Acne is a condition of the skin in which oil produced by your glands just below the skin gets trapped, producing inflammation?and usually infection. Unfortunately, acne commonly occurs on the face, making it an unsightly problem that need to be cleared up and for all.
Keeping the face clean is certainly important when suffering from acne, but a dirty face is not usually the core problem. Acne occurs because of overactive glands, usually hormonally induced. In addition, excess toxins usually are present in the blood and are being eliminated through the skin, causing skin conditions such as acne, pimples, and/or rashes.
As if being a teenager isn’t hard enough, now you have pimples to deal with! No doubt this condition is annoying, but before you cancel your engagements for the rest of your life, read on to see how herbs can help.
The liver is instrumental in filtering away excess hormones. In the teen years, our body fluctuates its hormone productions?sometimes wildly. Therefore, when our liver (which responsible for filtering excess hormones from the blood) can’t keep up with this pace, we find the excess hormones in the blood showing up as acne or pimples on the face.
Making up for the insufficient liver-filtering function by cleansing the blood and liver is an effective approach toward clearing up the problem. Additionally, cleansing the bowel helps get rid of toxins through the instestinal system of the skin?a nicer way to go!
One of the best-known blood cleansers to herbalists is burdock root. Burdock (Artium lappa) not only cleanses the blood of excess wastes, but it also helps your glands regulate hormonal balance. Burdock seems to be verry politically active?it is againt everything!
Burdock is anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory, and anti-tumor. These qualities make it helpful for anti-acne, too. Burdock seems to work well for cleansing the liver, kidneys, and bowel, and its therefore helpful for clearing up associated sysmtoms. Soak a cotton ball in a burdock formentation or tea and apply to your face for a toning effect.
Burdock has also been used to ease anger, irritability, cancer, eczema, chicken pox, measles, and mumps. It has been used as a hair rinse for dundruff, and the juice has been drunk to rid the body of mites. Burdock also may serve as a mild aphrodisiac.
Females who need a little more help regulating those hormones can add extra herbs that support balance for the glands, such as black cohosh, red raspberry, dong quai, and evening primose oil. Adolescent males need balance, too, and can take sarsaparilla in addition to burdock root for a grandular balancing act.
Sarsaparilla has been referred to as a “cowbow tonic” because cowboys used to order sarsaparilla (root beer) in the late 1800s and believed it to be a cure for syphilis.
Tipically, keep your face clean and apply tea tree oil to infected pimples. The tea tree oil is very drying, so use it topically to help dry up infection. Be careful that you don’t apply it so often that it makes your skin dry and flaky, however. Tea tree oil is antiseptic acts as a local anesthetic to reduce pain.
A little sunshine on your face will not only help you get some vitamin D, which helps the skin, but will also help to clear your acne condition. But of course don’t overdo the sunshine! Finally, stay away from junk food! Excess caffeine, sugar, and oily fats overburdens the liver and defeats your goal.
Drink plenty of pure water; adding some lemon to your drinking water will help, too?vitamin C content in the lemon will help cure skin problems, and lemon is a good tonic for the liver.
If you are a female adult and you suddenly begin to break out with pimples, my first suggestion would be to get a check-up by your obstetrician or gynecologist. Have the doctor check for any type of reproductive organ problems growths or any other problems.
If you are on any type of hormonal replacement therapy or any medications that have an effect on your hormones, have your dosage checked. A sudden acne or pimple problem can mean that your hormones are fluctuating?and you need to know why!
If your doctor finds no problem, regulating your hormones with the use of herbs can help calm them down or tone them up, whichever may be needed. Note any changes in your diet or facial products that could have caused a temporary break-out. Some adults who pick up coffee drinking as a new habit will quckly be burdened with new blemishes; the oil from the coffee beans may be the cause of a break-out. What? No more afternoon cappuccinos?
Adults with acne can follow the same herbal advice for teenagers by using burdock root to cleanse the blood. For men or women, red clover (Trifolium pratense) taken internally has been an excellent herb for cleansing the blood and clearring up skin ailments such as acne.
