It started out as a few pimples around my jawline. No big deal, I thought. It’s just the hormones getting back to normal (I had just had my second son a few months earlier). But as more and more pimples started popping up, worries started creeping up in the back of my mind. It took me back to when I was a teen-ager and I struggled with acne for years. But I pushed the worries aside- I’m too old to be worrying about breakouts (I was in my early thirties). But just in case, I started using acne treatments. They seemed to work for about a week, and I thought I was finally in the clear! Little did I know that I was about to get the worst acne I’ve ever had in my life.

After using acne treatments for a few weeks, the acne came back with a vengeance. It just got worse and worse over a few years. I always felt like I had to wear my hair down just to cover up my cheeks as much as possible. To make matters worse, I was a professor and I had to be in front of students on a daily basis, when all I wanted to do was hide.

I started doing my own research (I was a scientist afterall, so I looked to the scientific studies). What I discovered was that the acne treatments I was using was killing off all of the acne bacteria, plus a bunch of “good bacteria” as well. This lead to a fungal overgrowth because there were no bacteria to keep the fungus in check! I ran a test in my lab, and sure enough, it was a fungus causing my problems. I went to a dermatologist, and told them my discoveries, thinking I would be prescribed something that would take care of my problem! At Last!

But what the dermatologist told me shocked me. He said that acne was caused by a bacteria and prescribed me antibiotics. When I objected and told him that it was the antibiotics that was causing the problem in the first place, he just said something about everyone thinking they know more than the doctor.

So I went home to find other ways I could get the fungus under control. This led me to researching different types of plant oils with anti-fungal properties. I started applying different oils to my skin. Some made the acne worse, but after some trial and error, it did seem to get better. But I can’t say that my skin was as clear as I would have liked.

This was around the time that my sister in law, Katie, was making her own oils and giving them out to family- including me. She gave me custom oil blends (I was just using one oil at a time). They started to work much better than the single oils.

After a while, she started designing blends specifically for cleansing the face. Together, we came up with a protocol that included exfoliation with the oils, then wiping the excess away. This was the jackpot! It got the deep cystic acne under control, and eventually, there was no acne left to speak of!

I really love how combining my scientific knowledge, and her deep knowledge of oil blends resulted in something unique that was able to heal my acne. To this day, I won't wash my face with anything else!