LENA BLOG

Jody came in to see me after reading my book [ Timeless Skin ] and realizing we lived in the same city. She is a 23-year-old with problem/acne skin. When she first walked in, it was obvious she had skin troubles; the whole bottom half of her face was red from blemishes and sensitive, irritated, skin. As I always do, I asked her a series of questions ranging from what her skin care routine consisted of to how much water she drank, what if any vitamins and herbs she might take, and what type of exercise she was committed to. She was aware of sugar in her diet, and in fact Jody said she had just given up putting two teaspoons of sugar in each of the 2-3 cups of coffee she drank daily. That she stopped this daily sugar habit is something to be congratulated. And because is was a recent change, her skin hadn’t had enough time to clear up significantly. What Jody hadn’t given up (yet) was a sugary cereal she was eating every morning for breakfast. At this point, she wasn’t abl...

I came into the facial room to meet a new client, Cheryl. I went over her current skin care routine and any medications she might be on, especially the birth control pill. I asked if she took vitamins or herbs, did she exercise, drink water, and wear sunscreen? As soon as all the questions were answered, I began the facial. After cleansing her skin, I brought my magnifying lamp over and peered through it at her face. The lamp magnifies about seven times, but in Cheryl’s case I really didn’t need the lamp. I could see from pretty far away that her skin was very broken out. She didn’t have pustules; her breakout consisted of those hard, red, deep-under-the-skin places. I could also see she was causing some damage from picking at her skin. “Clean food”—good for skin Instantly I knew she was ingesting way too much sugar, but I held myself back and proceeded to ask about her eating habits. I told her not to tell me what was good in her diet, but that I was int...

Donna has blackheads on her nose and rarely gets whiteheads. She experiences most of her breakouts in the hollows of her cheeks. She complains of oily eyelids. Other than her normal daily routine, she uses a peel-off mask now and then. For breakfast, she has oatmeal or cereal, and sometimes a bagel and eggs. On a normal work day, she has fast food for lunch. The sugar she knows she eats comes in the form of muffins, which is just like cake in terms of sugar content—no matter how healthy they may appear to be. Donna says she is “very constipated.” Donna used Proactiv for three months; then she said it stopped working. This is something a lot of people have told me. But I will say this: No matter what regime you are using product-wise, if you don’t change your eating habits, there is no guarantee your skin troubles will exit your life. Donna’s case is actually easy to help. She wasn’t really aware of how much sugar she was getting just by eating cereal and muffins, which ...

The following examples are of less obvious or even hidden sugars that you may be consuming on a frequent or even daily basis. Hopefully this information will help you determine sugar in your diet. When a client tells me they “don’t eat sugar” yet they have (what looks like) sugar breakouts, I start down a list of possible problem foods that perhaps they have overlooked as being “bad.” Be honest. I find that after asking lots of questions, a client will eventually tell me about some sugary food they are eating—knowing that it is probably a bad thing. Don’t waste this time, just cut to the chase and be up front about how much sugar you are eating. If you have a breakout that seems “unexplainable,” go back in time and see if you can discover how you might have eaten something incidentally that could have caused your skin to erupt, even if it is just a slight breakout. Do you add anything to your coffee or tea? Some sugar substitutes can have the same effect on your sk...

Perhaps you’ve read Sugar Addicted? Try a three-day sugar fast (see link below) and decided to give up sugar for a while. Maybe it was a New Year’s resolution, deciding it was time to make a positive change and sugar had to go. Whether you’re skilled at letting the sweet stuff go or need some helpful hints, the suggestions below may be new to you, and my hope is these ideas help you to lessen sugar in your diet to bring you closer to balanced health. Don’t eat sugar two days in a row. If I follow this rule, the addiction doesn’t have a chance to set in, I get to exercise my will, and I can have sugar every now and then. This doesn’t mean it’s OK to eat it every other day. It means don’t go on a run of eating sugar for days on end. Have some cookies one day if you haven’t had sugar in a while and just want to indulge. But stop there. Otherwise you will get your system readdicted and you’ll have to go through the withdrawal process all over again. Don’t start another chain...

When clients come in who admit to eating sugar but have no outward signs of excess sugar consumption (like breakouts, for instance), I will not only ask if they get frequent headaches, which many times is a side effect of excess sugar, but also do they get canker sores inside their mouth or on their tongue? Your body simply cannot throw off sugar into thin air. The toxic residue from this “white devil” has to be eliminated somehow, some way, somewhere. I believe these inner-mouth sores (sometimes called ulcers or technically aphthous ulcers ) are actually similar to blemishes—like a zit inside your mouth. Why? Once again, from my own life experience, these sores arise in relation to the amount of sugar I have consumed. I am not saying that every canker sore’s appearance is due to sugar. I am simply trying to give you my own personal experience with these problem spots and why I have discovered they occur. You may find other offenders and have a different experience than I ha...

Although sugar intake causes many ill-effects in different areas of the body, here I am going to explore the problem that I deal with in my profession, which is sugar’s effect on skin. During the next several months I will be posting a few case studies straight from my skin care salons. These clients all had issues with sugar consumption that were causing problems with their skin, sometimes unknowingly. I hope these stories will bring more awareness about the detrimental effects of sugar and shed some light if you suffer with problem skin. Case study: Gretchen Gretchen came in for her first facial. She had widespread breakout over her whole face; small red infected places that were persistent. As I examined her skin I figured it was sugar consumption but kept from saying anything until I had more information. She had recently gone through a round of antibiotics from her dermatologist, which brought her little relief from the breakouts. I explained that she was p...