The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I have a very annoying medical mystery that I would appreciate some help with. I've had acne since my adolescence, not just whiteheads but the uncomfortable hard ball underneath the skin, and my nose would get very red and inflamed. I had no idea how to get rid of it and tried lots of dermatological interventions that did not do much. A couple years ago I was experimenting with ways to improve my athletic performance and tried a carnivore diet (only beef). I was surprised to discover that the acne and redness completely went away almost immediately.
Since then I have eaten a diet of mostly beef and a few other very simple things (a starchy carb like potatoes, some basic green vegetables, even some dairy now and then). When I'm on this diet, my skin is pretty much clear. When I try to introduce other things, even very basic ones, it tends to lead to a big problem. I tested some salmon last Friday and am currently dealing with another one of those hard balls that I otherwise never get.
Based on the testing I've done over the past 2 years or so, I am completely confident that this is related to food. It only occurs when I deviate from the basic diet that I have confirmed works for me. The difference is visible and dramatic.
I need to find a better solution than just eating beef for the rest of my life. It's expensive, a hassle, makes traveling and socialization difficult, and I'm not sure how healthy it is for me in the long term. But I have not been able to find any medical or scientific knowledge related to this phenomenon. It seems like I'm dealing with some kind of highly idiosyncratic intolerance to vast groups of food and nobody knows what might have caused this or how to help with it. Is there any medical specialty or institute that might be able to help me get to the bottom of this?
Have you spoken with a dermatologist in person? Could you have rosacea?
I have, but I guess only before I discovered the dietary "cure". But I tried lots and lots of creams, gels, antibiotics, etc up to but not including accutane and some of it worked okay but the diet change blew all of that out of the water. I could try again, but from some basic research I don't have a ton of confidence that the sense that dermatology knows much about the food-acne connection yet, and even if it did, my reaction seems abnormal and idiosyncratic and not along the lines of "okay, sugar and/or dairy may influence acne" that I've read in articles here and there.
I think they've used that term for it before, yeah.
Rosacea is not acne, and it will not be treated with the same things as acne. It sounds like at least type 3. Antibiotics are the most common prescription for Rosacea, but topical Ivermectin is the 'it' new thing. There are new developments every year and it might be worth going back to a dermatologist or at the least go through something like https://www.dermatica.com/.
The problem doesn't lie in food (like an allergy), the problem lies in your gut biome. Can you try drinking homemade milk kefir and see if that's a trigger? You can make it with A2 milk, goat milk, any kind of fancy milk to see if you can tolerate it. If you can, after a few months you might find that you're able to tolerate a wider range of food (but probably not everything.)
I've tried both of these with not much effect unfortunately. Ivermectin in both topical and pill form even lol. I should probably go back to a dermatologist regardless though, as you mention it's good to keep up with new developments.
I've wondered if this might have something to do with it, because I seem to have exhausted most conventional explanations.
Dairy in general doesn't seem to bother me very much. I haven't looked too deeply into the gut side of things but I probably should because I have few other leads and it seems to have something to do with digestion. I take a probiotic pill regularly but I imagine that is not the optimal approach. I do like the kefir idea and might try that next.
If dairy works well for you, you can try to get more calories from heavy cream? Way cheaper than beef and might be easier on social gatherings (show up with tea filled with 1/3 cup of cream, that's a full meal and you probably won't look too weird compared to pulling out a chunk of meat.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link