If you have skin issues, you definitely need to check today’s episode of Period Story with Cheryl Woodman. Cheryl is a scientist, award-winning skincare formulator and acne expert.
In this episode, Cheryl shares:
- How you should actually be washing your face
- Common triggers for acne
- Her own acne healing journey
- And the story of her first period
Cheryl says that if you understand the underlying biology changes of what’s causing your skin to become acne-prone, you can be empowered to take back control of your skin health and to get clear without the need for acne meds. If you want to work with Cheryl, use the code GETCLEAR20 to get 20% off her course Acne Warrior.
Thank you, Cheryl!
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Le’Nise: Tell me the story of your very first period.
Cheryl: Sure. First of all, thank you so much for having me. I remember when you invited me on the show and I thought back about how many years it’s been since I shared the story about when I had my first period and when I was much younger. It used to be something I’d share with my close girlfriends all the time, and it would be quite a bonding experience. Now I’m 35 and it’s something that I’ve not spoken about in so long, so it’s going to be really good to relive it today.
So for me I had my first period when I was in about year 8 or 9 at secondary school, so I think about 13 or 14 years old. And it was the weekend, I think it was about spring time because I remember it being a sunny day but not super warm. And I was with my parents visiting an English Heritage site which my dad loved to do, when he lived in the UK and I of course found so boring and really didn’t want to be there. This site that we were visiting on the weekend, it had like a live re-enactment on and it had some food stores and jewellery sellers, so it was a little bit more exciting than the usual visits. I remember reading needing the toilet, and so I went with my mom. And the bathrooms they were renovating at the time. So they had these portaloos lined up and this castle had almost like a big square green in the middle of it, and it had a pathway that run down the centre of the green, and they’d stacked these portaloos all the way up against this pathway. I remember there was this massive queue of people needing to use the toilet. So I eventually got into this portoloo and a big, dark blue plastic portaloo and I can’t see so well inside. And your eyes are adjusting from the bright sunshine outside. I went to use the toilet and I remember suddenly realising that I had blood in my underwear and oh my goodness, I started my first period and I can’t speak to my mum about that because there’s so many people outside. And I remember just taking a load of toilet tissue and putting that in my underwear. By the time I came out of the portaloo to leave, my mum had already gone into a different portaloo so I couldn’t speak to her and my dad and my sister were waiting. I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it in front of them, so I just kind of kept it to myself and I was just hoping that I wasn’t going to leak probably through my trousers. And I remember we went around the jewellery store with my mum and my mum actually bought me a ring that I still have to this day. And I always think about that ring as being the day I started my period and we eventually, after maybe an hour went back to the car and then my dad spotted this walk near the car and he said, Oh, so we should give this walk again. I remember just screaming inside. No, Dad, I need to get home and speak to Mum.
And anyway, we went for this walk and eventually got home. And again my mum was desperate for the toilet. She ran into the house and I ran in behind. But by the time I’d got there she’d lock the door and I banged on the door and I think she’d had enough of me and my sister that day. So she was like, Just wait your time. And so I stood outside and she opened the door and I bundled straight and locked the door behind me and her. I said, Mum, I’ve started my period. I don’t remember too much of what she said. I remember that she showed me where the pads were, which was the side of the bath tub came down and the pads were behind that. And I also remember that she asked me, Are you okay? And I remember thinking, Oh, am I not supposed to be okay? I am. But yeah, I think I’m okay. I’m good. I’m good with this. And that was my first period.
Le’Nise: You sounded like you were quite comfortable once you were able to finally speak to your mom, to share with her what happened. And she asked you. She sounded like she was very empathetic. How did you learn about what was actually happening to you?
