Does acne make you ugly ?

Karen Jessett, 30, is a graphic designer and founder of acne-advice.com. She lives near Cambridge with her husband Bob and their nine-month-old son, Finlay. She has had recurrent acne for 19 years. In my mid-teens, I felt so hideous because of my acne that I never left the house without make-up. The one time I ventured out bare-faced to buy milk, two men walking past said. 'God, that girl is so ugly'. After that. I refused to let anyone see me without my mask. When I did wear make-up. men found me attractive, and even my long-term boyfriend only told me I was beautiful when I had my 'face' on. It reaffirmed my belief that my own skin had to be hidden To this day. I still feel bare if I don't wear full foundation. When the acne first hit l was only 11 and I had no idea what to do. A friend told me her brother had received some pills from the doctor to clear up his spots, so I went to my Gfi was given some antibiotics, and my acne disappeared. But that began a cycle of medication that blighted my life for years; my body became used to the antibiotics and spots would come back with a vengeance. Then I'd be given a stronger prescription. This went on, until at 22,1 was taking a dose more potent than they use to treat tonsillitis, three times a day. I was never told about the side-effects of antibiotics -that you can become immune to them, and that they kill off the beneficial bacteria in your digestive system and can cause Candida and thrush. Instead, every month when I picked up my prescription, I was given Canesten to treat the thrush at the same time. In my mid-twenties, l became fed up with taking so many tablets and seeing no long-term improvement in my acne. I wondered if there was anything else I could do. I went into Waterstone's and stumbled upon a book by Kathryn Marsden about how lifestyle affects your skin. It contained a list of foods that should be avoided and I realised I was eating all of them. It was like a light bulb going on. I stopped taking the tablets, cut out processed and red meat, pork and dairy products, and began to eat fruit smoothies with Maca (a root vegetable that you can take as a supplement to help stabilise hormone-related skin problems).

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