Hello all,

I have always had pretty good skin.. just a pimple here or there.

About a year ago I broke out in terrible cystic acne on both sides of my face. I think a combination of stress (studying for the GMAT), testosterone buildup (I was working out a lot), and dairy (I was consuming a lot of milk to bulk up) led to the perfect storm.. resulting in a pepperoni pizza on my face. I was a bit confused about what to do because I was not used to such copious amounts of acne, so I just assumed it would go away if I just rinsed my face every night. After about a month when it showed no signs of disappearing, I made an appointment with the doctor and was prescribed some antibiotics and topical ointment. It ended up clearing up.

Ever since I was left with dark hyper pigmentation dots that took forever to vanish! After almost a year they disappeared.. I was using Likas soap which was pretty effective and Olay SPF 15 pretty regularly (along with BP cream at night). Ever since then I got 0 pimples.. maybe one on my forehead. My diet has been mostly paleo (i.e. fruits, nuts, meat, veggies, little dairy). About 2 months ago, I was under a lot of stress for exams, and also ate out a lot. I noticed some pain in my cheeks and ended up getting one pimple on my right hand side, which was huge and swollen and left a nasty red mark. After traveling abroad for a week for vacation, I came back with 2 pimples.. one on the left and another on the right. The left one was a whitehead and left no mark, but the right one swelled up again to large red proportions and then vanished, leaving a small red dot. Last weekend after two nights of partying I woke up with large inflamed pimples (the whole right side of my face was red), one next to where the other red one had been and the other near my ear. I recently added whole milk back into my diet.. I'm wondering if it's the root cause of all of this, and the stress.

Anyways, ever since I got these two I have been following an anti-inflammatory diet, taking 6 omega 3-6-9 pills a day, ibuprofen, and red tea at night. The swelling has gone down considerably, and the pimples are beginning to shrink down. I'm afraid these will leave a nasty red dot like the other two.. I'm so angry, after a year my skin was finally clear, and like some cruel joke these popped up again. Is there any way to fade these quickly (I see my family again for the first time in a year in 2 weeks!) I was wondering if because I treated them quickly, they will fade quicker. Not sure what do ... plz help.

Sorry for the long post.