Adina Grigore - Skin Cleanse: The Simple, All-Natural Program for Clear, Calm, Happy Skin

DEDICATED TO YOU, BECAUSE YOURE AWESOME.

I ve been sensitive my whole life. I have a sensitive belly and sensitive skin and I cry at sad commercials. When I was little, I was plagued by mysterious stomachaches after every meal and headaches that had no apparent cause. By the time I was thirteen, my parents rotated picking me up from school and taking me to different doctors to try to figure out what was wrong. No one ever could, and my symptoms kept getting worse. I moved to New York City for college and by that time I was scared of every food; I was getting migraines every week; and I was covered in itchy, rashy skin. As you can imagine, it was pretty awesome.

After I graduated, I went back to school to study holistic health and nutrition. I also became interested in fitness and exercise science and got a job as a personal trainer at a local gym. By that point, I had learned enough about different nutritional theories that I was able to calm my stomachaches and migraines by making small tweaks to my diet. It felt really empowering to be able to fix myself when doctors had only been scratching their heads and prescribing me pills. Helping people take better care of themselves and teaching them how to be healthy all on their ownwithout having to pay expensive expertsbecame a passion of mine.

As for my skin? Nothing had changed.

I was in my early twenties, and I was dealing with a horrific trifecta: constant breakouts; itchy, dry scalp; and an undiagnosable body rash that wouldnt go away. I was already using two different heavy-duty medicated treatments for my breakouts and rash, and my dermatologist had just given me a new shampoo for my scalp. But when I started to use it, I quickly and painfully realized that my new shampoo made my leg rash freak out.

So I did what any person driven completely insane would do: I started showering upside down. Normal, right? Im not kidding. I would flip my head over to wash my hair and rinse really well, to make sure that the suds from the shampoo wouldnt drip onto my itchy legs.

Luckily, it didnt take too many showers for me to realize how completely ridiculous my skin-care routine had become. I had studied holistic health and nutrition for years and had learned so much about my internal health, but I had somehow managed to ignore my skin completely. I was treating it as if it wasnt a part of my well-being at all. I had finally gotten healthy enough to need a doctor only rarely, but I was addicted to dermatologists. As I said before, I was on actual prescription medications for my skin problems. I was like an addict, but instead of being hooked on pills, I was hooked on creams, baby.

Those miserable, painful, upside-down showers were my rock bottom. I just felt so ugly and itchy and frustrated, and I couldnt do it anymore. I couldnt keep using these products that were meant to help but were turning my life into a nightmare. So I quit. I stopped using every single skin-care product and medication. Cold turkey. I thought to myself, Maybe Ill be single forever and people will avoid standing next to me, but at least I wont be itchy anymore. It was my last, desperate attempt at finding some relief.

And, shockingly, relief did come. It was pretty much instantaneous. That whole first day of using no products whatsoever, all of my symptoms improved. And the next day, I felt even better. Every day, I waited for proof that this was too good to be true. How was it possible no one had told me to try this miraculous cure?

Then came the research. Reluctantly, the first place I went to was my kitchen cabinet. I knew all about holistic health and nutrition and the amazing things that eating good food could do for my body, and I wondered if it was possible to use on my skin the same ingredients I was eating. But if it was soooo great, why wasnt everyone doing it? I tested my theory anyway, and watched as my rash improved after using olive oilstraight up extra-virgin olive oil, the same kind you use as salad dressing. I tried shaving my legs with coconut oil (after even going so far as to peel the moisture strips off my razors because they were making my rash worse) and didnt get razor burn for maybe the first time in my whole life. I rinsed my scalp with apple cider vinegar and noticed that not only was my scalp not itchy the next day, but my cheeks were rosy and clearer, too. So then I put it straight on my face, and voil! Breakouts gone.

If this sounds completely insane to you, you are not alone. But think about it: weve been spending years and years shifting our conversation about food. I work with clients to teach them how to eat healthy and work out to feel better. They already know to think of good food and fitness as medicine. Yet somehow this idea still has not crossed over into our conversations about skin care. Ingredients like preservatives and artificial chemicals that have become hugely infamous in food do not have the same reputations when they are in our face washes. And most simply and most importantly, no one really talks about how the olive oil that lowers our cholesterol and provides our bodies with healthy fat is the same exact olive oil that can cure psoriasis and fight stretch marks.

So, awkwardly, painfully, and sometimes upside down, I found my mission: to tell you and every human on the planet that healthy skin must be nourished in the exact same way as a healthy bodyand with the exact same ingredients.

I launched an organization called Sprout Wellness dedicated to this idea and taught workshops about what I had learned. I developed DIY skin-care recipes and gave long speeches about the magical, skin-calming powers hidden in your kitchen cabinet. I eventually turned those recipes into a full line of products called S.W. Basics (S.W. stands for Sprout Wellness, so that our company never forgets its roots in education and wellness). I still cant get over the fact that S.W. Basics productswhich are still made using my original DIY recipesare now sold in boutiques and retail chains all over the world.

To this day, my favorite thing to do is work one-on-one with clients and talk to people about the changes I made that gave me clear skin. Through my work and the work we do at S.W. Basics, thousands of people have started ditching their junky skin-care products and cleaning up their routines.

My ultimate goal is to get everyone to think of mainstream skin-care products like they think of packaged food: full of preservatives, unnecessary ingredients, and nasty chemicals. I want to lower the average number of products you use on your skin each day from twelve to one or two. To vastly reduce the even scarier number of individual ingredients the average woman is applying to her skin each day from hundreds to just a handful. To push the skin-care industry to get rid of the chemicals in their products that have been linked to cancer, reproductive disorders, asthma, and severe allergies. To make you understand that most of what you have been told and sold is not true, and the ability to have healthy, happy skin is totally and completely in your hands.

In baby steps, though. I dont want you to feel as if you have to stop doing anything you like, but I want to help you not need any of it. I want you to feel like an expert by the end of this book. An expert on