Episode #53: Interview with Leigh Brandon

Ever felt like your body's working against you, despite your best efforts? Leigh knows that struggle firsthand. From battling cystic acne to enduring sports injuries, he's turned his journey into a mission to empower others with holistic wellness solutions

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Show Notes:

• Leigh Brandon shares his journey of overcoming severe cystic acne.

• Conventional treatments failed him for 18 years until he explored dietary changes.

• Personalized approaches are key, considering factors like gut health and hormones.

• Mindset plays a crucial role in overcoming acne; resilience and positivity are vital.

• Leigh recommends a balanced, unprocessed diet and his book, "Eliminating Adult Acne for Good."

Key Takeaways:

• Diet impacts acne significantly; eliminating trigger foods can lead to clear skin.

• Understand individual differences in addressing acne; consider factors like gut health and hormones.

• Mindset matters; resilience and positive goal-setting are crucial in overcoming acne.

• Leigh's book offers comprehensive guidance for addressing acne through dietary and lifestyle changes.

Transcript:

 Welcome back to the Better Than A Pill podcast today. I'm so excited to have Leigh Brandon on as a guest and Leigh has been in health and fitness since 1996. He has suffered from severe cystic acne, which started at the age of 13, which really affected his self esteem and confidence while working in health.

And he felt like an imposter, but by the age of 30, he discovered the work of Paul Shek and William Walcott. and quickly began to understand why doctors weren't able to help him. Leigh has overcome acne, gut problems, Lumbar spine, disc herniations, ACL sprains, and shoulder impingement syndromes. And he helps other people do the same.

Wow. Well, that's quite a long list there, Leigh  You've done a lot and I'm so grateful. Good to have you here and, and welcome to the show. 

Thanks for having me. Yeah. It sounds like I'm an old wreck  listening to all the injuries I've had, but that is over a 55 year period, so I haven't done too bad. 

Yeah. No, I don't think so. That's true. If we put it in perspective and all the value and everything you've obtained from those, but so I'm excited. And today we're actually going to talk about Lee's struggle with acne specifically and how he really did overcome that. So. I would love just to kind of start off and hear a little bit about your story with acne. 

Yeah. So as you said, it started when I was, when I was age 13, as it does for a lot of people, right? You know, we know that about 85 percent of teenagers suffer from acne at some point.  So I started off just getting some little blackheads around my nose and then I was getting blackheads and whiteheads and it just got gradually worse and worse and worse.

until eventually my mum said do you want me to take you to the doctor to you know help you with that and i was like oh yeah i'd like to go and get this sorted out so went along to the doctor  he gave me a cream to use an acne cream and a cleanser  and i went away and started using them and it didn't really make any difference so a few weeks or months later i can't remember exactly the timeline but we went back and he said oh okay  Yeah, they're clearly not working.

I need to put you on an antibiotic.  But these will definitely work, he said. So, I went away and I started using antibiotics. And, actually, they did get, my skin did clear up.  For about six weeks. And then it came back, and then it came back with a vengeance. It came back much worse.  And so over the next 18 years, every time I went back to the doctor and said,  you know, it's not getting any better.

The only solution that he could suggest was, oh, you've become resistant to that antibiotic. I need to give you a different one.  So, you know, looking back now, I think, what did that do to my gut microbiome, you know? I mean, I'm sure it's possibly still even affecting me today,  having taken antibiotics for that long. 

Again, as you alluded to in the introduction, it was, it was devastating on, on my confidence, on my self esteem.  It definitely affected my confidence during job interviews and I've no doubt cost me a lot of money because of that.  Also relationships, you know, that's very tricky when, you know, your face looks absolutely dreadful.

And by the way, it wasn't just my face, I had it on my chest and my upper back as well.  And it wasn't, you know, the odd spot here or there. It was, I was covered and they were. Often really big boils as well.  So the other thing I think is tough for people with acne as well is anxiety. You know, even if you're, even if you're having a good day and there were good days, particularly in summer.