You can support the liver (which filters excess hormones from the blood) to get to the source of your problem. Take two to three tablets of either burdock, milk thistle, red clover, or dandelion two to three times daily to help your face clear up. Red clover has been used for centuries as a key herbal ingredient in fighting and liver and assisting with protein assimilation.
Both men and women, can take supplemental zinc, vitamins A and D, and niacin. All have proven helpful for acne. Zinc helps in skin healing of any kind, vitamins A and D feed the skin, and niacin helps flush built-up wastes from the circulatory system.
To cleanse the bowel, coloric irrigations or Ivy’s colon cleanse should prove helpful almost right away, although the red clover or burdock root may act as a mild laxative for you. You can utilize a periodic herbal cleansing to assist your body with any ailment, and it will make you feel better and healthier and clear up your skin.
A cleanse doesn’t need to be harsh to be effective. A gentle, slow-cleansing action can be obtained by adjusting your herbs accordingly. Red clover, in fact, acts as a slow detoxifier. See your herbalist to find a cleanse that is right for your body. Otherwise, give Ivy’s cleanse a try.
Tea tree oil may be used topically to help dry up the condition. Don’t forget to get a little sunshine on your face, too.
I have heard a lot about different allergy tests and am confused. My local supermarket offers tests of this kind, and a friend has also suggested an ELISA test. Can you give me any more information about these types of test and allergy tests in general?
‘Allergy tests’ mean different things to different people, and you will hear a lot of conflicting information about their use. Broadly speaking, there are two types of allergy test applicable to skin disease:
patch tests
skin-prick tests (this type of testing can also be carried out on blood samples with an ELISA test, but both of these techniques are testing the same thing).
Patch tests look for evidence of contact eczema (also called dermatitis), such as is seen in allergy to nickel, chromate, rubber, dyes, glues or perfumes. This is a delayed allergy that sometimes develops after repeated exposure to a substance.
Contact eczema is uncommon in children, perhaps because they have not had enough exposure to these allergens, so patch tests are not needed (or indeed helpful) in uncomplicated atopic eczema in childhood.
Patch tests are complicated to do and interpret (they are carried out only by specialist dermatologists) but are useful in investigating certain types of eczema – such as isolated hand eczema, especially in people with certain jobs, for example hairdressers, builders and nurses.
Skin-prick tests (or ELISA tests) look for an immediate type of allergy (type 1 allergy). There are hundreds of allergens that can be used in these tests, but the common ones are pollens (grass and tree), dog fur, cat fur, house dust mite, egg, milk, fish and nuts. They can be useful in detecting relevant allergens in asthma, food intolerance and hay fever.
They do not, however, provide much, if any, useful information in atopic eczema, and most experts in childhood eczema now realise this. The majority of children with eczema have multiple positive results to the skin-prick test, and these are difficult to interpret in any useful way.
Children’s skin seems hyperreactive to many substances. Although some doctors still do these tests, we believe that it is unjustified to inflict 15 pin-pricks or a blood test on a young child with atopic eczema if it is not going to provide any practical information in helping to manage the eczema.
These tests do not help in deciding whether a certain food might make eczema worse and, if they are wrongly interpreted, can cause problems if nutritional foods are unnecessarily excluded.
I sent a piece of my hair away for testing and it came back with a whole list of foods that I am allergic to. My GP doesn’t believe the result and says I should see an immunologist. Can’t I just stop eating all those foods?
There is a great problem with the sort of testing you have had done. Often, there is very little science behind the test and the results, and we feel that the people doing the tests have a financial interest in the test being positive.
Immunologists work much more with properly researched and what we call ‘evidence-based’ tests so can give more accurate results. If you tried to avoid the ‘whole list of foods’, your health would probably suffer greatly so it is not safe just to stop eating them.
