Benefits and Dangers of Essential Oils ~ Holistic Dermatology

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The Benefits and Dangers of Essential Oils

Essential oils are for example the various kinds of oils that have a strong fragrance in taste that tend to be either cool or hot now essential oils can be very valuable. They have various emotional effects they also are highly antimicrobial in many instances and they can be used even in cases where there are staph infection that are resistant to antibiotics.

They can be used to keep surfaces clean of those, various bacteria and also even to treat infections on the surface of the skin. Some people have even use them internally, they are good for brushing your teeth because they kill the bacteria that are living in between the teeth but there is a down side to essential oils. And that is that you can become allergic to them and develop all sorts of reactions, either locally at the site where you having the problem or elsewhere in the body.

One fellow who I know had a rash on the side of his chest for the longest amount of time and somewhere along the line he figured out that it was being caused by the cinnamon he was eating. And he got away from the cinnamon and that rash went away but sometime down the line he found himself eating some dessert that have cinnamon in it and sure enough he broke out in those same places on the side of his chest.

Now, that doesn’t mean everybody who has a problem with cinnamon or everyone who eats cinnamon is going to have a rash on the chest it could manifest many different places or he may not have a problem at all. Sometimes this comes from just having essential oils over and over and over again not just in your teeth but in your mouth wash and your food and may be in your chewing gum over and over.

So, some people have to get away from essential oils in order to get better, those essential oils I might mention include  clove cinnamon and cloves and all those things that have a strong and also a lot of the perfumes. So one of the things you may find you have to do is take a break from essential oils.

Do Hormones Cause Acne? ~ Best Natural Acne Treatment

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Do Hormones Cause Acne?

Many ways to tell is if your acne starting with a hormone change such as puberty, especially in women. Another way especially if women, is to see if it is related to the menstrual cycle, may not be every time.

It could be every other month, but it can usually start before the period begins or at some point during the period or even at the time of ovulation. Observing if this is cyclical activity of your acne is very important in understanding which hormones contribute to that condition.

The other thing is that we get a lot of hormone-related products in our environment, everything from pesticides, petrochemicals to various kinds of preservatives in our skin care products. All those things have small amounts of hormonal activity and they may also be disturbing your system and leading to hormonal acne. Examining this and starting to discover your own acne triggers is the start of the best natural acne treatment.

3 “Health Foods” That Could Aggravate Your Acne ~ Best Natural Acne Treatment

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3 “Health Foods” that could aggravate your acne

The first type of health food that can aggravate acne is the natural looking product that really is a bad product. That would include various types of chips that are coated with oil and heated to high temperature in an oven rather than a fryer, so they say they are “baked and not fried”. 

The second kind of health food that can aggravate acne is part of the sugar that come from wonderful natural sources like a guava or honey because they really are sugar.

Another type of health food that can aggravate acne especially to people who have sensitivities to various types of yeast are foods like kombucha, vinegar, or apple cider vinegar. It is important to know that many of the kinds of things that might be promoted on the internet or the health food store, may not be the ones that are good for you. Your body ecosystem is unique; different foods are good for different people. Find out what’s right for you by noticing how you feel after you eat.

Does Chocolate Cause Acne? Ask an Integrative Dermatologist!

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Does Chocolate Cause Acne?

Do you often wonder, “Does chocolate cause acne?” The old time physicians used to believe that chocolate was related to acne. Someone came along in the 1960’s and did a study and showed that chocolate did not cause acne. That study was part of Harvard dermatology resident bibliography.

And so the training programs all over the country in the early 70’s taught those residents; taught those dermatologists in training that acne had nothing to do with chocolate. Which was of course a great news for all kids because people love chocolate. The problem is, that acne can be aggravated by chocolate in a significant number of people. And so for a generation or so we used antibiotics to suppress the acne that was being caused by the chocolate. In the past a dozen years or so somebody came along and re-examined that study and showed that, that it was not true. The conclusions were not based on sound data, and that there is some aggravation of acne by chocolate.

Now it could be for several different reasons. It could be from the chocolate, it could be because a lot of chocolate is milk chocolate, and some people react to milk. And it also could be because of the amount of sugar, and also because people who are eating chocolate are eating other sweats with sugar in it. So there are a number of things that tie chocolate eating to acne. So it’s important nowadays for people who have acne to seriously consider removing chocolate from their diet and seeing if that makes a difference.

Going on a Vegan Diet? Here’s You Need Your Amino Acids.

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Vegetarian or Vegan Diet and Holistic Skincare

Let’s talk a little bit about a vegan diet and your skin from a holistic dermatology perspective. Now, a vegan diet has some wonderful aspects to it. First of all it is much more humane and many people like to subscribe to it for that reason. The second this is it avoids a lot of the various kinds of toxins that are present in meat and fish and diary products. These toxins potentially cause trouble for the skin and other parts of the body.

And also it avoids being vegan even milk which an aggravator for acne in a significant percentage of the population. So vegan diet can be a great boom to causing improvements in the health.

On the other side of it, when you go on a vegan diet, you limit tremendously your sources of protein. One way that that causes trouble is that you maybe lacking specific amino acids that are important for making complete protein. And we talked about a concept called the protein efficiency ratio.

So that means that if you are eating a whole variety of amino acids but you are lacking a few of them like, lysine and some amino acids. You are not going to make complete protein and you are not going to keeps the parts that you have assembled. You are going to get rid of those and you have to start all over again. So some diets have small amounts of meat in them that have traditionally being used in places like China, which compliment a mostly vegetarian diet.

