Pangarl,

I'm sorry your forehead has been breaking out! It may be due to additional stress, as you suggested, but I agree that you might also be allergic to apples! Have you tried discontinuing them for a while to see how you do?

faeriedust, (love your name! hehe)

I'd like to suggest that you only do 1-2 servings of fruit and at least 2 large handfuls of a cruciferous leafy green. You say you switch up your veggies in your smoothie - are they always a leafy green? Too much fruit can cause skin issues for those prone to acne, and since you're doing about 3 fruit servings to one handful of greens, that could be causing issues. Try to work your way up to what I'm suggesting here. It might taste more "green," but it should still be tasty enough and might possibly yield the results you're hoping for.

Hey abg, thanks for all the replies hah, yes I will try discontinueing fruit in general for a while but I'm going to give it another week to make sure it doesn't get better now that i'm past exams. Doesn't really matter if I keep breaking out this week since I'm getting my wisdom teeth out in a few days and I'll look like I got beat up anyway

I'm trying to stick to my scientific rigor and only change one thing at a time, since I know something I've changed in the last 5 weeks reversed my progress, I'm going to change back one by one and see what happens. I've actually found taking photos every day to be a huge help it's good to have a solid knowledge of how things are progressing not just vague memories of how I looked at certain times.

I'll keep drinking the green smoothies, even if I have to switch to straigt vegetables, I really like them, though my family/gf make fun of me for it

Hey abg, thanks for all the replies hah, yes I will try discontinueing fruit in general for a while but I'm going to give it another week to make sure it doesn't get better now that i'm past exams. Doesn't really matter if I keep breaking out this week since I'm getting my wisdom teeth out in a few days and I'll look like I got beat up anyway 😛

I'm trying to stick to my scientific rigor and only change one thing at a time, since I know something I've changed in the last 5 weeks reversed my progress, I'm going to change back one by one and see what happens. I've actually found taking photos every day to be a huge help 🙂 it's good to have a solid knowledge of how things are progressing not just vague memories of how I looked at certain times.

I'll keep drinking the green smoothies, even if I have to switch to straigt vegetables, I really like them, though my family/gf make fun of me for it 😛

Oh really? they make fun of you? They have no idea about this health stuff. 🙂

Once they see your skin glowing they might start drinking it, too. 🙂

Mom: Pangarl, make me some!!!!!!!!

Pangarl: Ha ha.

Pangarl,

I think your elimination/documentation approach is a very smart one!! You're right... memories do become a little vague after a while, and it's hard to keep track of what was helping and what wasn't! I'm sure you'll get it figured out soon, and I'm sure your family will one day realize that value of what you're doing - it might take a while, and they may never jump on board, but just keep doing what you're doing, as you're an awesome example!

Eddie,

You crack me up! haha

Do you think these Smoothies would be any good for a me, a 16 year old male with hormones all over the place. My face has gotten oily over the years due to hormones which i've determined to be the main cause of my acne, and im looking for a way to make them balanced again and help my acne in other ways too. I'd say i have moderate acne. Only a decent amount of Whiteheads and only a few pustules at a time, nothing any more serious than that. If you have any advice it would be much appreciated.

helliotion,

Glad you stopped by! Your acne definitely sounds like the kind that should be rather easy to control. I definitely think the smoothies can help you!! I'd do the basic recipe while quickly working your way up to at least 2 large handfuls of greens a day, and always use cruciferous greens, like spinach, kale, collards, chards, etc., since they help to balance hormones.

You might also consider supplementing with DIM to speed up the results - it's a substance that's found naturally in cruciferous veggies.

Watch your dairy intake, and be cautious of foods high on the glycemic index. All this is discussed in more detail in the first post.

You might need to go through trial and error finding what helps and what doesn't. Make the green smoothies your first step, and you might consider using low-sugar fruits at first like green apples and pears. If you notice an improvement, you can then experiment with adding in other types of fruits, etc. If you don't notice an improvement, then look more carefully at your diet, cut back on dairy and high sugar foods, etc.

If there's anything more I can help with, please let me know. I hope you soon get great results!

Awesome thread! I've always been kind of cautious around vegetables... but something about a green smoothie gets my stomach growling. I love the Green Protein smoothies they sell at Trader Joe's. Anything I can make that tastes like that? I know it contains algae but the stuff in my pond doesn't look very appetizing.

haha, thanks Treeface93! I'm glad you're excited about green smoothies!!! Maybe down the road you'll even venture into trying some of the veggie-based green smoothies! I don't know about the drink at Trader Joes, but I'd recommend adding a powdered green to your smoothie (but not in place of the fresh greens... still need those!) like barley. There are lots of different powdered greens out there, and they definitely have a distinctive flavor. If you find something you like, please share it with us!