So for me, getting out into the sun and sunbathing was actually really good.  But each night you go to bed and you're just anxious about  what you're going to look like in the morning.  And one of the things we know as well is that  anxiety  can lead to acne as well. So it becomes a bit of a vicious cycle. 

So, that was really the story of acne in a nutshell. But in terms of my recovery,  as you said, it really started. I was at a conference in the UK at university.  Paul Cech was one of the speakers who you mentioned. So he's actually from California. He's the founder of the Cech Institute. He was delivering a lecture called Flatten Your Abs Forever. 

And you might think, how on earth  would that lecture lead me to finding the solution to my own acne? Well, he was talking about how food affects your hormones, and how hormones affect your skin, and how you can have food sensitivities, and how food sensitivities can affect your skin, and  he even mentioned acne as well.

So, of course, we're These light bulbs are going on in my head.  And I was thinking, well, why hasn't my medical doctor ever told me this? And in fact My medical doctor denied several times that acne has anything to do with diet.  Now, the interesting thing is since then, I've found hundreds of research papers that show a link between diet and acne. 

And even today, certainly in the UK, the National Health Service in the UK still says there is no link between acne and diet.  And in my book, there's over, well, there's hundreds of references, and many of them are  clearly showing the link between diet and acne.  So,  so in terms of my next step, so after, after this lecture at Loughborough University in England.

I went back home  and I went to see a guy locally and he tested me and it turns out I had a ton of food sensitivities, which is what Paul Czech was talking about in his interview.  And I also had a fungal infection.  So the guy said to me, the first thing you need to do is to stop taking those antibiotics.

Cause it was probably the antibiotics that caused me to get a fungal infection, right? Because  the antibiotics have cleared out all the good bacteria. And now that allows the. You know, the less desirable microbes. And one of them is Candida, which is what I had.  You know, we, we, we, we all have a level of Candida.

It doesn't really become a problem until it really proliferates.  So, this guy suggested I go on an elimination diet, eliminating all the foods that I was sensitive to, and also a very low,  uh, sugar diet, because fungus feeds off of sugar.  And I went home, cleared all my cupboards out,  went to the supermarket, restocked all the things I could actually eat,  And within two weeks, my skin cleared up.

And apart from the odd breakout, you know, a few times a year,  my acne didn't come back. Nice. That's powerful. Wow.  And look, I mean, all the time going back on these antibiotics, back and forth, back and forth the whole time. If you could have just made that change.  Yeah, it's interesting, you know, the other thing as well is a lot of people link teenage acne to hormonal changes,  right?

Which you can't deny, that's, you know, that that happens.  But if you, if you ever study hunter gatherer types, so people that, you know, don't live in western societies and don't have supermarkets, etc,  their teenagers don't get acne,  right? But they do have hormonal changes,  So  one of the things that I think is possibly one of the reasons why teenagers get acne, it's probably the worst decade of your life in terms of the food that you eat  for a lot of people.

And it certainly was for me. You know, I was eating tons of  wheat based products. I was drinking fizzy drinks, sports drinks, fruit juices.  Um, I was drinking dairy and my protein shake, all these things that we know,  um, can cause acne were in my diet. In fact, it was almost all of my diet.  Whereas if, you know, if I could have met the future me when I was 13 and the knowledge I have now,  you know, I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure I could have changed my diet at age 13 and I would never have had those problems. 

Yeah. And, and a lot of boys your age or parents that are listening like myself too, that have boys that are approaching that, that age now, you know, we can. We have that power, that knowledge to know, like, okay, we don't have to run to the, to the medicine or the antibiotic or the quick fix. There could be other things we could do.

Like you're saying, right. Dairy, no sugar. I'm going to guess no processed food. Get rid of the junk. Right. Start. Why not? Why not start there? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And again, if you think about what, what are these hunter gatherers eating, they're eating their natural diet.  Right. Yeah. It's that simple. It's that simple.

Yeah. Exactly. And that's not to say, that's not to say, by the way, that it's always that simple to overcome acne. There are other things that can cause acne and it can be more complicated and it can be more of a longer journey to get there. I'm not saying everyone with acne can change their diet and it's going to be gone within two weeks.

That's, that's about the quickest time I tend to see. And that tends to only be males as well.  You know, females are, you know, let's face it, females, you are more complicated than most men, hormonally. Right. So, I generally find that in women it does take longer always. on average. So  I just didn't want to leave anyone with that idea that everyone could just change their diet and acne is going to be cured in two weeks because that's not the case either, because there are a lot of factors involved.

Sure, sure. But it's still powerful to share your experience and that's what happened to you and, and, you know, and that could happen to other people as well to understanding that it is an individual process. And You mentioned that we've got food and we've got, um, things like candida or fungal infections or food sensitivities that can cause acne.

What else? What else?  Well, the one that's linked to that is leaky gut syndrome. So that's where things that are in the gut can actually seep through the gut lining and enter the bloodstream. So things like. You know, bacteria, fungi, um, parasites, toxins,  and often things like the bacteria, the fungi, the parasites, they're releasing toxins as well. 

And what that does is that creates, um, chronic systemic inflammation.  And if you think, what does, what does inflammation do? Yeah, it's the immune system and it's, and it's mopping up things that shouldn't be there.  But what, what do we often see with inflammation? We see redness, we see swelling,  we often see itchiness, and we could see, and we could experience pain. 

That's, that's all the things that you see with acne, right? You get the redness.  You get the swelling, the bumps, you get the itchiness, and you get, sometimes it can be painful as well. So that's quite a large factor. The one thing I kind of brushed over quickly was toxins.  One of the things that I see causing acne in some people is heavy metal toxicity. 

And again, there's a story I talk about in the book with a lady that came to see me. She was 27. She was getting married in six months. For the first time in her life, her skin had broken out  and we changed our diet. Not much really happened.  I ran a stool test. She did have a little bit of dysbiosis in the gut.

She had a parasite. We worked on that. It got a little bit better, but she was still, she was panicking because now it's like three months out. And she's like, I don't want to look like this on my wedding day.  And so I said, look, let's, let's run a heavy metal test just to see if, if that could be what's going on. 

And it came back and everything was clear, apart from mercury. Her blood mercury was literally off the chart.  And it wasn't just slightly off the chart, it was way, way, way off the chart.  And, and she said to me, how can that be? How, how can I have mercury that high? And I said, well, I can't be sure.  I said, but the most common thing tends to be.

if people eat a lot of tuna fish.  And she looked at me stunned and she said, I've been eating tuna every day for lunch for 10 years. Wow. Right. So there you go. Yeah. So she cut the tuna out of her diet and I got her to take some liposomal L glutathione to help with that. release the, um, mercury from the blood,  and within a matter of weeks her skin had completely cleared up, and she got married, and now they've, you know, they've had a baby, they've got a, they've got a little kid now, so, you know, it all, it all ended up a happy story in the end, but, um, yeah, she was certainly panicking for, for a fair few months. 

Yeah. No, and it's amazing too, because that just brings into the light that it is individual. You know, we have inflammation and then we have things like  heavy metals, toxins that can affect us differently. And you don't really know until you really work at an individual level. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, stress, stress is another big one as well.

One of the things that stress does. It breaks down mucin, which forms the lining of the gut, so it actually increases the likelihood of leaky gut. But the other thing, if someone's got higher cortisol, so that's a higher stress hormone,  if the cortisol is actually high, that can stimulate  the sebaceous gland to secrete the oil, or the sebum, for the skin.

So that helps to lubricate, moisturize and protect the skin.  And when you're stressed, it stimulates the sebaceous gland, it releases more oil, the hair follicle now gets blocked  and that's what can cause a whitehead or a blackhead. The bacteria that live on the skin, and they're there for a good reason,  their only source of food is the sebum, so the oil from the sebum, and the protein from skin cells.

It's not like the microbes in your gut, they get to feed on, on your food.  So, when there's excess sebum, now these bacteria can proliferate, and now they become a problem, just like bacteria. The Candida did in my gut.  So,  when they, when they proliferate, now the immune system says, oh, we need to, we need to deal with this, this is a problem. 

So, that's when you now get the inflammation, you get the redness. And you get those, you know, the big,  uh, cysts and nodules, uh, in the skin. But it's not just the hormone cortisol,  the, uh, androgens, the male hormones, so things like testosterone, dihydrotestosterone,  known as DHT,  other hormones such as insulin and insulin, uh, like growth factor one, they also stimulate the sebaceous gland to secrete sebum  and a lot of those hormones are stimulated  after the release of insulin in the body. 

So when you eat something that's sugary, high glycemic releases sugar into the blood very quickly.  That  stimulates the pancreas to, uh, secrete insulin.  And now you've got that cascade going and now you're, you're getting that excess sebum. And that's why when you change your diet  and you go on a low fat diet, Um, sugary diet, low glycemic diet, that your acne will almost certainly start to calm down.

Mmm. Another hormone that can also, um, stimulate the sebaceous gland is excess estrogen. So you know, if your estrogen progesterone balance is normal, it's not really an issue, but if your, uh, estrogen levels go too high or even if your progesterone goes too low, that can also cause stimulation. So there's quite a, there's quite a hormonal. 

uh, element to acne as well. So, you know, it's definitely a diet, it's hormonal  and it's also toxic and inflamed. Sure. That makes sense. And, and what you shared about, um, stress and then things like anxiety and, and so just curious as to, you know, mindset, why is, how is that important for acne? Yeah, that's a really good question.

And it's, it's, it's one area that I find not that many people talk about.  And the first, the first thing I would say is,  a lot of people I see online, like on social media,  if they're in like an acne group and they're asking for advice, they're generally saying, what product should I use? Or, how long is it going to take before this pharmaceutical works?

Or, what dosage should I take? Right.  So the first thing I would say is your paradigm has to change.  Acne is an inside job.  So you need to treat acne on the inside of the body, and you need to treat it at the root cause level, not at the symptomatic level. So these products that you put on your skin, these pharmaceuticals, don't treat the root cause of the problem.

All they do is mask the symptoms.  Now there is one acne treatment that is actually In some instances successful in the long term. It used to be called Accutane. It's now called Isotretinoin.  The reason they changed the name was because of some of the really serious side effects that some people get when they take it.

And one, one of them is suicidal thoughts.  Now,  I don't know about you, but, you know, if I had a teenage, um, son or daughter and they had acne, I would rather them have acne than suicidal thoughts. Yeah. A hundred percent. Oh my goodness. Yeah. And the other, and the reason why it can be successful in some people is because what it does, it basically, it shrinks the sebaceous gland, but it's a permanent shrinkage. 

So you might get rid of your acne. But what also happens is you now could well end up with dry skin for the rest of your life. So now you've just swapped one problem for another problem.  So  the other thing that's really important as well to get your head around  is that  my, my understanding of acne is that It is a warning sign  and it's a warning sign that if you don't treat the root causes further down the line,  the likelihood is you're going to end up with a much more serious disease.

So the causes we've spoken about already are also linked to things like obesity, dementia, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.  So if you treat it with pharmaceuticals. or skip or, you know, topical products, whatever.  It may or may not work, but even if it does work, you haven't dealt with those root cause issues that could cause a potentially life threatening illness, maybe 10, 20, 30 years down the line.

Yeah. Yeah. So, that's really important to get your head around. So that's kind of the first part of the mindset, why that's important.  The second part is, is to first of all, understand that  You know, when you look to overcome your acne, as I said, for most people, it's not going to be two weeks, it's going to be longer  and you've got to understand it can be a journey and for some people it can be several months, okay, depending on what your starting point is. 

So whenever, whenever you're starting on such a journey, you've got to be in the right mindset.  So  when, for instance, if I'm coaching people  to overcome acne or indeed any other condition that I help people with,  it's really important that,  The people understand there's going to be,  um, it's going to be ups and downs on the journey.

It's never just a smooth straight line from the start to the finish line. There's always peaks and troughs. There's challenges that people come up against. So you've got to be, you've got to be resilient before you start.  So I take people through a process. The first thing I get people to do is to get really clear on what their goals are.

Now that might sound really simple, but it's an important part of the process.  And the other important part of setting your goals is to make sure they're positive goals. And again, that might seem like, well, of course,  but for instance, if I say to someone, okay, so what's your ultimate goal? And they say to me, I want to be acne free. 

No, no, no, no.  That's not a positive goal because you're focusing on acne and that's not what you want.  I'll say, how can you say that without saying the word acne? Or free or not.  So they might say, I want clear, glowing skin, as an example. Right? Because that's how they want it. You know, again, if they say, you know, often people say, oh, blemish free.

I say, no, I don't want you to focus on blemishes. How do you want it to be?  Because,  you know, we know from quantum physics that everything in the universe has a vibration.  your thoughts have a vibration, right? So you want to be putting out the vibration of what you do want, not what you don't want.  So that's the first thing. 

The next thing, once they've set their goals is I get them to come up with an affirmation statement.  So it might be, I am happy and grateful. Now that my skin is, uh, soft and clear,  let's say,  and I get them to say that as many times as they can possibly remember to say it every day, because you're creating that vibration. 

The next thing I get them to do is to set core values around their lifestyle behaviors.  Because your core values are your,  if you like, your instruction manual on how you're going to achieve the goal that you want to achieve. How are you going to live your life? What choices are you willing to make?  So there might be core values around food, around  hydration, around sleep, around exercise. 

And whenever someone's not living in alignment with their core values,  It's, it's underlining that they're not leading themselves towards achieving their goal they want to achieve.  And that's okay, as long as they're doing that consciously. Because, you know, I had a client recently,  and he was due to see, like, he was seeing me once a week, and there was one week he just didn't see me at all.

And I thought, that's really strange, because he's normally really on it.  So I contacted him, so I was, you know, is anything up? He said, oh no, I just feel really bad, I feel really guilty, I've just had a week where I've made some really poor food choices.  And I had to take him back to his core values and say, look, you know,  maybe your core values were too strict.

Maybe you need a little bit more wiggle room,  because there's no point feeling really bad.  And also  it's okay to make mistakes.  As long as you learn from them, right? You know, I say to all my clients, there's no such thing as failure, only feedback.  Yeah, right. All right, 100%. Unless, of course, you keep making the same mistake over and over, then, you know, then that is a problem. 

But, um, the lot, the other, the next thing I do,  Because, you know, I've been coaching for 28 years, so I've pretty much heard every excuse under the sun as to why someone can't follow the program, right?  And  again, in my book and when I'm coaching clients, what I get them to do.  is to write down all their potential obstacles that are going to get in the way of them doing the things that they need to do to be successful. 

And I even list a lot of, a lot of the common examples that I've heard over the years. And I'll give you, I'll give you one example.  Someone once said to me,  Oh, and I couldn't, I couldn't, I didn't have control over my lunch that day because my work called a lunchtime meeting and they supplied sandwiches. 

I said, okay, so let's look into this.  How much control did you have over the situation? And they said, well, none, because they called a lunch and that was it. That was the food  they supplied. I said, okay, so if you had that situation again, what, what would you do?  And they thought, and they said, well,  I could have taken my own food in for lunch, actually.

I said, okay, anything else?  I could have popped out to the local place that I know does some really healthy food, and I could have taken that food into the meeting.  I said, okay, so did you have control or not? Yeah, I did, really.  But if you, if you come up with these solutions, even before you're in that situation, you're far less likely to, to fall off the wagon.

So it's, it's just getting that resilience. mindset before you start because no program in the world is going to work if you don't follow it. Yeah. Oh yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. And even with acne, it's well said it goes a lot deeper. It doesn't matter. Like you have to, to kind of be aware and, and take these steps.

