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After Caveman Regimen: Layers Of Dead Skin. Help.

MemberMember
7
(@battle2011)

Posted : 06/28/2012 4:05 pm

37 days after starting the caveman regimen, here are some facts:

 

- I am in my mid 30s, still having acne breakouts and cystic pimples. Tried everything, every range, every medicine (including accutane), every diet.

 

- I decided to start the caveman regimen 37 days ago. No more water touching my face at all, except on rare occasions after very sweaty day (and it would be spring water, not the one coming from the tap).

 

- First, my skin got much clearer. Or at least, so it seems. If a pimple comes, it usually comes to a head within hours, lasts a day or two, does not get inflammed, does not hurt, and it blends into the skin (nothing extreme red anymore).

 

- Old marks faded away, and some old cyst marks woke up. Pimples grew in those areas, as if the skin needed to purge. They are now gone.

 

- The only issue is dead skin:

 

There is a huge amount of dead skin building up. It is quite an issue. If I do nothing, I think it can hardly be seen. But if I do a bit of sports, it becomes an absolute mess. Or today, I was kissing with my fiancee outside, and my God! My nose and the areas around were absolutely white from skin debris, my chin as well. Tons of dead skin just showed up. I am not even sure how and why. It took me a good hour to gently remove those debris with wet cotton pads. But still, some dead skin debris keep surfacing even when i remove what I can see.

 

How can this be?

Anyone has a solution to such an issue?

I have always had skin problems, and dry skin.

But here, it is really unsightly and I do not understand how such a build up can form and be so hard to remove.

Some of the debris also seem firmly attached to the skin, and do not go away even with wet cotton pads!!

 

My hair is also full of dead skin by the way.

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MemberMember
92
(@murph89)

Posted : 06/28/2012 4:13 pm

Exfoliation is the most important step in skin care. Might want to find an exfoliant to get rid of all that dead skin.

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MemberMember
7
(@battle2011)

Posted : 06/28/2012 4:16 pm

any good one that you would know of? without any chemicals in it?

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92
(@murph89)

Posted : 06/28/2012 4:24 pm

There was something people mentioned on here that is all natural with sugar and something else. I can't remember.

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173
(@green-gables)

Posted : 06/28/2012 8:53 pm

I tried the caveman thing and had the same issue...

 

I switched to the Oil Cleansing Method and found I got the same results as the caveman without the nasty skin shedding.

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MemberMember
7
(@battle2011)

Posted : 06/28/2012 10:16 pm

That's interesting. What is your typical regimen with oil cleansing method then? i mean, how does it work?

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4
(@sepsi)

Posted : 06/29/2012 3:32 am

In OCM you usually scrape your face with a towel. That quite effectively removes the dead skin cells.

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173
(@green-gables)

Posted : 06/29/2012 2:53 pm

Google Oil Cleansing Method. You basically use jojoba oil mixed with castor oil to cleanse your face (there are other oils you can use, but I would say that's the standby). In my experience, the oil actually helped my clogged pores loosen up and get rid of the stuff trapped in there. My face also seemed to maintain a more constant state: a nice happy medium between oily and dry.

 

I only stopped because I went on spiro to treat my hormonal acne, and on the spiro I feel like I have "normal" skin...you know, where you can do anything to it and it stays the same. So basically I stopped feeling a real need for the benefits of OCM. But I might start up again, since I still have blackheads.

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3
(@beender20)

Posted : 07/02/2012 3:52 pm

Hey I'm glad to see you've stuck it out for the full 30 days and more! I think I did around 47/48 myself and then finally took it all off. I was at the beach at the time and just dumped my head under the ocean water and gently rubbed it all away with my fingers. Idk if you took it off yet or what but I would suggest just getting your fingers wet and gently rubbing all the dead skin off.

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MemberMember
6
(@allrighty)

Posted : 07/02/2012 9:27 pm

Try manuka honey, the good stuff, it has tiny little particles in the honey, its great for scrubbing ur face, it isnt too harse, just gentle enough to do the job and remove the dead skin.

BTW with the caveman diet, what snacks do u eat? Im fining it hard to get snacks....

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MemberMember
7
(@battle2011)

Posted : 07/04/2012 5:52 am

Thanks for all the answers. It turned out fine.