So there are problems for some people using just a vegan diet if they are missing particular amino acids. Another problem is that if you have a diet which requires that you avoid gluten or grains you become tremendously limited in what you can eat, and so it’s very hard to get enough protein. And another aspect of a vegan diet that can be real problem is that, there are other things in foods that cause issues according to especially your blood type.

So for example if you have a lot of beans in your diet, you have certain kinds of proteins that come on those beans called lectins. Notice lectins grab onto the sugars on your red blood cells, and in many people also on your other cells. This can cause a reaction to occur inside those cells or punch holes through those cells, causing reactions that are inappropriate.

And they can be inflammatory reactions, so that they can cause leakage through membranes like the gut. So for many people a vegan diet may present an awful lot of challenges in getting enough of the right amino acids and avoiding various things are setting off inflammation. So it requires a lot of extra planning and in some cases a reconsideration of the diet in order to get rid of various diseases.

3 Hidden Hormones in Food that Can Cause Acne ~ Best Natural Acne Treatment

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3 HIDDEN HORMONES IN FOOD THAT CAN CAUSE ACNE~BEST NATURAL ACNE TREATMENT

There are various types of hormones that aggravate acne. Some of those are seen with your own cycle if you are a female and with puberty if you are a male. There are also hormones in the food that can disturb your hormone metabolism and aggravate the acne and cause it to be worse. Those include the hormones present in milk and dairy products because cows are usually pregnant when they give milk, as well as hormones injected into cows to produce bigger cows or more milk such as bovine growth hormone. That type of hormone can also be in meat if you are eating beef that has been injected in that way.

Sometimes, hormones are injected into other animals like the necks of chickens, to fatten them up. Finally, there are hormones which are much weaker, but are present in other kinds of foods because of the nature of the kinds of food itself or because they are added in as preservatives. For instance, soy has some hormone-like activity.

So too, do various types of preservatives that are used in foods and creams and topical products. Now those are fairly weak, but when you use them on a repeated basis, day after day, you do get some significant hormones that can also aggravate your acne and disrupt normal cycles.

Natural Cures for Hidradenitis Suppurativa: The Worst Acne ~ Integrative Dermatology

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Natural Cures for Hidradenitis Suppurativa

I want to speak about the condition that is so bothersome and horrendous that some people can’t even go to work and go out and function normally. The spectrum includes mild forms that are just plain disturbing, to other forms that completely make it difficult to want to be part of a society.

Hidradenitis is an accentuation of what acne is, especially occurring under the arms, in the groin area and elsewhere of the body such as below the breast. This condition is called Hidradenitis Suppurativa. I call it acne from hell. Sometimes involves draining lesions that can be as big as a golf ball or even as big as a baseball.

And the lesions may be draining chronically. It’s not fun. Some of the conventional treatment for this involve cutting the entire area out down through the fat. Current treatments for Hidradenitis are some of the new drugs, which poison the dividing white cells. And those are called biologics. For some they are successful ways of treating their acne.

But I fortunately have been able to treat some of these patients in the way that I treat acne. We avoid foods that are causing inflammation. By making a whole variety of changes in the diet and in the digestive tracks, in the hormones using supplements that contribute to the inflammation involved. So here is another inflammatory disorder that can be controlled by changing the underlying conditions for the inflammation. So, working to reduce inflammation is the one of the best cures for hidradenitis.

Is there a Natural Cure for Acne? ~ Holistic Acne Treatment

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Is there a cure for acne?

That is really one of the questions that has been asked so many times, certainly by teenagers, certainly by drug companies and the question still stands out there. Now, there are many different types of treatments that can make acne get under control. However, the problem is that it often comes back. I think that the biggest issue is that acne is not just a condition.

Acne is a symptom showing that something is “off” in the body. The cure for acne is getting that rebalanced so that the body no longer needs to produce that inflammation that has been going on. This is the start of holistic acne treatment.

Can You Treat Dandruff Naturally, Using Holistic Medicine?

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Can You Treat Dandruff Naturally?

How do you treat dandruff naturally? Let’s talk about it. Dandruff in its aggravated form is technically know as subarea dermatitis. It involves scaling of the scalp with redness, and when it gets bad, scaling of the eyebrows, of the forehead, and sometimes even of the chest. It’s caused by a reaction to a yeast that lives normally in the skin known as malassezia, previously called pityrosporum.

And it is know that that yeast is a problem many of the shampoo cure that yeast. It’s just not the yeast that is there, but the attack of that yeast by the immune system and that is caused by overgrowth and overexposure to yeast in the body. So it’s important to make changes to what’s in your diet that is contributing to the overgrowth of that yeast and to the yeast that are leading to the attack on your hair follicles that is causing the dandruff. See my blog for more videos on what specifically to do for altering your diet, to lower the yeast in the body, and treat dandruff naturally.

What’s Keratosis have to do with Inflammation? ~ Holistic Dermatology

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What’s Keratosis have to do with Inflammation?

Let’s talk about a very common chronic form of folliculitis called Keratosis Pilaris and what it has to do with holistic dermatology. That involves red bumps along the air follicles of the extensive aspect of the body especially on the backs of the arms, and sometimes on the backs of the legs too. Now this disorder has been conventionally treated by things that loosen up the plugs like retin-A or vitamin A.

And products and various kinds of mullions-like containing products. Those treating for a period of 9 months or so can make some difference. But my feeling is, there is something going on to have that much inflammation in the follicles.

And it’s really important that if this is a chronic condition, to see if you can take the steps that fix the inflammation. Materials being excreted from the follicles are altering the way they should be normally be functioning. And that might be a very worthwhile step, for not only treating the keratosis pilaris but for treating other forms of inflammation that you may not even know or going on and even related to that process.