Cheryl: Yeah. I think that’s a really interesting question because I, I don’t know if there was any point when I really did learn what was happening to me. I think it was being a scientist. I’m going to use the word osmosis, the gradual soaking in of pieces of information from biology class at school. And we had PSHE lessons, so I knew it was natural to have a monthly bleed. And I knew the basics of, of what starting your period meant in that I could get pregnant. But other than that, I didn’t really know too much. When I was thinking about coming on your podcast today, there was one memory that stuck out from school, and I don’t think it was PSHE class, but it was a biology class when they started to talk a little bit about female hormone health, and I don’t know if you remember this from your science classes, but they wheeled in the TV, these huge cathode ray tube TVs, and they put a video on it, which seemed like it’d been filmed 30 years before. And it was really it was really strange because it was a there was a man talking about what to expect every month. And then there was this video of a woman going about her day and finding everything really stressful. And it was talking about PMS and all these symptoms that you might get at different times of the month and headaches.
And I remember it being more of a negative feeling that, oh my gosh, we’ve got to deal with this every month. And it being more portrayal of what a natural period is and that it comes with these negative symptoms. Which which is interesting to think back on, because I know now that’s not a normal period and that’s not normal for a woman to experience that it during every cycle. And if you are getting symptoms like that, then it’s an indicator of something going on inside. But other than that, I think it’s more has been more talking with friends and sharing stories when you were younger about what was normal and what you’re experiencing and then if there has been anything which has happened for me. So I think a big a big learning for me when I looked at my female hormone patterns more deeply was actually when I started to get breakouts and acne. And it was because of that symptom, which I was concerned and worried about, that I started to look more into my female hormone health and my period health and what that was telling me. So not necessarily that I ever went looking to learn about periods, but that signals my body was giving me made me eventually start getting to know my period health in more detail.
Le’Nise: And when you first got your period, your mum asked you if you were okay. What was your experience of your period like?
Cheryl: Sure. So my period my my first few years, I didn’t really get any negative symptoms other than I remember. My third period was very specific. I had the worst period cramping and I just remember not being able to sit still, but also not being able to keep moving. It was this really weird conflict of I didn’t feel like I had anything that could make it better. And I remember sitting on the bathroom floor with my knees poured into my stomach and my mom offering me a hot water bottle and I thought it would just make me feel quite sick, and not help. And I took the hot water bottle and within ten, 20 minutes, I was feeling so much better and just thinking, wow, this is really helpful. And I remember my mum saying to me, actually on that day that, Oh, maybe you’re going to be one of these women who has period cramps really bad. And obviously when you’ve not had an experience of so many periods, I thought to myself, Oh my goodness, am I going to have to deal with this every month? But it just seemed to be a one off actually.
After that, my periods I didn’t get regular cramping and if I got any mild cramping, then I would sort it out with a hot water bottle. And it worked quite well for me. It wasn’t until I was in my early twenties when I started to get more period related symptoms like acne breakouts and cystic jawline acne I had, which is when I started to look into my female hormone health in a bit more detail. And it also coincided with a journey of using different contraceptives because I’d I’d been struggling with acne and breakouts and seeing them fluctuate with my monthly cycle for a few years. But being able to deal with it through some skincare products and it not bothering me too much and I changed my contraceptive to the copper coil because I wanted it to be non-hormonal and I saw a huge increase in my breakouts in combination with my periods becoming a lot, lot heavier. And that was really when I started to look into what was happening hormonally, why I was breaking out, and how I could help to heal my skin. Because the breakouts that I was getting when I was on the copper coil were really deep rooted, painful cystic breakouts along my jawline, and they were barely healing before more were cropping up. And I just was in this never ending cycle of oily skin and breakouts that really started to impact the way that I was feeling. I felt really down about it and it really was affecting my self-confidence at work because I felt like nobody would take me seriously with all these breakouts on my face.
Le’Nise: So were you originally prescribed the pill for the breakouts and the acne?