Now I am battling the first break out due to heavy sweating at the weekend.

As for my diet, I eat everything now. Gluten, sugar.. It has very low incidence on my acne.

It was really all the products I have used over the years that made a disaster on my skin.

Now my issue is to find a balance, and clean the skin once in a while, to avoid those breakouts when i exercise.

Maybe water with a drop of tea tree oil would do the trick. Not sure how abrasive that would be...

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2
(@sima)

Posted : 07/04/2012 10:57 am

I'm not exactly sure how tea tree oil would help with the exfoliation of the built up layers of dead skin. I recommend gently exfoliating with sugar or a washcloth in circular motions. I don't wash my face either, but I do a sugar scrub once a week.

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3
(@beender20)

Posted : 07/08/2012 2:01 pm

Yeah after I did the caveman thing I've been just washing my face with water everyday in the shower and I've been fine. No new breakouts. It was all the products that was causing my breakouts for me too, not diet..although I try to eat healthy as possible.

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1
(@wicky)

Posted : 07/08/2012 8:34 pm

how do you do this is if your already dry and plugged? My skin has the grossest hardest sebum already and Im afraid they will become harder and more stuck if thats possible

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0
(@bjarnecke)

Posted : 07/18/2012 7:41 pm

In OCM you usually scrape your face with a towel. That quite effectively removes the dead skin cells.

 

Sepsi, have you actually tried the OCM regimen? I'm just wondering to see what kind of results you had with it. I'm thinking about trying a caveman regimen, or a variation of it like this

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MemberMember
4
(@sepsi)

Posted : 07/18/2012 10:54 pm

In OCM you usually scrape your face with a towel. That quite effectively removes the dead skin cells.

 

Sepsi, have you actually tried the OCM regimen? I'm just wondering to see what kind of results you had with it. I'm thinking about trying a caveman regimen, or a variation of it like this

 

I did it a few times, but I was never consistent with it. I have had good comments about it at my forums though.

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MemberMember
0
(@bjarnecke)

Posted : 07/19/2012 12:17 pm

In OCM you usually scrape your face with a towel. That quite effectively removes the dead skin cells.

 

Sepsi, have you actually tried the OCM regimen? I'm just wondering to see what kind of results you had with it. I'm thinking about trying a caveman regimen, or a variation of it like this

 

I did it a few times, but I was never consistent with it. I have had good comments about it at my forums though.

 

I think I'm going to try the caveman regimen and scrape away the dead skin with a towel. The only problem is, I live and work on a farm, so there are days when my face gets very dirty. Not sure how I'll deal with that yet.

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4
(@sepsi)

Posted : 07/24/2012 10:35 pm

I have to say that I'm not a big fan of the caveman regimen. That's because it totally ignores the role of genetics and skin abnormalities in acne-prone skin. In my opinion you just can't leave acne-prone skin to fend for itself. Because even at normal hormone levels acne-prone skin produces too much sebum, skin cells grow too fast and there's too much keratin, see here for a complete description of how genes affect acne.

 

The caveman regimen is good for reducing irritation from topical products. But why not just use gentler products? Why not use stuff that both helps the skin and doesn't irritate it?

 

Just my two cents.

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0
(@bjarnecke)

Posted : 07/25/2012 12:07 am

I just went a week without washing my face...it didn't get any worse, but it really didn't get any better either. However, the redness did clear up a little bit.

 

I think I figured out what my problem is though. Where I live, we have extremely hard water. And I've read quite a few articles about how the minerals in hard water don't allow cleaners and topicals to work properly, and more often than not damage the skin. So tonight I bought some distilled water and I'm going to wash my face with that for a while. If that goes well, I'll more than likely add a gentle cleanser back in the mix.

 

I do know that the first week of July, I went on vacation, and the place we stayed had naturally soft water. After that week, my skin felt great and looked fairly good too. I mean as good as acne-prone skin can look I guess.

 

My face was getting too oily and felt unclean even though it really didn't look dirty. I just had to wash it. So my "caveman" regimen will consist of distilled water only for a few weeks, even you can even call it that then.

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(@dantheman1014)

Posted : 08/14/2012 7:36 pm

Very interesting read. I'm still contemplating taking the plunge.