Awesome thanks a lot. Im definitely going to drink these regularly. I've already limited my dairy consumption to only cheese on occasion no straight up milk, problem was that milk was the cornerstone of my diet so i had to work a bit harder to change it. That DIM sounds very good, i might have to give it a go, but isn't internal anti-androgens bad for males especially during puberty?

It's great that you've mostly eliminated dairy! That a big achievement, especially since it made up so much of your diet! Cheese is actually the most concentrated dairy there is, but I know it's hard to avoid - I don't completely avoid it myself! It's not something I buy at the grocery store though... it sneaks its way in when I eat out! haha I'm glad you're going to look into DIM. Hope you see results soon, and keep in touch!

wow, so now i gotta avoid cheese especially!! ugh, i really dont like to limit my diet. but ill do anything to get clear. hopefully it will have some effect.

^ Maybe you should just start with the smoothies for now and see if they help. You may not need to give up cheese entirely. If you decide to though, you may find you don't miss it after a while! I have a lot of healthy foods/meals/snacks that I really enjoy, and because of that, I rarely crave the bad stuff. Let me know how you like the smoothies!

Thought I'd share my progress, 5 weeks into green smoothies and I'm sad to say that my situation has gone downhill rather than uphill.

On the plus side, the general health benefits seem to include better color to my skin, somewhat more energy, and virtual immunity to infection (my girlfriend couldn't give me her cough if she tried, and I made it through wisdom teeth surgery with no problems). However, my skin is now significantly worse than when I started the green smoothies. Every day for the past week has been worse than the last, which is unusual for me. Above the lymph nodes on my neck on the left side, its gotten bad enough that it almost looks like a rash. My back is all spotty, and I even had little red dots along my chest. My forehead has gotten somewhat worse, and I'm now breaking out on my cheeks again, which had been pimple free zones for a while now.

Today i took lemons and apples out of my smoothies, in order to finally test whether it's the fruit that's been making it get worse. Hopefully if it is some type of intolerance, the reduced inflammation should be apparently in a week or so. Wish me luck.

Pangarl,

I'm happy to hear of the improvements to your health, but I'm really sorry to hear that your skin is worse! It's odd that it's progressively been getting worse. I definitely think something is triggering that. It could be that your body is detoxing, but I also wonder if it's a reaction, like you suggested, to the fruits.

Are all the fruits you've been using in the smoothies new for you? You might want to try just adding in one new fruit, for at least a week, at a time and see how you react. Could you tolerate for a while just blended greens with water? Maybe just baby spinach since it has a milder flavor? You could throw in some parsley to give it more of a fresh flavor and maybe some cucumber or celery. I would say some lemon juice, but sometimes citrus is a real trigger for people. The safest bet would just be spinach and water and then add in one new thing at a time. If you can tolerate the taste, it would be a good way to see how your skin reacts to just the greens. I highly doubt it's the greens that are causing an issue. I guess it's possible, but I would think that to be very rare! Also, in case it's a detox reaction, you might just try a small handful of greens for now and gradually work your way up. I really hope this issue is resolved for you soon!! I so want you to get good results with your skin! I think it will happen - it'll just take a little more time.

Besides the smoothies, anything else new in your diet?

Hey abg ^^ thanks again for the help - here's the smoothies I was drinking for about 35 days:

Half a cucumber

2 celery stalks

Parsley

2 big handfuls of greens (english spinach, baby spinach, silverbeet, bok choi)

1 green apple

1 lemon

2 tsps pumpkin seeds

some mint leaves (added these only a few days ago for flavor)

eating that much lemon is something is wouldn't usually do, and apparently it contains a decent amount of fructose, so its a possibility. As for apples, I used to eat 2 or 3 a day in high school, my skin was terrible then, but who knows if that was a factor I do know that two years of eating tonnes of fruit and vege in college did nothing for my skin, and that i cleared up around the time i gave up and started eating pizza/chips etc again, so maybe eating less fruit helped me.

The only other thing thats really new in my diet is oat milk/oatmeal, but that was replacing soy milk/mini wheats, so i don't see how it would be that different.

Right now I'm drinking the smoothies listed above, minus the apple and lemon. So basically a hugely concentrated dose of greens. It's kind of like drinking cucumber water (cant taste the mint anymore for some reason) but I have a strong stomache

I don't believe the greens were hurting me in any way, they even lifted my mood I think, so if it was the fruit, it should be obvious pretty soon, since i'm eating 0 fruit at the moment.