Any dietary modification should be carried out with advice, and perhaps supervision, from a dietitian. Immunologists may need to play a bigger role in managing cases like yours in the future, especially when tests for ‘intolerance’ as opposed to true allergy are established and properly validated. To date, however, there are very few immunologists in the NHS, and waiting lists are long.
My doctor has refused to do allergy tests on my daughter – can I insist that these be done? It sounds as though you and your doctor have a problem. Words like ‘refuse’ and ‘insist’ are very strong as you need to be able to discuss the investigation and treatment of your daughter’s eczema in a calm way.
If you read through the answers given above about allergy testing, it might help you to understand why such tests are not likely to change the way in which your daughter is treated. This is a very important concept, and doctors are often the worst offenders in carrying out tests unnecessarily.
With eczema, it is very difficult to justify the pain inflicted on your daughter by having the tests done, and in today’s tightly budgeted NHS we have to look at the cost of tests as well as treatment, and be able to justify the expense.
I have a leg ulcer but also seem to have developed eczema on my leg. Is this caused by the ulcer? Having an ulcer does mean that the skin on your leg is weak and prone to damage so you are more likely to develop irritation and even allergies to the various treatments used for your ulcer.
It is not therefore a direct effect but is a consequence of having the ulcer. The bandaging used to treat the ulcer occludes the skin and increases the likelihood of a reaction to creams or dressings under the bandages. You might need to have patch tests to check for allergies to substances being used to treat your ulcer.
My eczema doesn’t seem to behave as it should! I keep getting flares around my eyes and eyelids, and my GP can’t explain why. I always use the same creams, which sometimes work and sometimes don’t. Should I see a consultant?
This is a common presentation of any allergic contact eczema. Unusual patterns like this should always suggest the need for allergy testing. The skin around the eyes and on the eyelids is very sensitive, and one common cause of allergy is actually nail varnish.
We are sure you are not applying nail varnish anywhere near your eyes, but you might be surprised how often you touch this area, and if you are wearing nail varnish this can cause a reaction. It could also be a reaction to any make-up you might use intermittently around the eyes, and you could also have developed an allergy to one of your treatments.
I recently had to go to hospital for patch-testing and found out I was allergic to nickel. I try to make sure I don’t come into contact with it, but I still seem to get eczema. Is nickel eczema just from contact with it?
You have probably been given a list of metals that contain nickel, but it also occurs in many foods, which could be a reason for your eczema continuing. You could also have several different triggers for your eczema, not just nickel.
Cheap jewellery is not the only source of direct contact with nickel as it is unfortunately present in many common items made of, or containing, metal:
clothes fastenings such as jeans studs, hooks and zips
other personal objects – cigarette lighters, wristwatches, key rings, keys, parts of spectacle frames and pens
household items such as drawer and cupboard handles, kitchen utensils, toasters, etc.
silver coins.
The list could almost be endless so only a few examples are given here. The nickel content of some foods comes from natural sources or from the way in which they are prepared. This is usually only a problem if you have a severe reaction to nickel, which often shows up as a blistering eczema (pompholyx) on the hands.
Avoid canned foods, and use aluminium or stainless steel utensils when cooking. A dietitian could give you a list of foods to avoid, which will include asparagus, oysters, herrings (other fish are OK), mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and rhubarb.
Is it worth having tests for food intolerance? I have recently read about this testing and about claims that most people get better after testing, although nothing has been published. Is it worth doing?
These tests are being developed but, at the time of writing, have not been fully evaluated or validated. This process is very important if the tests are to be used to change treatments or dietary habits. Tests need to be accurate and repeatable – this means that they should give the same result no matter how many times you are tested before having any treatment so that changes in the results can be believed.
Could I sometimes be allergic to dairy products and sometimes not? I notice that my skin sometimes seems to get worse when I drink milk?
One possible explanation may be that the lining of the gut can become inflamed when eczema is severe, and larger proteins than normal can get through. These larger proteins may trigger an immune response and cause further exacerbations, but once the eczema has settled, the gut returns to normal and the larger proteins are kept out.
