The first pic is a year ago when I was starting my first year of college

it's an id pic, so it's not that clear/close up, but you can tell my skin is good

for a few months before then, i had become obsessive about diet and was drinking like 2-3 gallons of water a day, apple cider vinegar, was doing low carbs (most days anywhere from 0- 100g, with a carb up maybe once a week of junk food) but i was trying to get very low bodyfat, some days during that summer i was only eating around 1000 cals a day for periods of time, mainly chicken, vegetables, and berries

i noticed during that time that my skin completely cleared up and started to look really good. I started using clindamycin and benzoyl peroxide on spots that would pop up here and there, and was using witch hazel toner during the day

a few months after i started college, i visited china over winter break. while there, i ate some contaminated food/drank contaminated water or something and got sick for a week (i just had diarrhea for a week). Once the diarrhea stopped, my digestive system has never returned to normal. Main symptom was constipation, intense bloating where i looked pregnant (regardless of what i ate) plus i was just storing all this food and water in my stomach. I used to urinate maybe once every 20 minutes when i drank 2-3 gals of water a day, but it's been reduced a lot as the water is being shuttled to my stomach/digestive system.

Given that it was china and that my symptoms are digestive mainly and that they havent gone away, i'm thinking i caught some type of parasite or have an overgrowth of something. this was clearly the trigger.

In that time though, i developed severe acne pretty much immediately. Within a month my skin went from good to covered in cysts? i think or just deep red acne bumps. My acne always scars as well, and since I went to China (9 months ago) the severe acne has just continued to get worse (although it gets better for periods of time, but the scarring is just continually building up since my acne always results in scars). My face is now covered in deep and very red scars and it's really affecting my life.

recently, the acne switched over to huge, deep pus/blood filled whiteheads that would be bursting throughout the day and be painful to touch.

Now, i'm not sure if it's the constipation itself that would cause acne or whatever it is that's affecting my digestive system, like a bacterial overgrowth, but I've been taking a fiber laxative (citrucel) which has let me eliminate much more waste and the acne seems to have been reduced, but it's been 9 months and i know this isn't going to end anytime soon.

I made an appt with a random osteopathic medicine doctor who i asked to order the CDSA 2.0 w/parasitology stool test for me so i can have a better idea of what's going on.

I've had the general stool tests they give out at hospitals for parasites and they didn't find anything, but i've read they are notoriously inept at detecting things.

If my results do indicate parasites, I'm not really sure what I should do, but I've read that taking a pharmaceutical antiparasitical drug is usually most effective, combined with some herbs i guess.

I'm into fitness as well, so I've attached a picture of what my stomach used to look like and what it frequently looks like now.

Also, i did gain a little bit of bodyfat during that time, as it was so frustrating storing all this water and waste and not seeing results anymore from sticking to a good diet, so i did start to binge quite a bit on junk food. I noticed i was craving it quite often and was having like 6000 calorie binges at once at times. But i stopped that like 5 months ago and am back to a good diet.

I will upload pics of what the acne looks like now later, as they are on my camera not laptop.

but it's just very inflamed, pus filled whiteheads,cysts and things like that

it even looks like im starting to get rosacea as my nose skin has thickened up a lot recently and looks inflamed

but maybe that was from applying too much clindamycin/salycilic acid