Cheryl: That’s really interesting question because it’s definitely what many women are prescribed when they go to see the doctor when they have acne. Actually, I previous to that, I had been taking the mini pill and it was of my own accord that I wanted to stop taking that and come off onto a non-hormonal method of contraception. So I almost had the reverse experience of what many of my clients have, and so I came off that went on to the copper coil, and I remember speaking to the doctor about these symptoms that it was worsening my acne and that my periods were heavier. I remember her saying, you know, it’s quite normal. Sometimes it does make periods happier, but there’s not any indication that that’s linked with acne or that the copper coil could be causing your acne in any way. I knew personally because it was my body that there had been a very distinct change between coming off of the mini pill and going on to the copper coil on my skin flaring up with that. And of course, the copper coil with it making your periods heavier is having an effect and an effect on the inflammation levels within your body as well. And when you’re dealing with inflammatory hormonal acne, that can very much worsen the symptoms that you are experiencing. So for me, birth control wasn’t something that I used or had used to control acne, but it was that I’d seen a worsening of it with switching.
Le’Nise: And when? How long were you on the copper coil?
Cheryl: I think I may have had it for about a year. I had it removed for the reasons that it was making my periods excessively heavy. And I was somebody when I was younger, he tended to have heavier periods anyway and. Had it removed for those reasons. And I definitely saw an improvement in my breakouts as well. When it was removed, they didn’t go away completely, but there was an improvement in them.
Le’Nise: Okay, that’s interesting. And were you then advised to go on to another form of contraceptive? Or were you. That was the end of your journey with hormonal and non hormonal contraceptives.
Cheryl: Yeah. So when. When I came off the copper coil, I went on to the Mirena coil as kind of an in-between, it being a more localised hormone, not taking it orally as a tablet every day. And in the Mirena coil that did that to my skin somewhat, but I was still getting cystic breakouts and I switched after I was on the Mirena coil for quite some time, and then I switched on to the fertility awareness methods as being a non-hormonal method of contraception. And in the same way that we spoke about with the pill sometimes being prescribed for acne, I’m really not a fan of that when I work with women who’ve been on the pill for helping to control the acne.
It’s something that I don’t recommend because it’s shutting down your natural hormone production and it puts the plaster on what’s happening underneath. And actually for me it was the same with birth control. When I came off of the Mirena coil onto the fertility awareness method, it took many years, my periods to come back. That’s not actually a normal, normal thing to experience. Usually when you have the Mirena removed, periods will come back fairly quickly.
But for me, being on the Mirena coil, I wasn’t getting a period when I used that method of contraception, so my body wasn’t able to talk to me when I was going through certain things to say, Hey, something’s up here. You’ve now lost your period. So it was a journey over a few years again to get my periods back and to really understand what my body was doing. And actually it’s only really been this year that I’ve got a good handle on how to support my body in having a regular period.
For me, what I’ve identified as a big trigger. So I play tag rugby quite competitively. I play for Yorkshire and for Great Britain and our training really ramps up over the summer months and we have very intensive even weekend training sessions of 4 hours and playing tag rugby. It’s more like HIIT session. So it’s lots of quick sprinting on the pitch and it’s quite a hard on your body from that point of view. And I’d very much seen the last two years that when I go through that heavy intensive training period in the summer months, my periods become irregular and sometimes stop, whereas in the winter they they come back and they start to become more regular. So. It’s been a learning experience through contraceptives, trying to understand my period health and what works to help my body have a really healthy, natural period.
Le’Nise: It’s so interesting, the journey that you’ve been on from the mini pill to the copper coil to the Mirena coil to now fertility awareness method. So for listeners who aren’t aware, that is where you use a combination of the signs that your body is giving you, like your cervical fluid, changes in energy, mood, and also your basal body temperature, which you take every morning just after you wake up to tell you when you’re most fertile. So to turn that’s a real journey and also then layering on what the changes that you see in your period and menstrual cycle from intense exercise. It’s really and what I find really fascinating and of course it makes sense because you’re a scientist it’s that you and you kind of are you have this awareness of all of the different things that have affected your period and then the kind of side effects were the acne and so on and so forth. Just going back to what you were saying about the acne specifically, that is that is what you do now. Like you’re an acne expert, you are a skincare formulator. Why do you think doctors are and GPs are so quick to prescribe the pill as a way to reduce acne?