My asthma flared up recently, and my doctor told me to stop taking aspirin or Nurofen. Could these also have been causing my eczema?
Some people with atopic diseases such as eczema, asthma and hay fever are sensitive to the effects of ‘salicylates’. These are naturally occurring substances very similar to aspirin, which was derived originally from willow bark.
Nurofen and other ‘non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs’ have a similar action to aspirin and can share some of its potential reactions. This appears to be much more of a problem with asthma than eczema. Salicylates tend to give an urticaria (hives) rather than eczema, but they could be a factor for you.
I work in a sawmill and get eczema on my hands. This is put down to wear and tear, but recently I got eczema on my face, which I think is also worse at work. Could it be something in the air?
You could have a combination of a physical contact irritant eczema from the wear and tear, and an allergic form from natural resins in the wood or agents used to treat the wood. If the ventilation is poor and the atmosphere you work in is heavy with dust, you could well get an allergic reaction on your face. Talk to your GP about a referral for patch-testing.
My parents have always recommended massaging mustard oil into the arms and legs of our children to help with strong bone growth. I have a 3-year-old daughter with eczema and am worried that this might make it worse. What should I do?
We have come across the practice of using mustard oil on the skin in families from Africa and the Indian subcontinent. There isn’t any scientific evidence that this practice helps with bone growth, but many people are strong believers in it. It is important to try to respect cultural practices as they may be helpful, or at least not harmful, to eczema.
For example, many West Indian and Indian parents use olive oil or aloe vera cream as a moisturiser, and these seem to be beneficial. Some Nigerian families use hibiscus flower water on the skin; although we are not sure that this helps, it certainly does not seem to make things worse.
Mustard oil, however, is very irritant to the broken skin of eczema and will nearly always make it worse. Because of this, we strongly advise you not to use it. A balanced diet with plenty of calcium and exercise will ensure good bone growth. You will have to explain to your parents politely, but firmly, that mustard oil would make their grand-daughter’s eczema worse and that she is growing into a healthy girl without it.
All my children have suffered with bad cradle cap and nappy rash. Why is this, and why did they all get better after a few months?
It sounds as though all your children had seborrhoeic eczema. In a mild form, this is almost universal in babies. It is probably caused by a transfer of hormones (androgens) from mother to baby just before birth. These hormones act to stimulate the grease glands (sebaceous glands) of the skin, making them overactive.
They are usually inactive in children until puberty. This hormonal stimulation causes the greasy scaling so typical of this type of eczema. The scalp and nappy area are commonly affected – hence the usual presentation with cradle cap and nappy rash.
As babies do not make these hormones themselves, and because the transferred hormones are soon broken down and inactivated, the problem of seborrhoeic eczema resolves completely on its own in a few months.
I suffer with eczema on my hands, which I think is made worse by work, although I work in an office and don’t handle any chemicals. Could there be another explanation?
Your work environment might be a problem as the low-humidity from air-conditioning can dry out anybody’s skin, and this will be a bigger problem for you. It will show up as redness and scaling. Repeated friction from handling papers or other materials can also be a problem, leading to a physical eczema that will differ in looking less red, but dry and thickened.
I have just come back from holiday with the most awful eczema. My doctor says it is photo-dermatitis and might be due to a new sunscreen. Will I ever be able to go on holiday again?
Yes, you will. A type of allergic contact eczema whose cause involves natural or artificial ultraviolet light is quite rare but may be on the increase. Sunscreens are the most commonly reported culprits (photo-allergens), but they are always used in the sun!
Other common photo-allergens are fragrances, topical non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and some antibacterial creams. You might need to be referred to hospital for a special form of patch-testing that uses ultraviolet light to mimic the conditions in which you reacted – this is called photo-patch-testing. This should allow the dermatologist to tell you what sunscreens you can safely use.
