Hi everyone, Tina here (+1 662 830 8246, info@nakedactives.com)

This is my interview with Marcus Fuchs' journey from July to November and all his issues and solutions he confronted around his forehead adult acne.

First of all, some initial resources and my two cents! 

In my summer blog, Foods that Cause Acne I talk about; what is Acne, how can acne develop, foods that can cause acne and explanations around the triggers that those foods cause, but ultimately if you read anything online or materials, it generally comes down to good gut health and keeping your body inflammation down.

As one can see in Foods that Cause Acne, Inflammation can often be caused by insulin spikes in the body (and in this case from bad diet/foods). MSG in Fast Foods can trigger a more pronounced spike in your insulin even if it follows a high fat low carb diet. One must be mindful of the impact that chemicals have on your body or even histamines that are often found in "nightshades". I could on further here, but this blog is about my interview with Marcus Fuchs and his 2021 summer/fall struggle with Adult Acne. 

Hi Marcus, can you tell us about your history with Acne? 

Hi Tina, well thanks for the chance to have this chat with you. I am excited to share this rather unique experience about my adult acne. Well it may be hard to believe but I never had acne when I was a teenager or kid. I used to find a rare spot here and there but never really struggled with acne. My mom used to always tell me with her lovely soft Scottish accent, don't eat that junk as you are what you eat. I used to just shrug my shoulders and think to myself, yeah, whatever mom! Boy how we learns that our Mom's are often and almost always right! Although I didn't always follow Mom's advice, I was fortunate not to worry about acne in high school. Being athletic and a sportsy person, I never quite understood how this ended up as a major issue for people. I used to listen to girls in my class and often wonder why it was such a stressful experience and often embarrassing. 

But in July I started to get some pimples on my forehead. In the old days I'd rub a piece of toothpaste on my forehead, the spot would go to a head and then eventually it'd go away. Yes, I said toothpaste Tina!! Well being middle aged, it was still my perfect hack for acne and surprisingly it wasn't working. Just look at my before and after picture here and see how bad it got? How did it really get this bad? For the first time in my life I found myself googling 'how to fix my acne'. 

So what did you do? Did it work? 

Well I was scouring the internet and couldn't find anything that wasn't a paid 'information' advert with all sorts of lovely links to all these wonderful products or devices that could fix my problem. So, I used what most guys used. Head and shoulders and a bar of soap and stop putting any sort of moisturizer on. Yeah, seriously, I did that and some of my lady friends just laughed and said, oh you are such a 'typical' guy. Well it didn't work! Yes, for the first time in history, the bar of Palmolive soap didn't work! 

I then cut my hair short as I avoided the barber during COVID  and was absolutely convinced that my longer hair was the main cause of my forehead. Well after 8 weeks and two haircuts, my pimples started to be a weekly event. I was told by former acne veterans to not scratch my head and that would help but before I knew it, I was scrubbing away. I then switched away from the bar of to use a hydrating cleaner (I tried our Naked Actives Cleanser, which helped a bit) but for the first time I started to worry that this was not going away. My old school man solutions just didn't work. 

 So what happened next? Did you find a solution? 

Well, I was convinced I could crack the nut on adult acne. I start to get angry as I managed to conquer nutrition by losing 48KG (100llbs) and I decided to go back to a first principles to problem solving. Throw away all these absurd google SEO driven searches that came up and focus on materials that "were not ON GOOGLE". I found a brilliant dermatologist who wrote a book called the Skin Care Bible. The book provided a first principles approach to skin. I discovered that as one ages your skin just doesn't work the same (read the book as I don't want to rewrite it here). I accepted the fact that I also lived in a big city, Prague.  The air isn't the best here, so I knew I had to crack the skincare code for 'me'. I struggled to full comprehend the narrow and focused depth of Skincare bible and didn't really know how to apply this knowledge. My skin was improving, and a skincare routine and I found the article our own resources thanks to one of our wrtiers, Liz Kirschner and it helped me. I also made a new friend, named Ella who is an esthetician and educator. She gave me the best solution of all! 

So what was the final solution?  

I think going back to first principles is the best thing to do. Try and 'forget' everything you've learnt and act as a kindergarten student. Presume you know nothing about the subject.

So the advice from Ella! The advice that Ella gave me was to exfoliate my skin. I had no idea what that really meant so I had ignored it the first time she told me but now having read about it and verifying it several times over, I went ahead and made the effort.  For me exfoliate was an intense experience. First actually learning about the word actually meant and then the experience.

I googled a local pharmacy and collected a nonprescription over the counter gel with Benzoylis Peroxidum as the active ingredient. The brand name here in Prague was called Akneroxid 5. The instruction said to test it on your arm as it can cause a pretty robust reaction, but, like a typical guy I just went ahead and threw it right on my forehead skipping all the testing steps. I did about 3 days of treatments. I discovered on the second day you are supposed to apply water to the skin before you put it on (not easy reading instructions in the Czech Language). For the next 7 days my forehead broken out and I think an alien probably would have scared people less.

After the peeling started, I started to itch a lot and tried to avoid scratching it. I applied some of our Vitamin C MAP we have at Naked Actives but only small amounts. After a good 2 weeks of peeling/healing my skin looked normal again. There was one tiny spot that came back but it was the core spot where the worst acne was coming  from. I am happy to say that as of today, I am 97% acne free and within a few more weeks I think I will finally feel confident again that I can control my skin. I have 1 spot on my forehead that I will treat one last time. 

Do you know what caused it? 

Well Tina, I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but my acne became an issue after I got my first COVID vaccine in early July. I read that the vaccine can cause inflammation in the body and skin. Although I didn't have any reactions to the vaccine itself outside of some fatigue, I do feel that it was an odd coincidence that I developed such an issue with my skin during this time. I am not entirely sure and will not publicly blame the vaccine as that is absurd.

It could also be that during the lockdowns and restrictions, I did eat more fried foods, although not fast foods, but fried and my diet went to crap!

Recently, I've cut back on the saturated fats as well as am avoiding a bad diet as much as I can. The acne could also be stressed induced too! I really didn't feel stressed, but I look back at the lockdown and restrictions before and after the pandemic to today where we are moving more to an endemic, and I think the hysteria around the news and press releases definitely didn't help the mindset and who really knows how the body works!  

If you really want to understand what caused your acne, I would suggest using some of the resources here. Start with first principles to any problem you feel helpless about and take the consistent and general advice you come across! Yes, don't eat poorly, avoid foods that you know are not good for you and stay as healthy as you can! You don't need to waste lots of money on products to fix your problems. I think you can fix most of your problems by tackling them from the start. 

So, there you have it folks! A big thank you to Marcus for his interview. I've done my best to transcribe it. I've tried my best to link the resources here that he referenced. 

Just to let you know Marcus is a co-owner of Naked Actives. Yes, he uses his own products as well and will tag some of them here as he truly believes in them. If you find your own products just as well, obviously, go for it. Outside of our own links, we don't profit from the other resources. This is Marcus' journey from July to November and all his issues he confronted around his forehead adult acne. Marcus is not a doctor nor dermatologist nor an expert in this field. He is an investor and entrepreneur who we reluctantly asked to give. We hope you enjoyed it and hope it helps. Never forget to always seek professional advice. This is just a testimonial and not advice!