Cheryl: Yeah. It’s a really good question. I think part of it comes from obviously when you see any doctor, they want to help you and giving you something to go away with feels very much like you’ve got an action plan. And actually, in terms of the doctor’s arsenal, if you like, of treatment for acne, it very much is limited to medications and you won’t usually find diet, lifestyle, supplement advice when you go to visit your doctor. At least that’s very much the case in the UK. The pill. In its past. If you look back on adverts that were in the seventies, they were even focussed on Take the pill for great skin, not take the pill because it’s a form of contraception, but take the pill because it’s going to give you great skin. So I think there’s a history of it being advertised and educated as a tool to support clear skin, and it can be very effective at doing that, which I think is the reason why in NHS, especially when a doctor has the very limited time with each patient that it’s tempting to to give as a quick fix.
And it doesn’t, it doesn’t clear skin for everybody, but for many women it can help with hormonal acne. And as a scientist, it’s not something that I recommend because it is just if you think it like autopilot in an airplane, it’s switching your body’s natural hormone production off. And I think what is most maybe worrying or sad when somebody is being prescribed the pill for acne is that it’s not giving you the opportunity to understand what your body is communicating to you. Everything that your body does is it trying to talk to you and tell you what’s going on inside. And when you shut down those natural signals, it’s very easy to keep pushing acne triggers harder and harder. You’re pushing that gas pedal on those acne triggers, but you’re not seeing the acne in your skin. And when you come off of the pill, quite often, acne will come back worse than it was before, because you’ve still been hitting those acne triggers that you’ve identified, and also because the pill can take a toll on your body and cause some maybe nutritional deficiencies that your body also needs to recover from in the process of that.
Le’Nise: And also just thinking about the effect that the pill has on gut health and certainly something that that I learnt when I was doing my nutrition training is that, as you say, the what’s going on in the skin is a manifestation of something going on inside, something most commonly, something going on in the gut. And so it’s interesting that, you know, when I have clients who experience acne. Once you start to make changes to their gut health, adding in certain different things that support the healing of the gut lining, also, you know, the healing of the overall gut microbiome. You do see a change in the skin health. And I just find that so fascinating. And it’s really I find it really empowering as well because it’s it actually can be as, you know, acne can just be so damaging to your confidence. And when you see these changes, you know, oh, my gosh, look at my skin. It’s really, really empowering.
Cheryl: Yeah, I completely agree. Skin is this beautiful, amazing organ that we can see. Aha. Our lungs, our gut. We don’t have the opportunity to do that. So when something’s going astray internally. Quite often before you get these symptoms of pain or diarrhoea or constipation or stomachaches, there’s there’s something going on already for it to build up to that extent. And the skin is, in my experience, very good at translating what’s happening internally. I think it’s it’s amazing and what it does and it gives us the opportunity to act on things before they propagate into something much more serious there. Another reason for why I find it maybe worrying or sad when women are prescribed the pill for acne is because actually the symptoms of acne. So the biological changes that are happening within your skin cells and your oil making glands, they’re being linked in published science papers to other conditions like PCOS, polycystic ovary syndrome, diabetes, some forms of cancer. Those conditions take years and years and years to build, but your skin will fairly quickly show that something is going on internally that could lead to these kinds of conditions years, decades down the line. So it’s giving you that really beautiful signal to listen to now to protect your future health, which, yeah, I think is amazing.
Le’Nise: And so if someone’s listening to this and thinking, I would love to sort out my skin is skin, I get I get acne around the jawline or along my forehead. And I would just love to finally sort that out. What would you say to them? What would you recommend that they start?
Cheryl: In terms of healing your acne, many women, first of all, would look to do that mostly from the outside in. So using skincare products, which is very it makes so much sense because it’s a symptom that you can see from outside. So you want to treat it from outside.
