So you said that you do try and drink more water and sort of vegetables and so on?

Yeah.

Is that something you’ve started doing since the doctor in [home country] said that it could be a cause for your acne?

Yes. Because one thing he mentioned is about food. So I try to eat more vegetables and drink more water and eat more fruit. But it’s better now, but it doesn’t, like it doesn’t completely disappear. So I’m not sure if it’s the main cause of my acne. I think it might be a factor that make my acne worse, but it’s not the main cause of my acne. So I’m still find, trying to find the real cause of my acne, yeah.

After I’ve grown acnes on my face I’ve become very cautious. So I pay a lot of c-, attention to what I eat every day and what I drink. So I used to drink some soft drinks but now I completely like forbid that. And I mean so I have to go to bed very early yet. It’s kind of I used to live free, freely. But now because of my skin condition I have to put a lot of restrictions to my habit and, sorry, yes, and to my diet and to everything that might be, affect, like that might affect my skin. And that’s quite stressful because sometimes you can’t control everything. And when, when I feel that I can’t control, control it, I feel really, really anxious and stressful. Like I think I need to drink a lot of water to speed up the metabolism and it will help to, maybe to, yeah, to better my skin. And then in my typical day I don’t really have a lot of time to drink water because there, there wasn’t enough like water if, in library, like if you want to drink hot water.

So you think that might be to do with stress from your studies?

It might be. Cos I feel very anxious all the time and I don’t feel that I have enough time for my, for my, for my coursework. And when I sit down, I feel that I’m not very productive. I feel like, Oh, it’s time for me to drink some more water to make my skin more, yeah, and to have some fruit and vegetables and something, yeah. So, and sometimes, although I have a lot of work to do, and then I see that it’s about 11 o’clock and I think, Oh, I’m supposed to go to bed and have a good rest otherwise my skin condition will be worse. So it kind of makes me very anxious, because of my skin condition. And, and it’s, my skin condition in turn, sorry, the anxious state in turn makes me, like my skin condition worse.

Okay.

So it’s

Yeah. So the two interact with each other?

Yeah.

I think diet is quite a key one. That was another sort of factor that, you eventually realise do, does or can affect it. But, yeah, diet, I suppose the main one. Maybe stress to a certain extent. You might have certain bad weeks, but because you fluctuate quite a lot it’s difficult to sort of pin point what’s the cause, like if there’s a cause effect relationship of like stress or diet you can only kind of guess. So, yes, I suppose I didn’t really understand like all the main causes. But, you kind of just, you kind of just do your best to get on with it and try and eat well and try and hydration. I knew can affect it as well. But, like I say, because you fluctuate so much you kind of, you are sceptical whether like, you know, keeping hydrated and keeping a good diet, it does actually work or not. So, I think it’s kind of like an individual sort of level.

Was it raised ever by any of the GPs or dermatologists about sort of things like diet and stress?

No, not really. Not at all. They didn’t really go into like how your lifestyle can affect it, or at least I don’t remember them going into that sort of thing. That was more like me looking up on the internet like how to sort of prevent sort of acne and things like that.

But obviously to a certain extent that doesn’t, that will work, to a certain extent for like certain individuals, but when you’ve got acne, like, just keeping hydrated and a general, general good diet is not going to do a great deal. I mean, it might help, but it’s not going to like clear it.

I think my skin will be fine from now on. Touch wood. I think with Roaccutane (isotretinoin) when, when you’ve been on it, you’ve got a lot less chance of getting acne again. So I’m quite confident I won’t get it again and as long as I like, I am like sort of doing the stuff like keeping hydrated and having a good diet and like doing a little bit exercise that’s going to help.

And do not eat anything that like ice cream, chocolate and sweets like that or spicy ones. So but I love eating them [laughs].

Oh.

So it’s very hard for me like to not eat anything like special sweets or. Oh like OK I will not touch them’ like so hard [laughs].

So what do you do about that, do you still eat some spicy and sweet foods?

