I would never and have never personally taken Accutane.  But when you do, it’s scary stuff.  All the side effects to you are bad enough.  But they also require women to take birth control and essentially sign a pledge form not to get pregnant.  I mean there are slip ups I’m sure, and at that time you might be in a place where you would have to take more serious steps to avoid pregnancy in general or rather fix the problem.  It’s not that you might not normally want to have kids at certain times.  But quite frankly, with Accutane you are guaranteed to have birth defect problems.  It’s a given thing, and you cannot really avoid it.  So while birth control alone could cause you to reduce acne anyway, which is really helpful along with naturally balancing out other things too, you do have to remember to take it whenever you take Accutane, because one slip could make the difference, and then you would definitely be in trouble to say the least.  Well, you would have to figure it out, because the birth defects that come with Accutane are not pretty.  My suggestion though, just don’t get started, find another way besides Accutane, because in most cases there are plenty of choices.

Senior portraits, my worst nightmare, or maybe just something I was too lazy to do, so I played it off like that.  Apparently senior portraits are not for you, and I always thought they were, they’re for your parents.  So my parents took “senior pictures” later on when I was 20 or something.  But honestly, so often you are not in a shape where you necessarily want to remember that.  Maybe you have your teenage baby fat, maybe you have an outbreak of acne, in fact it seems like you almost always have an outbreak of acne, I had my reasons, mostly that I just didn’t like pictures.  But the reality is that as far as pictures go, they don’t just airbrush models now, they can airbrush you.  I mean when I took those pictures, I looked good.  I had finally gotten my acne under control and everything, and the airbrushing a few inches off here and there definitely helps with the self esteem.  Granted, I didn’t actually look like that.  But getting rid of the zits that I could have had, not a bad thing, and evening out skin tone on the computer, an awesome thing.  I loved it anyway.

I’ve never been big on sugar.  Even as a kid, I would trade all my chocolate away for the best pixie sticks, jolly ranchers, all that stuff at Halloween.  I was the only kid on the block who didn’t like chocolate, and I had some serious leverage, always ending up with the biggest bag of candy.  But when it came right down to it, I would eat one or two pieces and then my siblings would end up eating more before my parents got rid of it for obvious reasons.  So it’s hard for me to understand people who have addictions to chocolate, are dependent on sugar, etc.  I have my occasional fix, but nothing too big.  This being said I still had the same breakouts as everybody else throughout my teenage years.  There are two common misconceptions about acne.  The first is that chocolate causes acne, the second is that sugar causes acne.  This considered, I think I just dispelled that myth.  You can believe experience of course or you can believe science.  In this particular case, science is on my side.  They agree, there is no scientific proof that either of these factor into acne at all.  So next time you want to blame that, though it could definitely help you to keep better control over weight or otherwise, think of another cause or reason.

Bug bites, I’ve learned through experience, tend to look a lot like zits.  I’ve steamed them, thinking they were zits, used the usual stuff, and it of course never works, because they’re not zits.  But of course, when I turn to my last treatment, anti inflammatories and cortisone, it usually works.  But the reality is that they do look like bug bites, and they can be just as annoying and inconvenient.  On your face, they will still look like huge zits.  So here’s one way to prevent them.  While cortisone works to get the inflammation down usually, you can change your diet a little to keep the bugs from biting you as much.  First of all, stop eating bananas.  They never particularly appealed to me.  But they apparently attract mosquitos.  We all know not to put sweet things on our skin, but that particular one in your diet doesn’t help either.  Second, start eating more raw garlic.  Cooked doesn’t count, if you have to take a pill, they have no scent ones.  But this will help you to actually actively keep the bugs away.  You can also get pills for a few bucks at the natural foods stores.  And of course, it will cost you nothing to stop eating bananas.  So avoid the appearance of huge zits with this.

Be on guard for the attack of the health maniac.  This is the person who you meet in the grocery store and they begin immediately to criticize your purchase choices.  They give you dirty looks if they see you eating something that is clearly unhealthy, but which you are thoroughly enjoying.  They have completely divorced the idea of enjoyment from the world of food and eating.

The health maniac always has advice that they have recently read in a magazine or newspaper article somewhere and they are shocked if you doubt the veracity of their information.  They insist that every one should obviously be following the same alternative health protocol they are because it is simply evident to them that everyone needs it.  The health maniac thinks and stresses about their health to the point that they are usually hypochondriacs, always worried about this or that minor symptom and  what it could mean and what they could take or who they could see to address the problem.