My first piece of advice is making sure you’re treating inside out triggers as well as outside in triggers. You’re not going to fully heal your skin and your acne until you do both of those together. Then I would recommend it’s very much for me. I quit the Big Three skincare diet and lifestyle factors, so working on those concurrently.
A really simple tip that anyone can can try straight away. You can try it tomorrow and the day after, do it for a week is to stop washing your face so much when you have acne, which I know sounds really counterintuitive because when you have usually oily skin that comes with acne and you have these breakouts in your skin and all it feels like is you just going to get the oil off of your face. You want it to be clean.
Actually, the process of doing that is really aggressive to your skin biology. So for example, your skin has a pH level, which is a measure of acidity, and your skin is is fairly acidic somewhere when it’s not exposed to too many cleansers, it’s acidifies itself about 4.7. To put out in context, seven is neutral. Tap water is usually slightly alkaline. If you’re in a hard water area, it’s above 8.5 and the ruler ends at 14. So when you’re washing your skin with water, which has a mismatched pH level to your skin page, it immediately changes the pH level of your skin. It raises it. And then if you add in a cleanser, spot cleansers can be alkaline. Natural soaps, for example, can be nine. So this can be quite aggressive to your skin. How can your skin barrier and when your skin is raised actually creates the perfect environment for acne bacteria to start ever growing and therefore it can worsens new breakouts long time. It also wears away your skin barrier the washing process and if you’re overwashing which in my opinion is more than once a day removing these layers of what I call your skin shield allows the bacteria that live on the surface of your skin quite happy to get more deeply into your skin. And that can cause the breakouts to become more inflamed and more cystic, hotter, itchier, all of these symptoms. So a really simple change anyone can make is try not washing your face so much. So just once a day in the evening and going straight into your morning skincare routine when you wake up.
Because many women ask me, but do I not eat to wash my face to get the skin care I’ve applied off of my skin the night before? If you’re using a skin care routine, that skin care it absorbs deeply into your skin. So you shouldn’t be washing it off in the morning anyway. So you can naturally just go straight into your morning skincare routine. And most of the women that I work with who try this, first of all, there is an amount of apprehension, which I completely understand. But most of them come back to me and say, I can’t believe the difference. This is made to my skin in a week. It’s amazing.
Le’Nise: I mean, you’re blowing my mind here. Everything you read, it says, do your morning and evening cleanse. And I’ve always thought, why? Why do you need to cleanse your skin in the morning? Like, what are you cleansing it from? If you’ve done like you’ve wash your face in the evening, you’ve wash your makeup on off of. So it’s really reassuring to hear to hear this like don’t wash your face too often because, you know, you if you’re on social media, you’re on TikTok and you’re seeing these women and men with these really, I think, quite aggressive skin care routines. There’s like ten different steps they’re applying all of these different products, morning and evenings. I do kind of wonder like, is this really good for the skin? And it’s so reassuring to hear, well actually take it, you know, take it back.
Cheryl: Yeah. Oh, I’m so glad it’s exactly that. Take it back. There’s no need for ten step skincare routine, if anything that really works against your skin’s ideal.
Le’Nise: Going back to your journey so you’re you’re a scientist and it’s really exciting to have to have you on the show because I haven’t had any scientists on the show before. Can you talk a little bit about what led you into this career? And then the second part of the question is what made you decide to focus on on the skin?
Cheryl: Sure. So becoming a scientist. I was just really interested and curious about the world around me and why things happened, which is what led me into science as a career. I started off working actually in the pharmaceutical industry, and then I went into the fast moving consumer goods industry (FMCG), which is a bit of a mouthful, but it’s code for any products you buy down the supermarket, toiletries, household care products, cleaning products. And then I started my career helping women to heal from acne naturally, because of my own experiences with suffering with my skin and finding it a struggle to get help. The first place I actually looked for help was from a pharmacist because I was embarrassed to go and see my doctor. I thought I would be wasting their time because it was skin and I felt vain about it. And actually, I know now I shouldn’t have felt vain. Your skin is an indicator of your internal health. I remember going to see a pharmacist and. Asking, reaching out for help and his words to me why there’s nothing that can be done. You’re just going to have to accept and live with it.
