1 Green Thing v.3

Well, this week, lets call this one supplement thing.  Or one healthy thing.  Or one confession thing.  I guess it's all of that.  So, let's start with the confession... I don't have the best skin.  It's been a source of contention for me since I was 13 years old.  I don't talk about it much (except with family members who understand), but it's been a major contributing factor to my self esteem over the years (as in, knocks it down quite a bit).  I've always dreamed of having perfect, beautiful, don't need an ounce of makeup, skin.  It was terrible during my pregnancy, and at that time I pretty much just learned to deal with it, and accept it.  Kind of admitting defeat.

A couple of months ago, Isla June had a stomach bug (that I thought was a UTI), and I turned to this book for answers.  

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I love this book for the fact that I can look up symptoms and it can give me a general idea of how I can treat the illness, or give me enough information to give the doctor in order to help diagnose the symptoms.  I received it from our Holistic doctor right after Isla June was born, but you can buy it from Amazon.com.  Seriously, I love this book and I know it will be a valuable resource for my family many years into the future.  I definitely recommend it.

So whilst looking up Isla June's symptoms, I ran across a word of interest to me.  The dreaded A word (acne).  ugh.  I decided to see what the book had to say.  And essentially a lot of the information entailed that it's a bit of a mineral and vitamin imbalance.  There's more to it than that, but I'm giving the quick version.  It definitely made sense to me.  My skin is very much affected by my diet.  Over the years I've noticed that it didn't matter what I wash my face with, much more depends on what I am eating (or what week it is in the month).  Ice cream is my nemesis.  I love the stuff, but I live to regret what it can do to my skin.  I decided to try and implement some of the supplements into my routine and see if they made a difference.
And along with that research, I also stumbled across this website talking about the supplement Astaxanthin.

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Essentially, this supplement belongs to the family of carotenoids (something my book said I needed to help with my skin.).  It's naturally occurring in salmon, which is where they get their pink skin.  It's known for it's healing properties for the skin and shown to be beneficial in preventing certain cancers.  Yeah, sign me up.  Seriously though, I figured I could try it for a month, see how I felt and decide from there if it's something I wanted to keep taking.
And at first, I didn't notice anything.  I read that it can take 1 whole month to notice a change.  And after a month, I did.  Well, honestly, I didn't notice it until after I stopped taking it!  My skin showed me that I needed the vitamin. 
So, now it's back in my regimen and my skin is looking much better, which means I feel better.  And hey, maybe it will help with my whole "not looking 30 when I turn 30".

And honestly, this supplement isn't just for someone with skin concerns, it has so much more in it than that.  But, if it can help my skin, imagine what it can do for yours!
Here's Dr. Mercola's take.

Happy Supplementing!