Teen beats acne with good food
Pimples are inconvenient at any time, but Liv Groves-Kruk’s were so painful, they led her on a life-changing journey, writes Serena Solomon.
When deep, inflamed cystic acne began forming on Liv Groves-Kruk’s face as she was struggling with typical teenage angst, her confidence went from a 10 out of 10 to zero. The pimples were so painful she couldn’t sleep on whatever side of her face had blazing red mounds. She wouldn’t let herself be seen under certain light, or from specific angles that she thought emphasised her skin condition.
‘‘I was so embarrassed . . . I would wear a scarf and a hat,’’ said Groves-Kruk, who lives in Upper Hutt, north of Wellington.
That was Groves-Kruk at 16.
Now, at 19, she has clear skin and is promoting her cookbook, Simply Nourishing, which details the diet she used to help rid her face of those painful cysts. The recipes are void of gluten, sugar, soy and grains, and processed oils such as canola, while focusing on fruit, vegetables, proteins, and healthy fats such as coconut oil.
The vision for the book is the result of her cooking experiments during the Covid-19 lockdown last year, when Groves-Kruk began documenting her creations on social media.
‘‘I wanted to just start fresh and try something new,’’ said GrovesKruk, of her diet and journey to healing cystic acne that took two years.
She describes her diet and the cookbook as paleo with a touch of dairy. Paleo is an eating philosophy that focuses on the whole foods eaten by early humans, rather than the gluten-heavy and processed foods of the modern Western diet, a major culprit of acne.
Regular acne is described as a series of small whiteheads and blackheads. About 80 per cent of people will develop some form of acne between 11 and 30 years of age, according to Health Navigator New Zealand.
Cystic acne takes this to another level, and only impacts about two in every 1000 people who have regular acne. The cysts are caused when glands around hair follicles produce too much oil, clogging pores and producing a cyst deep in the skin.
Diet, stress, hormones, and genetics can play a role in the condition that is often treated with antibiotics or isotretinoin, the active ingredient in products such as Accutane. If the patient is female, the contraceptive pill can also be prescribed to rein in hormones.
It is widely accepted that diet is a major cause of acne in the modern world, according to Dr Paul Nolan from Ponsonby Cosmetic Medical Clinic.
However, ‘‘The science can be tricky,’’ he said, pointing to the cost and difficulty of diet research that can reach conflicting conclusions.
He highlighted two studies – one done in Melbourne in 2007; another in France in 2014 – that looked at the impact on skin when high glycaemic foods such as sugar, white bread and white rice are avoided. These confirmed a reduction in the number of pimples experienced by participants who avoided those foods. The paleo diet avoids many high glycaemic foods.
‘‘I’m not so much advocating what diet people eat. I’m advocating what foods they should avoid,’’ Nolan said, cautioning that not all acne will respond to a change in diet.