Le’Nise: Wow.
Cheryl: Yeah, I just I felt this panic inside me when I heard those words because I was searching for how. But that felt like a brick wall. And he eventually handed me a bottle of this face wash. I know now it was a benzoyl peroxide face wash. And he handed it to me with the warning that be careful, it can bleach your skin. But he didn’t give me any extra help for how to not make it bleach my skin.
Le’Nise: Oh, my.
Cheryl: Yeah. I was so embarrassed at the time. I knew I wasn’t going to use it, but I brought that bottle and I put it in the back of my bathroom cabinet, and I never used it, but I did. That was a moment for me where I said No Cheryl, you’re a scientist. I know my skin’s been clear before. There’s a reason why I have acne, and I just need to identify that reason and heal it. And that is what I did over the period of a year to two years. I delved into the scientific literature. I gradually found changes that helped to heal my acne naturally without having to revert to anything like the pill or antibiotics. And that is the reason for what I do now, helping women to heal from acne naturally, because I never want another woman to feel like I did in that moment with the pharmacist that there’s no help and I just have to accept and live with my skin and my acne and the way that it is.
Le’Nise: What do you think about people being prescribed Roaccutane as a way to heal acne?
Cheryl: Yes. Roaccutane I. I completely understand if somebody has tried. Roaccutane on that journey of having acne. I completely understand. I don’t think anybody should ever feel bad for what treatments that they’ve tried in the past. I don’t recommend it for acne because it’s again, like the pill. It’s covering up what’s happening internally. It’s not healing the root trigger causes of acne. I work with many clients who have tried several rounds of Roaccutane and the acne has come back or people who end up on a very persistent dose for many years just to control the acne and the published science is actually showing so Accutane can be very effective short term and that is what goes down in clinical trial data or many published science papers. However, it’s really important the follow up period after a study because you can take a medication for some time, discontinue it for two months, and then the study may report. All is great. It helps keep skin clear, but that follow up period is not the same. A year later, two years later, and often with medications like this, acne comes back because you’ve not confronted those trigger causes.
Also, it’s a very aggressive medication and most people will experience side effects of it, one of which is extremely dry skin like you’ve never experienced before. So dryness cracking inside of your lips, dry, inflamed eyes, headaches is quite a common symptom, joint aches as well, because it’s basically drying up the oil production, the mucous membrane production in your body. And so that is helpful for acne because oil is the perfect breeding environment for acne bacteria. They love to breed in oil and low oxygen environments. Oil creates a low oxygen environment. However, your body needs some oil and lubrication naturally. So these extra symptoms start popping up in your body. For some people, though you often hear somebody who’s taking Roaccutane saying that they feel like a 70 year old woman because that’s the effect that it has on the joints. And for some people, some of those symptoms can be long term. So I’m not a fan of Accutane because it’s covering up those trigger causes and it can also have long term side effects. So I have worked with clients in the past to heal their skin from the side effects of Accutane, which have been as severe as the acne that they dealt with in the first place. So it’s almost like switching one skin concern that’s really impacting your life in the way that you feel in your confidence for another skin concern on the opposite end of the spectrum, definitely not a fan of Accutane.
Le’Nise: Yeah, yeah. I’m really interested to hear your perspective on that because I have had time to spend on that in the past. And something that we’ve had to do is address any liver potential liver issues because it’s such a powerful drug and then that has as potentially had a knock on effect on their hormones, their period. So it’s it’s really interesting to hear hear you say this.
So just thinking about someone who has who has acne, who’s listening to this and is listening to some of the tips that they that you’ve given. What would you say about like that? They’re thinking, oh, well, you know, am I going to have to deal with this for the rest of my life? Is it going to keep coming back? Because something that, you know, I hear sometimes is, oh, my gosh, I’m like in my thirties, I’m in my forties and fifties. Why am I still getting acne?
