet on your skin but because of your fast metabolism you keep getting skinnier and skinnier. Then this email I got from a customer could have come from you.

Hello Seppo, I want to gain a little weight since I’m a bit too skinny.. At around 5′8 I’m 140lbs. and I want to add some weight but don’t know what foods to introduce to my diet. Although green smoothies are good I don’t think they pack enough calories especially for my FAST metabolism. I’m afraid that if I eat more carbs I’ll gain weight but acne and I want to do it as safely as possible. So what new foods that are high in calories can I eat?? Also, before I sleep I eat an apple and 1/2 C of carrot and spinach and 1/4 C of oats. But I find that it doesn’t  hold me up for the night and I wake up skinny since I seem to burn alot when I sleep again due to my metabolism. So if you can help me in what to increase or eat that would help and thanks

I see someone has bought on the fairytale of metabolic speed. Don’t worry, you are not the only one. I get this question in one form or other very often.

Let’s start by saying that there’s no such thing as fast or slow metabolism, not in a way most people understand it. Your metabolic speed doesn’t depend on your genes or anything like that. And for those who don’t know, metabolism, or metabolic rate, means how many calories you burn in a given unit of time.

Before we can go on, you have to understand that metabolic rate has two components. Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the amount of calories you spend while in total rest. The second component is your activity level.

Your BMR depends on your body size, weight and age. But a rough estimate is 10 times your weight in pounds. So in your case it would be 1400 calories a day. When people talk of fast or slow metabolism they mean that two people of same size and age would have different basal metabolic rates. There’s just no evidence to support this. Most sport physiology books say that individual differences in BMR, given same body size and age, are less than 5%.

The main determinant of metabolic speed is the second component: activity levels. An active person can easily double their calorie requirement by being active and exercising. So to get an idea of your metabolic speed you need to factor in your activity levels. You can do this either by calculating how many calories you burn exercising, or you can estimate it by multiplying your your BRM; 1.2 X BRM is a good estimate for sedentary people and 1.75 X BRM is good estimate for very active people.

Now to the second part of your email. What foods you should eat?

It’s not about what foods you should eat, but the amount of foods you should eat. To gain weight you need to make sure you eat enough calories. Calorie is a calorie is a calorie no matter which food it comes from.

Your metabolic speed, or total calorie requirements, doesn’t determine the types of foods you should eat. It only determines how much you should eat them. A person eating 4000 calories a day doesn’t need different foods than a person eating 2000 calories a day. He/she just needs to eat more food. I talked about this in a post titled Acne and athelete’s diet.

My recommendation is to eat more fruits. You can easily meet your caloric requirements by eating fruits. It’s not a problem for even very active people. Many active raw fooders eat 4000 calories worth of fruits a day.

Potatoes, rice, quinoa and beans are also acceptable foods. All of which can give you 10′000 calories a day if you want to.

And why would you be afraid to eat more carbs? Because they’ll give you acne?

Refined carbs and other junk food can give you acne, but carbs from whole foods don’t give you acne. And if carbs give you problems more often than not it’s because you eat too much fat.

I get a feeling you are losing some weight while following the recommended diet in Clear for Life?

If so, consider that as a good thing. As your body eliminates toxins it can also eliminate the fat they were stored in. It also starts releasing water it no longer needs (for diluting and eliminating toxins). Both of these lead to loss of weight.

There’s an ‘easy’ solution for that. Hit the gym. Most people are under muscled anyway. And the only reason they don’t look like that is all the fat and water buffing them up. I call these illusionary muscles. Once those illusionary muscles melt away people are faced with a cold reality of how skinny they actually are. I touched this when I wrote about the importance of strength training in curing acne.

In that post I recommended you take a look at Roger Haeske’s Lightning Speed Fitness Program. I still recommend you take a look at it. It’s an excellent and quite easy way to add strength training into your fitness routine.

Finally you don’t wake up hungry because of your fast metabolism, it’s because of what you eat in the evening. The things you described hardly add to 200 calories. Assuming you sleep 8 hours you need 466 calories just to meet your BMR requirement.

Not that I recommend you stuff yourself in the evening. I have a feeling you are rather new to eating raw foods. It takes a while to get used to the fact that you need to eat significantly higher volume of food you used to eat. So the overall problem is that you probably eat less than you need to eat. So the solution is to eat more foods. Bananas are great for packing calories, but the non-fruit foods I mentioned above are also acceptable.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

Researchers at University of California in San Diego have discovered more evidence that eating red meat and dairy products increases inflammation in the body.

This study looked at the effect of eating meat and dairy produts on cancer, but anything that increases inflammation in the body can also lead to more acne.

In the study researchers studied a non-human cellular molecule called N-glycolylneuraminic acid (Neu5Gc).

Neu5Gc is a type of glycan, or sugar molecule, that humans don’t naturally produce, but that can be incorporated into human tissues as a result of eating red meat. The body then develops anti-Neu5Gc antibodies – an immune response that could potentially lead to chronic inflammation.

Basically they are saying that eating red meat you can get Neu5Gc molecule into your body. Your immune system doesn’t recognize (as it’s not a human molecule) and treats it as an invader. This increases inflammation through out the body.

