Hey everyone. I've posted on here before, a long time ago, about back acne. I believe my last post was about how my back acne was under control, to which I attribute mostly quitting drinking milk. I highly, highly recommend that people with an acne problem ditch dairy.

Anyway, I'm mainly writing to tell you that a couple years ago, I developed a SEVERE acne problem on my face. My face had always been crystal clear up until summer 2011. And then over the course of two years, I developed cystic acne, along with tons of pustules and clogged pores, that was so severe, I couldn't even recognize myself in the mirror. I'm left with some physical scars on my face, and still some emotional scars.

But what I'm writing to tell you now is that my acne did get better (for now, and I desperately hope it stays this way). How did my acne get better? By ditching flaxseed. I had been eating peanut butter with flax oil in it, and putting flaxseeds in my oatmeal every morning, because I thought they were healthy. I did this for 2 years before realizing this was the problem. And during those two years, I tried SO MANY THINGS to fix my acne. Seriously, SO many. Different diets, different products, vitamins, supplements, different sleeping patterns, different so many things. But it was the flax. I had a light bulb moment one day: flaxseed is very high in phytoestrogens, which seemed to throw my hormones out of balance, and hormone imbalance, in my opinion, is the biggest culprit of acne. For some reason, after scouring the Internet nearly every day for those 2 years on new acne information, I never came across the information about flaxseed being high in phytoestrogen, or the (bad) reviews for flaxseed on this site. I guess I simply didn't consider it, due to it's being touted as such a healthy thing to eat. So yeah, incredibly long story short, I finally found out what was causing my acne, and after I stopped eating flax, my acne went away. All of it. I went from having 5-10 cysts, hundreds of clogged pores, and a handful of pustules on my face, along with red, irritated and oily looking skin every day for 2 years, to having my face back to normal. I still get a couple small pimples from time to time, and I've had maybe two slightly bigger ones in the past 5 months or so (I stopped eating flax 7 months ago). They're mostly the kinds you see on people who aren't considered to have acne. Everyone gets a pimple from time to time, and that's normal. What isn't normal is huge cysts.

So please, believe that your acne will get better once you find and address its source. Because it DOES have a source. It seems like a very small percentage of people have acne that is entirely caused by genetics. Which means, if your acne isn't caused by genetics (and I reiterate, I really do not think acne is a genetic disorder), it's caused by something that can be addressed and fixed. You just have to figure out what it is, which is of course incredibly difficult at times. I tried so many things that people raved about, that made my skin worse. And I do things that people say are awful, that work wonderfully for me (for instance, I use Dove bar soap on my face). Apple cider vinegar breaks me out like no other (where tons of others claim it is excellent for acne), yet coconut oil doesn't (where tons of people say it clogs their pores). So be diligent, keep trying to figure it out, understand that EVERYONE has different skin, and what is causing your own acne is probably not the same thing that is causing tons of other people's acne. And be patient, and try as best you can to enjoy your life in the meantime. I know how hard it is to enjoy life when you have cysts on your face the size of dimes, and when every facial movement hurts like hell, and even sleeping hurts. And I could never say I enjoyed it, but I am SO MUCH HAPPIER now that I had that experience of total acne hell. It was so embarrassing and so frustrating and downright depressing. Now, things that used to upset or depress me are total cake walks. I feel like I am much more unlikely to take things for granted than I was before the acne tragedy. I will live my life to a much fuller extent than I would have had I not had the experience of acne hell, simply because now I know how good I've really got it. Don't lose hope!