Maria was 23 years old when the acne that she had experienced since her teens started to flare.
Her breakouts over the years had certainly been annoying, but she had always been able to manage them with benzoyl peroxide cream that seemed to work some kind of magic to accelerate her skin’s healing.
But when the frequency and severity of her breakouts started to increase, and the effectiveness of the cream started to taper, Maria realized that she probably wouldn’t be able to solve her apparently worsening skin issues with over-the-counter medication.
Maybe she should finally see a dermatologist and stop trying to figure this out on her own, she told herself.
Maybe there was a more potent medication that she could take that would make her acne go away for good.
Modern medicine
After examining Maria’s breakouts on her face and forehead in their first appointment, her dermatologist speculated that her acne was caused by bacteria, writing her a prescription for two medications that would certainly classify as more potent: doxycycline, an oral antibiotic, and erythromycin, an antibiotic cream.
While Maria was desperate for something that might work, she also recognized that taking oral antibiotics long-term could cause health problems, having heard horror stories about how some people had developed debilitating chronic symptoms after taking antibiotics for months.
Still, she was getting increasingly frustrated with her skin issues, and increasingly self-conscious, too—she was spending almost all of her time at home, having retreated from her social life—so she decided that she would take the risk and start treatment.
She could always stop the experiment if it didn’t seem to be working, or if she developed any weird symptoms that might be attributed to the antibiotics.
Scorched earth
To her amazement, Maria’s skin started to improve within her first month of treatment.
Her breakouts were significantly less frequent and less severe, and it seemed like she had finally found something that might even resolve her skin issues completely, if she stuck with it for long enough.
She was still concerned about the health implications of taking antibiotics long-term, but her almost immediate results, and excitement for the possibility of clear skin, made it easy for her to rationalize continuing to take the medication, despite her initial hesitancy.
For the next six months, Maria continued to see significant improvement in her skin, getting her prescriptions refilled by her dermatologist whenever she ran out.
It seemed like everything was working out and that she might be able to continue the antibiotics without issue, until she started experiencing digestive symptoms—bloating, nausea, and diarrhea—with no obvious explanation, other than her medication.
Having taken doxycycline for months, Maria recognized that she had likely gone too far, and that not only would she not be able to continue to take antibiotics forever, but she would also need to think about making a transition to a different kind of treatment that wouldn’t compromise her health.
Enter Quantify
Searching for a natural approach to resolving acne, Maria discovered Quantify in a Google search, and saw that other members had resolved their acne, eczema, and other skin issues with diet, supplements, and lifestyle.
Knowing she would need help implementing such an approach, Maria soon signed up.
After getting matched with a certified health coach, completing a health questionnaire, and meeting with her health coach over video chat, a food sensitivity test and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) stool analysis were ordered for Maria, to assess immune reactivity to commonly consumed foods, test for parasites, bacteria, fungi, and viruses, and evaluate intestinal permeability, inflammation, and the health of her microbiome.
Dairy sensitivity
A few weeks later, she received her test results, and her health coach explained that her food sensitivity test showed a significant immune reaction to dairy, and that Maria’s regular consumption of dairy was likely causing an inflammatory response in her skin, resulting in clogged, bacteria-filled pores and ultimately acne.
Her qPCR stool analysis also showed an overgrowth of Candida albicans (a fungus that typically exists at low levels throughout the gastrointestinal tract, but that often overgrows due to antibiotic overuse), which was likely causing her digestive symptoms.
To address her chronic inflammation and candida overgrowth, her health coach continued, Maria would need to eliminate processed foods, grains, and dairy from her diet, take certain supplements, such as ginger, astragalus, and olive leaf, exercise regularly, and optimize her circadian rhythm, by minimizing exposure to blue light and getting to bed on a consistent schedule.
Recovery
While Maria had consumed milk, yoghurt, cheese, ice cream, and other dairy products for her entire life, seeing that an immune reaction to dairy was causing her acne motivated her to make the most significant dietary change that she’d ever made.
Since her teens, she had known that diet played a role in skin health, but she had always felt overwhelmed when trying to do any research on her own, ultimately dismissing the concept in favor of medication.
That Maria’s dermatologist didn’t ask her about her diet had further reinforced for her that it wasn’t important to think about whether her breakouts could be caused by what she was eating.
Receiving test results that clearly indicated that dairy was an issue for her, however, made it easy for her to go cold turkey, and within a few months of starting her health plan, Maria was no longer breaking out.
Within a year, she had completely resolved her acne and digestive symptoms, a follow-up qPCR stool analysis showed no candida overgrowth, and she reported feeling the healthiest that she’d ever felt.