They didn’t say how much eating meat increases inflammation, but any increase is bad since your goal is to reduce inflammation. Clearly eating meat takes you to the opposite direction.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

Mayo Clinic study reveals the 10 most common substances that irritate the skin. In the study Mayo Clinic studied several substances and ranked them on the basis of how often they caused contact dermatitis on the test subjects.

Though this study used contact dermatitis as basis it’s still useful for acne victims. Contact dermatitis results in swollen, reddened and itchy skin. Basically it’s an inflammatory reaction. Anything that irritates and inflames the skin can also aggravate your acne.

According to the Mayo Clinic study the 10 most common skin irritants are:

• Nickel (nickel sulfate hexahydrate) — metal frequently encountered in jewelry and clasps or buttons on clothing
• Gold (gold sodium thiosulfate) — Yes, the precious metal women love : )
• Balsam of Peru (myroxylon pereirae) — a fragrance used in perfumes and skin lotions, derived from tree resin
• Thimerosal — a mercury compound used in local antiseptics and in vaccines
• Neomycin sulfate — a topical antibiotic common in first aid creams and ointments, also found occasionally in cosmetics, deodorant, soap and pet food
• Fragrance mix — a group of the eight most common fragrance allergens found in foods, cosmetic products, insecticides, antiseptics, soaps, perfumes and dental products
• Formaldehyde — a preservative with multiple uses, e.g., in paper products, paints, medications, household cleaners, cosmetic products and fabric finishes
• Cobalt chloride — metal found in medical products; hair dye; antiperspirant; objects plated in metal such as snaps, buttons or tools; and in cobalt blue pigment
• Bacitracin — a topical antibiotic
• Quaternium 15 — preservative found in cosmetic products such as self-tanners, shampoo, nail polish and sunscreen or in industrial products such as polishes, paints and waxes

Source: http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2006-rst/3268.html

As an acne victim you would do well to avoid exposing the acne prone areas of your skin to these substances.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

The fantasy has come true.

Now you can get clear and beautiful skin by eating chocolate.

At least if you happen to believe the food manufacturers looking to cash on in the health boom.

The latest spin from food manufacturers is to reposition what used to be junk candy bars into health foods. Mars Snackfoods entered the ‘health’ niche of the chocolate market with Vitalize and Beautiful. Vitalize is supposed to give you energy while Beautiful, well, is supposed to help you get a beautiful skin.

However it looks like the bulk of the R&D money has been spent on marketing. The label shows the common chocolate ingredients with a sprinkling of vitamins and other nutrients. This is the ingredient list for Beautiful.

Ingredients: Milk Chocolate (Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Chocolate, Skim Milk, Milkfat, Lactose, Chocolate Processed With Alkali, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Soy Lecithin), Vitamins and Minerals (Tricalcium Phosphate, Ascorbic Acid, Vitamin E Acetate, Niacinamide, Zinc Oxide, Biotin). Allergy Information: May Contain Peanuts and Tree Nuts

Healthy? I leave it up to you to decide.

One company that pushes this even further is Ecco Bella. They have a product line called health by chocolate of all the things. They actually market their chocolate bars as being the most delicious way to give yourself soft, smooth, luxurious looking skin (http://www.healthbychocolate.com/product_info.php?cPath=22&products_id=78).

Delicious Swiss chocolate that’s good for you!

Formulated with Dr. Philip Cohen, Professor of Dermatology, with more antioxidants than most fruit or vegetables, it’s also choc-full of minerals! But all you’ll taste is rich Swiss chocolate.

http://www.healthbychocolate.com/

With Dove this is probably just marketing hype to get you to buy more of their unhealthy products. Ecco Bella probably honestly tries to make something that’s good for you. Unfortunately the sad fact remains that you can’t turn an unhealthy food (chocolate) into a health food just by adding individual nutrients into it. Health in foods comes from synergistic effect of many nutrients - not from a big pile of individual nutrients working together.

So I wouldn’t take Ecco Bella’s marketing phrase ‘Now you can be bad to look and feel good!‘ to the bank. You’ll probably find that the old acne by chocolate phrase still has more truth to it.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

I recently changed my chemical-laden shaving cream to coconut oil and that has made a huge difference on my skin.

The skin on my neck is very sensitive and used to get flaming red after shaving. I thought that it was part and parcel of shaving and that there’s not much I could do about it. Since I started shaving with coconut oil my skin takes it much better. Sure it gets a bit red, but not nearly as much as when I used chemical-based shaving creams. So probably the chemicals had a lot to do with it.

And for some reason I’m going through an extended detox at the moment. Due to that I’ve gotten some nasty pimples on my neck. They’ve already settled down quite a bit, but are still there. I used to hate shaving because it turned those pimples really red and angry looking. Of course they settled down quickly but it was obvious shaving irritated them a lot. Even that has settled down after switching to coconut oil.

Coconut oil also makes the blades so much easier to clear. While using shaving cream the space between razor blades used to get full of cream and whatever was coming off my skin. I had to open the tap full before it flushed the blades clean. With coconut oil I just have to run a little water through the blades and they come clean nicely and easily.

The only downside is that it’s a bit messy. I have to wipe the oil into a towel to get it out of my hands. But I’m willing to wash my towels a bit more often to keep shaving with coconut oil.

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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin