Hi Lois!

First up, the disclaimer that I'm not a medically trained doctor and so can't give any medical diagnosis or advice but I know what my experience has been with clearing up a number of skin complaints (both with myself and others). Personally I used to have rather bad skin problems across my legs, back and shoulders. The main thing that I found after years oif experimentation (on myself!) was that skin problems are rarely just about one single thing that if you just stop eating X it immediately goes away. At first I thought it might have just been when I overate on bad fats, but I'd cut them out and still have problems. Then I thought maybe sugar... same thiing. Then maybe protein...nope! (akthough I did find that too much of ANY of these could reliably make problems!) Later I thought that maybe it was all just down to too much cooked food (this was before we were raw!), as every time we ate mainly raw my problems would go away. This theory fell down when I oticed that I COULD bring these problems back while being raw by overeating nuts or dried fruit. Finally I came to the realisation that I could quite easily create skin problems in myself by eating unbalanced, unhealthful amounts of pretty much anything! Rather than curse and decide never to eat again (and become a breatharian? ) I finally began to understand that my skin problems were nothing more than toxin elimination and the symptoms just a helpful visual reminder to take better care of my recent diet. This is usually a case of just cutting back on anything that's been overeaten lately (cleanses and fasts can often work wonders after an initial detox increase), so over time you end up learning how much your body needs of this and how much of that by what gets a reaction and in what amount. For example women will often be able to tollerate a higher percentage of good fats and oils than men. You may need a greater amount of something than me and less of something else.
The beauty here is that your body has given you a guidance system that is unique to you and doesn't depend on any "expert" to tell you their theory of right and wrong.
I will put a caveat here and say that while most cases of skin problems I've encountered usually seem to be related to too much of something, there have been cases where not enough was a proplem too, most often in the case of good fats and oils (raw, unoxidised Omega 3's -flax, Omega 6's - sunflower and Omega 9's -nuts) or vitamin E (lots of fresh fruit and veggies!). These are more commonly just dry skin problems though and not visible spots or marks.

What has everyone else's experience here been? I'd be curious to hear! If there's anything else you'd like to ask feel free, or if you'd like to do some research yourself I can highly reccommend David Wolfe's new book "Eating For Beauty".

Viva La Raw!

Piers