I first started having eczema around my fingernails, which might have been due to the false nails I wore. I then got it in my hair – have I transferred it to my scalp from my fingers when I wash my hair?
Eczema is not a contagious disease so you will not have transferred it to your scalp. As you have developed eczema around your fingernails from an allergy to the acrylics in false nails, you do have a risk of developing eczema elsewhere.
Once you have an allergy to something, any part of your skin can react in the same way, so if you washed your hair with the false nails on, this might have been enough contact to start the eczema. There may, however, have been a different trigger for your scalp eczema, such as a different shampoo or hair treatment.
One of the residents in the nursing home where I work had scabies. I caught it and had treatment, but my doctor says I now have eczema. Does scabies cause eczema?
It is very common to have a rash that looks just like eczema after scabies (an infestation with little mites that burrow into the skin) as you will have developed an allergy to the dead mites and their waste matter.
Standard eczema treatments should settle it down over a few weeks, but it will leave your skin in a vulnerable state for the next few months so soaps and other products that might not have bothered you before could cause a problem. Take good care of your skin and it should all settle down and not trouble you again.
I think something in my garden makes my eczema worse. Any clues you could give me would be welcome as I don’t want to give up gardening.
There are many things in the garden that can cause skin problems, some of which are quite dramatic, with acute blistering rashes from a combination of plant juices and the sun. It sounds as though you already have eczema that gets worse when you garden, and this could be due to several factors.
The very act of using your hands outdoors, with rubbing, hard work and the extra washing required, can cause problems in terms of physical irritants.
Some plants are associated with eczema; these include chrysanthemums, which tend to give a thickened, dry eczema on exposed parts, and tulip bulbs, which classically give rise to a fingertip eczema. The pollen in the air near chrysanthemums can cause the reaction so you don’t even have to be in direct contact.
The Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) and Adequate Intakes (AIs) for minerals and trace elements are generous allowances, large enough to prevent deficiency but not so large that they trigger toxic side effects. What happens if you don’t get enough minerals and trace elements?
Some minerals, such as phosphorus and magnesium, are so widely available in food that deficiencies are rare to nonexistent. No nutrition scientist has yet been able to identify a naturally occurring deficiency of sulfur, manganese, chromium, or molybdenum in human beings who follow a sensible diet.
Most drinking water contains adequate fluoride, and Americans get so much copper (can it be from chocolate bars?) that deficiency is practically unheard of in the United States. But other minerals are more problematic:
Calcium: Without enough calcium, a child’s bones and teeth don’t grow strong and straight, and an adult’s bones lose minerals and weaken. Calcium is a team player. To protect against deficiency, you also need adequate amounts of vitamin D, the nutrient that allows you to absorb the calcium you get from food or supplements. Milk fortified with vitamin D has done much to eliminate rickets.
Iron: Iron deficiency anemia is not just an old advertising slogan. Lacking sufficient iron, your body can’t make the hemoglobin it requires to carry energy-sustaining oxygen to every tissue. As a result, you’re often tired and feel weak. Mild iron deficiency may also inhibit intellectual performance.
In one Johns Hopkins study, high school girls scored higher verbal, memory, and learning test scores when they took supplements providing Recommended Dietary Amounts of iron. Check with your doctor before downing iron supplements or cereals fortified with 100 percent of your daily iron requirement, the Environmental Nutrition newsletter warns.
Hemochromatosis, a common but often-undiagnosed genetic defect affecting one in every 250 Americans, can lead to iron overload, an increased absorption of the mineral linked to arthritis, heart disease, and diabetes, as well as an increased risk of infectious diseases and cancer (viruses and cancer cells thrive in iron-rich blood).
Zinc: An adequate supply of zinc is vital for making testosterone and healthy sperm. Men who don’t get enough zinc may be temporarily infertile. Zinc deprivation can make you lose your appetite and your ability to taste food. It may also weaken your immune system, increasing your risk of infections.
