Day 8 Summary

What an exiting day! I went to see a naturopath today, $100 well spent. I really liked this doctor. Today was an initial assessment, which run for about an hour. She listened to my story, then examined me and asked some relevant questions. I felt like she is very knowledgeable and really can help me. She was very skeptical of Accutane and wouldn't recommend taking it. She thinks that my acne is my bodies reactions to some problems inside. She is confident that diet will be sufficient to cure it. She advised me to make some adjustments to my current diet as well as stop taking any supplements I was taking before.

Basically the new diet is Elimination/Hypoallergenic diet and is very similar to what I was doing but excluding some vegetables and fruits that can cause allergies. For example tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, citrus can cause allergies, so I should avoid them. It was very interesting to see this list and it does make sense to me. I will scan the document and will post it here. I came up with my diet mostly by trials and errors, so it wasn't perfect. I still had many doubts about what aggravates my acne and what comes it down. It makes sense that some common allergens could easily aggravate it. I'm planning to start this diet on Monday. I should do some grocery shopping on Sunday. I'm really looking forward to it.

I also used many different supplements and she asked me to stop taking all of them. I think that's a great advice since I came up with the list of supplement just searching on the web for what can help with acne. I probably was taking too much of everything, especially when I was consuming so many fruits and vegetables that are packed with vitamins. Instead of supplements and vitamins she prescribed me to take L-Glutamine (2g 3x's/day before meals), turmeric (2 pills 3x's days before meals) and mil thistle (2 pills 3x's day).

So she asked me to do the diet for a month and I should see some improvement. After a month I will have a follow up appointment and we'll see if I need to stay on the diet for another month. She hope that I would be able to stop this diet after 2-3 months and eat normal without many restrictions. All her suggestions were in a good agreement with my believes. I've decided to follow her suggestions. From Monday I start the new diet. So excited :)

I also promised her not to be obsessed with my acne anymore, try to avoid looking in the mirror in a search for new pimples, etc. I will really try to do it, and I know that'd be hard. I will post my weekly update photo on Sunday but the next one will be only in a month. She said that with the diet it's always taking 5 steps forward but 1 back. So looking for improvements every day or even every week is a bad idea, because if I don't see any or I see new pimple I get upset and that causes stress and hence more pimples. Therefore, no more photos or mirrors for a month.