Perpetual Acne
Hi, I’ve been continuously struggling with acne since I was 13 (onset of puberty, I’m 24 yr old male). I was prescribed accutane at 15, and this fixed my issues for a while. However, after COVID came around, I started developing food allergens or histamine problems to some foods. I began to develop what I assume to be perioral dermatitis and back acne. I then slowly began to develop acne on my legs, and then my chest. The acne that I had before accutane was very cystic, but this diminished greatly afterwards. I would normally get small pustules and only little cases of cystic acne on my back afterwards.
I’ve been to the dermatologist before, but not much has changed. He prescribed me sulfur body washes, clindamycin cream, and generic cleaners and lotions. These did virtually nothing, and eventually he tried oral antibiotics. The first attempt was doxycyline and I instantly had anaphylaxis… Then we tried cephalexin, and all this did was cause fatigue and stomach discomfort. I eventually just gave up. He said he would have prescribed accutane, but I was leaving for graduate school, so he decided against it.
I have never been someone to use skincare of any sort because I thought everything came internally. All my skin reactions seem to come from foods. I became very invested in my diet over the years, but it didn’t help much. I’ve followed the general peat advice of eating such as: eggs, cottage cheese, raw honey, ground beef, ground lamb, liver, oysters, boiled deskinned potatoes, butter, salt, orange juice, coffee, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, carrot salad (coconut oil, white wine vinegar, salt) and milk. I followed this advice for multiple weeks straight, but something is obviously still agitated. The most obvious indicators are milk and orange juice, which I believe do trigger histamine and inflammation responses. It doesn’t matter if its organic, a2, etc, it still always causes skin agitation immediately and makes my nose stuffy.
Now, I have no idea what to do. The simple answer would be to try and avoid the irritants, but is there not a method to solve the issue? I’ve read of things like clearing out the small intestines or colon with active charcoal and coconut oil, but I don’t want to start throwing random treatments that may trigger more things. Also, my bowel movements are completely normal, and daily. I don’t get stomach aches or diarrhea, so I’m not sure if its possible to suffer from things like SIBO/leaky gut and still poop fine… I am getting tired of dealing with this bs while others can eat complete junk and have perfect skin. My face looks bloated and discolored, and I have ugly dark circles which is obviously very annoying. I’ll take any advice and am open to answer any specific questions in more detail. I am debating on trying accutane again, but I know that is frowned upon around here. The supplements I take currently are Vitamin D3, K2 Mk4, Thamine HCL, and magnesium malate. I’ve read people using things like lactoferrin, vitamin e, vitamin a, etc but again, this feels like throwing all sorts of things at the wall hoping to find a solution.