That's really great examples. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's so much involved here and we've got the level of our gut, you know, clearing out, getting rid of detox, you know, detoxing and, um, you know, we have inflammation, obviously that can be an effect, you know, side effect and cause problems. We've got mindset, we've got lifestyle.

Um, what, I'm just curious if you had to give everybody some basic  notes when it comes to what to do nutritionally, what would you tell people?  So the first thing we're all different. That's arguably the most important thing to understand. So  while one of the chapters in my book is called the acne elimination diet, It's actually teaching people how to find out what's right for them. 

So yes, I do talk about the foods we've already spoken about, the high sugary foods, um, the dairy foods. We haven't spoken about seed oils and vegetable oils, they're another one because they're very inflammatory.  But  the process I take people through is to find out The right fuel mix for them. And what I mean by fuel mix is your fats or proteins and your carbohydrates, because we're all  biochemically individual.

If you think about it, we all,  we all come from different parts of the world, right? You know, you're, you're in the U S I'm in the UK.  You could, you could easily say where, you know, where we're all made from immigrants. Right.  You know, the UK is a real mix. I know I've got some Asian blood in me somewhere from not that long ago, actually, you know, in the United States I mean, there are hardly any native people left in the United States, right?

It's real, it's a real cultural mix.  So,  You know, depending on how your ancestors would have eaten will show you how your body has evolved over thousands, tens of thousands of years. But because we're such a mix, it's not that easy. So I take people on a journey where I teach them how to find the sweet spot of how much fat, protein and carbohydrate they need at each meal.

And one of the things that's really important for acne is that it helps you to balance your blood sugar levels.  I mean, it gives you, it gives you a whole host of other benefits as well.  And I was on a podcast interview yesterday and I was saying,  you know, my clients tell me they also get side effects when they follow my program. 

So they, their acne clears up, but they get more energy, they lose weight, they think better, they perform better, their anxiety goes away, they don't have cravings for foods and ultimately, you know, they get more confident, more self esteem and they feel happier.  Right. Yeah. And, and that's a big part of it is, you know, when you really get dialed in to the right food for you, that's really important. 

I would say as much as possible, get high quality foods. I'm really talking about, you know, organic wherever possible.  Um, and  again, wherever possible buy foods with, where there's one ingredient,  right? If you buy beef, it's beef. If you buy an apple, it's an apple. If you buy a potato, it's a potato.  But if you're picking something up and it's got.

Lots of different ingredients on it. I mean, sometimes it could be okay  as much as possible. Try and cook your own food as much as you can, because then you know what's in it. You're controlling what's in it.  Um, you know, food labels can also be a little bit misleading as well, even if you know what you're doing.

So try and eat foods that haven't been processed or ultra ultra processed. So try and eat real food, fresh food, and natural food. And I would say cook as much of it yourself as you can.  Mm. That's great. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, Lee, this has been great. You have a wealth of knowledge. Um, you've been doing this for so long and you mentioned the, well, you mentioned the book that you have written to the audience.

Yes. Yes. Eliminating adult acne for good. It's just over my shoulder here.  For those that are watching, uh, you can get it from, you know, all, all major online bookstores. Amazon's probably the easiest place to get it. Um, but yeah, it's, it's got everything in there that I go through with, with, with my clients.

Uh, I wrote it really for those people that can't afford to work with someone like me. I know, you know, I'm very aware that not everybody can.  So, you know, for 20, it's, um,  it's pretty good value for,  you know, I remember, In my mid twenties, I was willing to pay 25, 000 pounds at the time that had been about 50, 000 us dollars.

If someone could guarantee they could get rid of my acne and I've pretty much packaged it up for, for 20. So I think it's pretty good value. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. And I've also included the link here. To where people can learn more about the work you're doing in this episode. So that is, that is awesome.

This has been great. And, you know, I'm sure that I know I took away a lot today and I'm sure other people did too. So yeah, you know how to reach Leigh and thank you Leigh so much for coming on here today. Thanks for having me.  And remember, we do new episodes every other week on Wednesday, and I look forward to having you join me then.