^ I hope you'll see improvements soon! I wouldn't think any of those veggies would be causing a problem, but you never know. The oatmeal could be a problem if you're eating a big serving. It's not instant oatmeal is it? Is it sugar free? What about the oat milk? I would check the ingredients label on the back - if it has a lot of ingredients listed, you could be reacting to something in it. I still think the quickest way to figure what's going on is to go back to the foods you were eating before these new skin problems started, but add in some blended spinach and see what happens. Either way though, I'm sure you'll soon get it figured out. Hopefully it was just due to the apples!

The oatmeal isn't instant or sugary or anything, it's just plain 100% wholegrain oats on the ingredients list. The oat milk contains "Filtered water, organise wholegrain oats, organic sunflower oil, and sea salt"

Yeah, my next step if it's not fruit is to go back to my old cereal while still doing the smoothies. The only other thing I could think of is that I started taking vitamin E and calcium/magnesium tablets about the same time, though I don't see what effect that would have.

^ Those ingredients don't sound bad. Did you say once that you were keeping a log of all the new things you're trying? I hope so, because at least that way you should eventually be able to narrow the problem down. I would think those supplements would be fine, so long as they're good quality. Hopefully time will soon tell!

Yup, I am indeed keeping a log. For every day I note details like food and sleep and anything of note, and of course i'm keeping track whenever i start something new now. I also have a daily picture log

You are awesome Pangarl!! Surely, with your log, this mystery will be figured out soon.

Did that one girl post her recipe in here, yet? I think it's worth adding, if not. I forget her name - something with a Q. I know it started out as Quez...Quezy or something?

All the same, I copied and pasted her recipe and saved it onto my computer. Sorry if it's already posted in here.

"In a blender pour in about a cup of carrot juice. That should cover the blades and then a little more.

Add in about a cup of low fat vanilla yogurt, or whatever flavor you want.

Then add lemon juice. You need about 1/4th of a cup a day so I freeze lemon juice in ice cube trays and then just add two, to the blender. That way its not super runny either.

Add mint about 2 leaves. If you add too much your stomach might feel weird later.

I buy a bag called berry medley. Its in the frozen food isle. It has strawberry, raspberry, blue berry and black berry) about a small handful or however much you like.

Then add a big handful of spinach. You can't taste it so don't be put off. It just tastes like a berry smoothie with a little lemon/mint."

It sounds pretty good. I haven't tried it yet because I lack a blender and cash, but I will once I get the chance.

gMARIAs,

Wow!! That sounds like a fabulous recipe!! I love the idea of the frozen lemon cubes too! Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

I thought I would post some good news, since I have it After 7 days with no fruit in my smoothies I'm seeing some good results. The most improvement I think has been in the neck region, which had been getting worse every day up until I stopped, and is now looking significantly better. I've attached some before and after shots if anyone cares - I was also doing some research in the Fructose and Insulin thread and found this interesting quote:

"I was having these fruit shakes every day sometimes 2x a day (I would blend 2 golden delicious apples, berries, pears, bananas, honey ). I was getting cysts on my neck/jawline which I'd never had before and I couldn't reason why this was happening, I thought it might be a detox symptom but it didn't let up and once I stopped the fruit shakes the cysts slowly disappeared."

Which seems to mirror what happened to me. I also looked into fructose malabsorbtion on wikipedia, and the two worst fruits for high fructose ratio are apples and pears, which were the fruits I was eating/using in my smoothies.

My cheeks are also a -lot- clearer, which is very nice. The forehead is the only real zone where i'm still bothered, but the photo log shows that the redness and aggravation seems to be going down, so i'm going to see what it looks like when current whiteheads heal. I might try supplementing with taurine or milk thistle to help the liver, which processes fructose, to repair faster.

In any case, I appreciate all the support, and I'll continue to update over the next few weeks as I observe the progress.

PS: the green smoothies seem to have gotten rid of the weird little bumps on my forehead and any general redness that may have still been hanging around, so I do have a lot to thank them for

^ Sounds like you've been doing some great research! I'm very relieved to hear you are doing better since stopping the fruit!!! I'm so surprised to hear of apples and pears being so high in fructose, since they are both low-glycemic fruits. I guess something can be high in fructose without highly affecting your blood sugar levels! Hmm... now I want to learn more about fructose. This is so interesting! Thanks for sharing what you did, and for keeping us posted!

Hey abg - from what I understand (and I try to eat a low gi diet too) something can have sugars and still be low gi if it has something to slow the absorbtion into the bloodstream, like how chocolate is low in g.i. because of all the fat.

I know fruit doesn't have fat so i'm not sure why the gi is low, but nutritiondata for apples says that each one has 2.5 grams of sucrose, 3 grams of glucose, and 7.5 grams of fructose. In my case, if I have some kind of fructose malabsorbtion, it's not the gi, just the fructose itself that I can't handle.