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0
(@cosmic-crusader)

Posted : 09/10/2012 6:08 pm

Have you considered dry skin brushing with a natural-bristle brush? :]

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1
(@notmeatall)

Posted : 09/16/2012 8:11 am

You know, cavemen were likely grooming each other like apes do. It seems like never touching your skin is a false ideal of how things were in the past. How about just rubbing the flakes off with a dry washcloth?

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0
(@kimanjo)

Posted : 11/26/2012 11:11 am

Hey I'm glad to see you've stuck it out for the full 30 days and more! I think I did around 47/48 myself and then finally took it all off. I was at the beach at the time and just dumped my head under the ocean water and gently rubbed it all away with my fingers. Idk if you took it off yet or what but I would suggest just getting your fingers wet and gently rubbing all the dead skin off.

 

I just want to pipe in here. I'm 50+ and have had acne since a teen. As a teen, my diet was terrible--I remember coming home from high school and being so hungry...the only food in the house was white bread, and I would eat 6 slices of toast right away. Then dinner would be high carb, followed by a breakfast of cereal, lunch of a bagel and something like sweetened yogurt, a bag of chips for some salt cravings...anyway, it paved the way to a path of breakouts, combined with hormonal issues. [i am now aware that teens' digestion undergoes a massive transformation, the production of acids and enzymes slows down, contributing to further waste/toxin issues].

For years I had acne. It wasn't until my late 20s that it improved, when I changed my diet. I still had breakouts, which I would say was moderate with occasional cysts, but nothing as bad as in my earlier years, when I ate 80% junk.

By my mid 30s, I was still having occasional pimples here and there. I had been around long enough to start to see a pattern: the cysts were usually hormonal AND if I had taken in waaayyy too many carbs, like 4 slices of bread with a pasta dinner, followed by dessert. It always showed in my face 48 hours later. The other thing I noticed was that when I went to Mary Kay or other beauty product parties and was given a mini-peel, my skin was pink and fresh like a newborn's skin--for about 24 hours. Then it would erupt in retaliation, which I realize now was bacteria infecting raw skin!

Fast forward, 15 years later. My oily face is as oily as ever (meaning, I can make a kleenex completely transparent), and I continue to have hormone issues (I'm on a high dosage HRT patch) but my acne has almost 100% gone away and my skin is better than when I was in my 20s. Truly, I think it's because a) for the past 10 years I have not used anything to cleanse my face but water, followed by a light rub dry with a towel to gently exfoliate; b) I've maintained a pretty balanced diet, and c) I drink homemade kefir every day. I KNOW that any high intake of sugar--a supersize chocolate bar eaten in one afternoon, for example-- WILL absolutely result in major golf-ball cysts on my chin/jawline a couple of days down the road. This is a truth in my corner of the universe.

So, in essence: I believe the body must be healed on the inside (lowered candida, healthy probiotics) as well as the outside (gentle and minimal cleansing). And from what I'm seeing on these boards, that program is working for quite a few people.

******

As an aside, I think our modern society has associated "oily" with dirty, and our obsession to have what we call clean skin is actually detrimental to our health. All the emphasis on "getting rid of the shine" and "fresh, pink" skin is completely contrary to our bodies' immune system. The so-called "acid mantle", where the beneficial bacteria are nourished by the good fatty acids in our sebum, exists for a reason.

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1
(@armadillo)

Posted : 11/26/2012 11:45 am

You can exfoliate without any products. All you need is a muslin cloth and warm water. I still recommend you wash your face with water at least once a day. Since we have no fur, because we are humans, there's nothing to keep our skin clean apart from washing it regularly.

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8
(@ind1g0)

Posted : 11/26/2012 1:42 pm

Apple cider vinegar on a cotton ball (this would maintain the PH balance of your skin which is what the caveman regimen attempts to restore). Since the layer of skin you have is so thick, you'd probably have to apply some pressure when exfoliating and ONLY do this in the areas where it is absolutely necessary. Also, when honey is mixed with water, it creates these little sugar crystals. Honey is also PH balanced, so you can just slather your face in honey, rub around for about three minutes (gently) and rinse of/pat dry. Then leave your skin alone as you have been doing.

 

I've heard of brown sugar scrubs and baking soda, but keep in mind that these both disrupt the PH level of skin and so I would NOT try these as it would be counteractive to all your progress on the caveman regimen. Good luck.

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