Eating Habits for Healthy Skin: 9 Eating Habits to Help your Acne, Eczema or Psoriasis

By Claire Hamilton

Are you ready to get your best skin?

 

After a decade of suffering from acne, eczema, and psoriasis, Claire Hamilton found a system that gave her body what it needed to heal. She shares that system in Eating Habits for Healthy Skin so you can do it too.

 

You'll discover how to eat in a way that optimises your gut and digestive health, and why this will help you get your best skin.

 

With a clear action plan and easy to follow steps, you'll see how simple it can be to change your eating habits. You won't have to change your diet dramatically, and there's nothing restrictive or complicated.

 

You'll learn how to get started, and effortlessly change your behaviours to stick to your new healthy eating habits.

 

Whatever obstacles you face, this book will show you how to overcome them, and eat your favourite foods without sabotaging your progress.

 

Full of practical advice, Eating Habits for Healthy Skin will help you enjoy eating in a way that nourishes your skin from the inside out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TLC Publications Ltd
• Release date: Sep 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781838177713

Book preview

My story

I was about 13 years old and home sick from school when there was a knock at my front door. I opened it to someone who told me they were the truant officer. I remember the nerves in my stomach and the flush on my cheeks. Gone were the days of primary school and perfect attendance. Now I was in high school, and I was sick for a few days every month for 18 months.

I had recurring tonsillitis and was drugged up on antibiotics. It was during this time that my skin broke out. It started with psoriasis, which is an autoimmune disease that caused large patches of raised, scaly skin to form on my forearms and lower legs. Acne followed, then eczema.

When I first asked for help to deal with my skin, I was told it was bad luck, and I would grow out of it. I was given a thick yellow cream to coat my legs with, ointments to bathe in, steroid creams, more antibiotics, and the contraceptive pill. Nothing worked. My skin was awful, and my self-esteem plummeted.

My gut wasn’t happy either. I was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) that gave me excruciating cramps in my stomach almost every day. I had heartburn, headaches, and frequent bouts of sinusitis.

I saw specialists, including GPs, dermatologists, gastroenterologists, nutritionists, Chinese medicine practitioners, and alternative health professionals.

This was all happening in the early 1990s. Years later, I learned about the gut skin connection and realised that my symptoms were all linked. But at that time there was no suggestion of this. I had no access to the Internet, and it wasn’t what it is today. The volume of information wasn’t there, and this was in an era where antibiotics were still prescribed for the common cold.

I asked my doctor if there was a connection to the food I was eating. He assured me there was no link between diet and skin conditions but agreed to test me for a dairy intolerance anyway to see if that might be responsible for my gut issues. The test came back negative.

Alongside the treatments from my doctor, I had been trying to heal my acne from the outside. I cleansed, toned and moisturised my skin twice a day and continued to use the prescription creams.

I tried skincare products for acne-prone skin that you can buy on the high street. I tried the premium brands and specialist brands that you could only buy online. I was at university and waitressing part-time. My skincare regime was more than I could afford!

The premium brands and the specialist treatment programs irritated my skin. My skin was more inflamed than ever, red, sore, and flaky. I switched to tea tree products. My skin calmed down, but it did nothing to heal my acne.

A Chinese Medicine practitioner gave me acupuncture and a big bag of dried plants to make into a tonic. I soaked the plants in water until it turned into a dark brown liquid. It looked and smelled revolting, like something you’d find in a clogged drain. In desperation, I drank it down. It didn’t work. I also tried cutting a variety of foods out of my diet to see if I could pinpoint anything that was causing my skin to flare-up.

I wore thick tights and long sleeves at school to hide my psoriasis. When we had swimming for PE, I was always in trouble for forgetting my swimsuit. I hated summer. I live in Scotland where the weather is not exactly tropical, but you still sweat too much if you’re wearing jeans and long sleeves.

I’d gone from school to university and then the workplace with skin conditions. I’d accepted that my skin was always going to be an issue for me, and there was nothing I could do about it. I kept on using skincare for acne-prone skin and emollients for my eczema and psoriasis in an attempt to calm my skin down while realising it was never going to fix the problem. I gave up. I couldn’t think of anything else to try.

Gut trouble

Meanwhile, my IBS continued to cause me problems. None of the treatments various doctors had given me worked. I would only schedule meetings at work in the mornings because I knew the afternoons were going to be difficult for me. I would get terrible stomach cramps almost every afternoon. Sometimes I would have to hide out in the toilets just holding my stomach in agony until they passed.

On occasion, they would be so bad I would be writhing in pain and sweating so much I would have to lie on a tiled floor just to cool down. 

I now had the Internet and spent hours googling IBS. It didn’t help. All I could find was that no one was sure how or why people got IBS. I was prescribed antispasmodics to calm my insides down. It was thought the pain was coming from spasms in some part of my bowel and medication to stop the spasms would reduce the pain.

Although I hadn’t had great experiences with cutting foods out of my diet for my skin, I suspected there was a link between what I was eating and my IBS.

I paid for private food intolerance testing. The test results came back with a list of 19 foods that my blood showed a reaction to including dairy, beef, mushrooms, coffee, wheat, lentils, salmon, and kiwi fruit.

As part of the testing package, I worked with a nutritionist for two months. I ditched dairy and switched to soya milk and soy-based butter. I ate gluten-free bread and pasta and eliminated all of the foods that blood tests showed my body was reacting to.

I avoided going out to eat and turned down invitations from friends because I knew I would find it challenging to maintain my restricted diet. I also didn’t want to deal with the questions from friends and family about my ‘faddy diet’.

I didn’t see any improvements in that period. While writing this book, I pulled out the food diary I had been given at the time. I was asked to track my food as well as how I felt each day using a rating of 1 – 5, with 1 being ‘worse’ and 5 being ‘excellent’. On every day except one, I rated myself as either 1 ‘worse’ or 2 ‘same as before’.

In one of my final sessions with the nutritionist, I complained that I wasn’t seeing any improvements. He told me soya could have the same effect on people as dairy so I should try switching to rice milk