Look I ain’t no expert, but this happened to me.
I always had terrible skin growing up. It plagued me for years and made me depressed, socially awkward, OCD about my skin, all that stuff. I was given a gamut of drugs to treat it, which worked with varying degrees of success, but never for very long. It was a heartbreaking roller coaster and one that scarred me literally and figuratively for much of my young adult life.
One of the treatments I used were long term antibiotics: minocycline, oxytetracycline, erythromycin, topical, oral, you name it. I was given two rounds of Roaccutane. I was put on Dianette, but I bloated and got moody. If you’re an acne sufferer, you’ll know these treatments all too well.
I cured myself, last year, after 15 years of suffering. I’m relieved, and although I still have to keep on top of it, and it’s heartbreaking that a treatment so simple could have saved me so much agony over the years, it’s worked wonders for me now. If you’re interested, it was bog standard Benzoyl Peroxide twice a day. Ten per cent to start off with, and then, when your skin’s under control, you can lower your dose.
I’d experimented with it in my youth, but it bleached stuff and made my skin flake, so I gave it up. It’s a shame. My sister gave me some on a night over in my early 30s, and my face cleared up overnight, and so I stuck with it, using a thick natural cream to counteract the dryness.
My skin has been pretty much blemish free ever since. Oh well. Life’s like that.
But the reason I posted the link to this Daily Mail article about antibiotics in babies causing eczema, above, is because of what I believe were the long term effects of long term antibiotic use in me. This is unproven, but this is my experience.
I took antibiotics on and off for years until the day I found out I was pregnant with Jonah, which was several weeks in. I stopped taking them immediately, and then went on an ill advised journalism trip to China, where my morning sickness started, and the alien cuisine failed to appeal. I ate barely anything for several days and suddenly, feeling ill, all this pinkish gloop started coming out of me. It carried on, and fearful I was miscarrying, and feeling like utter shit, I checked into hospital, where a bemused doctor scanned me, found a live fetus, and told me I had Thrush. I thought no more about it, save being a little embarrassed, and checked out of the country as soon as I could-mainly because to my pregnant palate, the food remained nauseating.
When Jonah was born his placenta was ragged. My midwives told me if they didn’t know any better they would have thought I had been a heavy smoker during my pregnancy. I hadn’t smoked a single cigarette.
It played on my mind over the years, especially as I began to develop various allergies, and eczema symptoms. My eyes would periodically puff up and itch and make me look unwell. As Jonah began to exhibit more and more Aspergers early indicators, that ragged placenta played on my mind.
I wondered about the antibiotics, and what it might have done to my microbiology.
One of my friends is a nutritionist and I would tell her about my symptoms and Jonah’s behaviour, and she was the first person to alert me to the idea, unaccepted by much of the medical community, of Candida (Thrush) causing whole body illness.
At the time, my health had taken a massive turn for the worse. After being diagnosed with a chronic pain condition, I was again prescribed a gamut of drugs to which I reacted badly. It took me months to recover. I had constant skin rashes, puffy eyes, chronic fatigue, pain and depression.
My friend, an expert in her field, advised a sugar elimination, anti-Candida diet, and after months of water, salad, meat and cheese, my skin looked better, my weight dropped and my energy levels soared.
The theory goes that yeast, or Candida grows when your good bacteria in your gut can’t control it – such as when it’s killed off by broad spectrum antibiotics. Fuelled by sugar in your diet, the yeasts ferment producing ethylene – alcohol, which can produce tiredness, skin reactions, mind fog – Google it, there’s a world of information out there- some more reliable than others.
With the microbiology in my gut severely compromised by long term antibiotic use, my health had suffered. When I stopped eating in China, i believe the Candida started to die off, causing the pink gloop and headache I suffered, which made me think I was having a miscarriage.
Ill enough to do something drastic, I ate natural yogurt every day to replenish my gut microbiology, took probiotics, drank apple cider vinegar and did daily yoga – for about a year. I got well. And slim.
Jonah, whose behaviour had become difficult to manage, I tried on a gluten and casein free diet. I gave him probiotics and fish oil. It’s hard to say what effect, if any, his diet had on him. We struggled to stick with it long term. he remains largely dairy free himself, through choice, although I give him a yoghurt drink most days before he goes to school. But he’s doing great now, and looks really healthy: long and lean with beautiful skin. Sugar turns him loopy, for sure, so we do our best on that, without being nutcases. It’s not easy, and forbidding things causes more problems in the long run, I think.
I don’t know whether years of taking antibiotics had an effect on Jonah’s development in the womb, but all I will say is the symptoms described by my friend, the diet she provided, they were so accurate and so helpful, I do wonder if that ragged placenta had something to do with my microbiology being out of whack – or account in some way for Jonah’s Aspergers’ traits.
It’s impossible to unpick. But I’m definitely an antibiotics sceptic these days, that’s for sure.
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