I’m not sure it’s that, I cut them for like two years completely and I just recently like got them back again because I stopped seeing the doctor and I think my skin is getting better for these days. But I still can’t like eat that much and like controlled to a limited Yeah.

I don’t drink or smoke. Just, not anything to do with spots, I just wouldn’t smoke myself, cos I think it’s silly. And then drinking, I’m kinda young, so I don’t really, I haven’t really got into that yet.

Diet. I might avoid the occasional thing. So I might be like in the Co-op with my friends like, Oh, I’m going to get a Crunchie. I’m going to get a Mars bar. And I’ll be like, I’m going to get a Fruit Shoot today. Which is still really sugary, but it’s not as bad as like whatever I was thinking about getting. So it’s not like a big change. I’m not like, I know friends who have just gone, I’m not gonna to eat this because I know it’ll be bad for my skin.

So about, about the diet. Before that, had you been sort of cutting certain foods out?

Not really cos I just kind of figured that, I’m not really that age where I want to have a diet and I’m quite happy how I am. And I was like if I’m going to have spots, I’m going to have spots but I also want to enjoy pizza and stuff. So I just kind of got on with it.

With the big lump it just used to kind of ooze [laugh]. It’s not very pretty. But yeah, and like underneath I think kind of sort of like bloody fluid just used to leak out, and that would, that would be kind of what would come down. And then I think because it was leaking like that, it would kind of like crust over. So I’d get like a hard kind of, yeah, a hard crust, like. And that’s what would get stuck to like my pillow, for example. And then obviously when I woke up like I’d sort of pull it off with it. So yeah, and just like random sporadic bleeding as well. Especially in the night I think cos I’d sort of rub my face against it. But yeah, it was very, very sore.

So when it was really bad I used to take painkillers to sleep. And I couldn’t really lie on my face. So I’d just kind of like, just lie on my back [laugh]. Yeah, lie on my back and try not to move. And I think once I got to sleep it was okay, but then it was just like I started to feel quite embarrassed because I’d end up making a bit of a mess. And then like even if I washed the sheets, like some of them obviously sometimes the blood doesn’t quite come out. And like. Yeah. It was just quite [laugh], it felt a bit like disgusting I guess. And yeah, it was just a bit awkward. Most people were like, Oh, you’re bleeding [laugh]. And yeah, just being painful, like I just- my sleep quality was quite affected by that, because I couldn’t really get to sleep. And yeah, the pain- I mean painkillers helped but not significantly. Like they couldn’t help the fact that it would obviously bleed in the night and things like that. And then if you wake up and then you kind of have to get a bit more painkillers in. It depends on, I mean, different nights would be like particularly bad, and. Yeah. I think it’s just-. And feeling like self-conscious that, and like I knew that when I went to sleep like I’d wake up and, and then just having to deal with like the kind of mess.

Has it ever affected anything like sleeping patterns, getting to sleep or staying asleep?

Well yeah, I think so actually because obviously when I was like going to sleep that would be when I would be like thinking about it. And like I’d often get quite upset. So yeah I think so. I think like stopping me getting to sleep yeah not, not staying asleep that was, that would be fine but yeah often like I’d just be lying awake thinking about it, feeling miserable. And particularly [clears throat] particularly when I had the implant and then that made it worse and like that let me up a lot because I felt like it was my fault. Because I felt like I’d been kind of talked into having it and I’d kind of been, I felt a bit misled because obviously they’d said, Oh, like don’t worry, like if it’s a problem we’ll just take it out and it will go back to normal. But I felt like I should have said, No, that it wasn’t worth the risk and so I, yeah that was particularly kind of yeah, frustrating for me because I felt responsible. And like the whole time before I’d never really felt like I had any control over like what made it better or worse and then suddenly it was like, it had become a lot worse and it was sort of my fault. And yeah so that was quite frustrating.

And that definitely kept me up [laughs]. And then also all the times that I kind of lay awake wondering what to do about it and like yeah. So yeah, yeah I think it did affect my sleep [laughs].