Cheryl: Mm hmm. Yes. I would say to anybody feeding like that, please know that your skin has been clear before. And it can very much be clear again in terms of how quickly that can happen. When you identify those root trigger causes, if you get them right and you get them right together, that’s usually a couple or a handful. It’s not usually just one key trigger and you’re working to heal them in parallel. Then your skin can dramatically care within a period of 3 to 4 months of active breakouts. And for anyone wanting to see what that looks like. I have some journey photos on my Instagram. Honesty for Skin of some of the clients I’ve worked with, which shows that 3 to 4 month healing periods where they started. And once we made changes to skin care, diet and lifestyle and where they ended up in four months, 3 to 4 months time is with the clearing of all active acne. And then we’re looking to heal skin from the remaining what you might call scars. But I hate that word because implies permanency, that post inflammatory arrhythmia, which is the redness that can be left behind or post inflammatory hyperpigmentation, which are the dark marks that can be left behind. So yes, I completely understand that feeling because when I had acne, I felt like I tried everything under the sun and nothing had worked for me long time. But once you understand your skin biology and you know what the triggers are, then you know how to work with your skin to keep it clear. So I don’t actually I have clear skin today, and I don’t like to say that I’m cured from acne, because if I go back on these changes that I’ve made, then my skin will break out. But I have control of that and that’s what matters for me. It’s a guidance for making sure I’m taking care of myself in those ways.
Le’Nise: That is so reassuring to hear, because you I have the same the same thing where, you know, because I this is the work I do and periods and menstrual health that everyone expects that I have a perfect period. But if I don’t, I have all of these different things that I have to do to make sure that my period is, you know, it’s fine. It doesn’t it’s not painful. I’m not getting loads of mood swings. And if I don’t do them, then I see everything kind of bouncing back. So it’s helpful to hear that, you know, this isn’t kind of like there’s no magic, you know, there’s no no magic behind this. This is just about consistency. It’s about knowing what your triggers are. And it’s about just knowing that you have to just keep keep going. You know, there is no, like, magic pill that you that you can take, which I think people expect. They think they come to you and they think, okay, can you just cure my periods period pain? And I always say, well, I can help reduce it, but I wouldn’t. It would be totally unethical for me to say, you know, you’re never going to have a painful period. You can you’re going to have a less painful period for sure. So thank you so much for saying that. So you’ve mentioned your Instagram. If someone wants to work with you, find out more about what you do. Where where can they get in touch?
Cheryl: Sure. Say my website is https://www.honestyforyourskin.co.uk and I have two main ways that I work with women to help them heal from acne. And that’s in my acne clinic, which is where I work with people one on one. And if you go to my website and you click the menu and the option that says Get Skin Help and the option that says Acne, then you’ll find that there. I also have an online course called Acne Warrior, which is something someone can take as soon as they enroll and wherever they are in the world. And which will teach you through the most common triggers of acne, through skin care, diet and lifestyle factors. And for anybody wanting to get started on that straightaway, you can get 20% off with code like get clear 20. So those are the main ways that I work with women to help them heal from acne naturally.
Le’Nise: Great. And just to round off, to anyone who’s listening today, of all of the amazing things that you’ve shared? What would be the one thing that you would want them to take away?
Cheryl: I’m going to say that the feeling that you are beautiful with or without acne. Acne doesn’t impact that. I can understand how it can make you feel. You’re beautiful with or without acne, and that’s something that you can do about your skin to clear it. But that’s more looking after your internal health. It’s not it’s not meaning that you’re any less deserving or less beautiful. If you have acne, Just remember that. Say it to your face three times to say I am beautiful and beautiful and beautiful.
Le’Nise: I love that that is so that so powerful. Those affirmations and those words that we say to ourselves, they they make a huge difference. They change the pathways in our brain. And we then we say it and then we believe it. So thank you for sharing that. And thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Cheryl: Thank you so much for having me.