Here is the funny thing.  The health maniac is usually not all that healthy.  Also the health maniac is not always the person with what you might think of as the most extreme ideas about health, but they take the ideas they do have and try to push them on everyone.

I had a trip to a chiropractor the other day that was truly amazing and, for me, very unusual.  The doctor asked a few questions, and then proceeded to write various ideas and things on little pieces of paper, like types of supplements and things that I had been eating etc.  He then put the paper into my right arm and told me to hold my arm out and resist as he tried to push it down, without me knowing which piece of paper I had in my hand.  Well, when holding some of the papers it was easier to resist him pulling on my arm, and others it was more difficult and it felt weaker.  From this he pulled a diagnosis on the kind of adjustment and such that I needed, and also some ideas about what I should and should not be eating etc.  

This whole thing was fascinating, and struck me as some kind of witchcraft at first, until I looked into it and found that it is a practice called applied kinesiology, and this kind of muscle testing is actually quite common.  The chiropractic treatment was great, and I am not sure about the recommendations but I will try them.   Strange but good, who knew

I went to the first “fitness class” of my life the other day.  Until now, I have always savored my work-out independence.  My workouts have consisted of going to the gym and working a bunch of random machines with as little downtime as possible.  This works fine, but is a little unpredictable, and I am not sure what progress I make so much because I never really do the same workout twice.  

I could simply get organized on my own, but that concept has a lousy history, so a friend got me a free pass to try a workout “pump” class.  I was half picturing some aerobics class with me as the only guy, but there were quite a variety of folks at the class, though the instructor was female.  The class kicked my but, and I was even a bit light on the weights I put on my bar.   This was no fu-fu aerobics class at all, but a full on work out.  The instructor was merciless, and we were taxed to even try to keep up.  It was great.  The only problem was that each part to the workout was done to a song, and they apparently have a lousy taste in music, even if they are super fit.

The best meal in the world is a summer fish barbecue with fresh corn on the cob, especially if it is salmon for  the fish.   There is something about fresh grilled fish that just feels healthy, and with the right marinade, the taste to me just epitomizes summer.  A steak just leaves a person feeling heavy , and chicken is, to me, just kind of blah.  Fish also packs nutrition in what it does and doesn’t have.

Fish is rich in omega 3 fatty acids which your body, and in particular your brain, is always in need of.  What fish doesn’t have is  a lot of saturated fat.  Even fatty salmon compares well to most beef or chicken.  Fish is generally very lean to begin with, so there is less fat overall.  You do have to make sure that it is fresh, however, and if you live inland this can be a challenge.  

Cultures which eat a lot of animal protein, but mostly fish, have almost no heart disease in their populations, by the way, so eat up.  Of course, you can’t deep fry the stuff.  The grill is the way to go.

I just had a meal at one of those all you can eat salad buffet restaurants.  The thing about these places is that on the advertisements and flyers what you see are fresh vegetables, but the reality of what I saw most people eating in there was different.  Its is almost like the advertisements and idea of the place tell the part of you that wants to be healthy that this is an acceptable place to eat, then once you get in there  the junk food junky takes over and eats five helpings of the creamy alfredo pasta.

For me it is not so bad, because I love the variety of  fresh raw vegetables available for a massive salad, and I even avoid puting a pint of honey mustard on it.  Then it comes to the soup, pasta, bread (hmmm…sour dough and pizza) and I am lost.  At least I get a bed of nice salad for all these heavy foods to slam into.  Of course, it becomes a total binge when it comes to the fresh brownies, which two of into a massive brownie sundae.  

Still, I will probably fall for it next time as well…all those fresh veggies…

There are some great products out there for treating acne, and people should find ones that work for them, that they are comfortable with and will pay the expense of.  For me, the most basic skin treatment or way to defeat acne starts inside rather than something that I put on my face or skin.

I can clearly see that if I eat greasy foods, especially animal fat, that I will break out in about a day.  If I keep eating such foods I will constantly be breaking out.  If I stop, my acne is much better, but that does not solve the problem entirely.  I wish it did, then that would be easy… except for the hardship of having to live without pizza.  There are some other things that make a difference as well.

I am not totally sure, but I find that when I eat a lot of dark green leafy plants like fresh spinach it helps as well.