Wounds heal more slowly when you don’t get enough zinc. That includes the tissue damage caused by working out. In plain language: If you don’t get the zinc you need, your charley horse may linger longer. And, yes, zinc may fight the symptoms of the common cold.
To date, several studies have confirmed that sucking on lozenges containing one form of zinc (zinc gluconate) shortens a cold — by a day or two. Others show no differences. Your choice. These results are for adults, not children, and the zinc tablets are meant just for the several days of your cold.
Iodine: A moderate iodine deficiency leads to goiter (a swollen thyroid gland) and reduced production of thyroid hormones. A more severe deficiency early in life may cause a form of mental and physical retardation called cretinism.
Selenium: Not enough selenium in your diet? Watch out for muscle pain or weakness. To protect against selenium problems, make sure that you get plenty of vitamin E. Some animal studies show that a selenium deficiency responds to vitamin E supplements. And vice versa.
Like some vitamins, some minerals are potentially toxic in large doses:
Calcium: Though clearly beneficial in amounts higher than the current RDAs, calcium is not problem-free:
Constipation, bloating, nausea, and intestinal gas are common side effects among healthy people taking supplements equal to 1,500 to 4,000 milligrams of calcium a day.
Doses higher than 4,000 milligrams a day may be linked to kidney damage.
Megadoses of calcium can bind with iron and zinc, making it harder for your body to absorb these two essential trace elements.
Phosphorus: Too much phosphorus can lower your body stores of calcium.
Magnesium: Megadoses of magnesium appear safe for healthy people, but if you have kidney disease, the magnesium overload can cause weak muscles, breathing difficulty, irregular heartbeat and/or cardiac arrest (your heart stops beating).
Iron: Overdosing on iron supplements can be deadly, especially for young children. The lethal dose for a young child may be as low as 3 grams (3,000 milligrams) elemental iron at one time. This is the amount in 60 tablets with 50 milligrams elemental iron each.
For adults, the lethal dose is estimated to be 200 to 250 milligrams elemental iron per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of body weight. That’s about 13,600 milligrams for a 150-pound person — the amount you’d get in 292 tablets with 50 milligrams elemental iron each.
New FDA rules require individual blister packaging for supplements containing more than 30 milligrams iron to foil tiny fingers and prevent accidental overdoses.
Zinc: Moderately high doses of zinc (up to 25 milligrams a day) may slow your body’s absorption of copper. Doses 27 to 37 times the RDA (11 mg/males; 8 mg/females) may interfere with your immune function and make you more susceptible to infection, the very thing that normal doses of zinc protect against.
Gram doses (2,000 milligrams/2 grams) of zinc cause symptoms of zinc poisoning: vomiting, gastric upset, and irritation of the stomach lining.
Iodine: Overdoses of iodine cause exactly the same problems as iodine deficiency: goiter. How can that be? When you consume very large amounts of iodine, the mineral stimulates your thyroid gland, which swells in a furious attempt to step up its production of thyroid hormones. This reaction may occur among people who eat lots of dried seaweed for long periods of time.
Selenium: In China, nutrition researchers have linked doses as high as 5 milligrams of selenium a day (90 times the RDA) to thickened but fragile nails, hair loss, and perspiration with a garlicky odor.
In the United States, a small group of people who had accidentally gotten a supplement that mistakenly contained 27.3 milligrams selenium (436 times the RDA) fell victim to selenium intoxication — fatigue, abdominal pain, nausea and diarrhea, and nerve damage. The longer they used the supplements, the worse their symptoms were.
Fluoride: Despite decades of argument, no scientific proof exists that the fluorides in drinking water increase the risk of cancer in human beings. But there’s no question that large doses of fluoride — which you’re unlikely to consume unless you drink well or groundwater in the western United States — causes fluorosis (brown patches on your teeth), brittle bones, fatigue, and muscle weakness.
Over long periods of time, high doses of fluoride may also cause outcroppings (little bumps) of bone on the spine. Fluoride levels higher than 6 milligrams a day are considered hazardous.