The main reason I’m in business it to help people feel comfortable in their own skin. I think that confidence is something that we could all use more of and you really can’t put a price tag on confidence.
A Difficult Time in my Life
The idea came about as a direct result of some pretty severe health problems I suffered a few years ago.
When I was 30 I was looking after my Father, who was seriously ill, and I took some medication that I wouldn’t normally have taken if I wasn’t going through a stressful period in my life.
I had lots of complications because of the medications and one of the side effects I experienced was severe pustular acne. It appeared quite quickly and was very uncomfortable. I tried to hide from the world. I took time out from my life and my job. It affected me a lot – physically and emotionally. It was a very traumatic time.
There are now multiple research articles linking the consumption of dairy to certain types acne specifically acne that is hormonally triggered.
Trying to Find a Solution
I decided that I needed to review my whole lifestyle, taking a holistic approach to my health. I started researching diets and healthy lifestyles and eating.
I went through the process of cutting out everything I shouldn’t be eating and reassessing everything that I was using on my skin. Going through that process of identifying certain triggers to my skin problems.
I spent a lot of time online looking at acne topicals and ingredients that people said helped them in forums and blogs.
I was also researching the benefits of taking supplements. Zinc was supposed to help your skin, so I started taking that and found it helped a lot. Then because I had been on a course of antibiotics I had taken probiotics for a while, so I looked into gut health and introduced probiotic tablets permanently to my diet. This lead to my discovery about the gut microbiome and then a little later about the skin microbiome as well.
Sharing my Progress While Searching for Solutions
I then started a beauty blog, which was more for myself. I was tracking what I was using, what I liked and what I didn’t like and people really started to respond to it well.
I researched lots of skincare from Europe and Korea. I racked up quite an Amazon debt buying all the products I wanted to try with the ingredients and formulas that sounded like they were ok, but not quite right.
Once I had found out about probiotics in skincare I tried to find other brands that had them in them and realised that there were only a few available overseas. My skin was starting to heal and I was excited about what the future held.
Then about four years ago I suffered perioral dermatitis. I am pretty sure that my perioral dermatitis was triggered by a combination of stress, a fluoride allergy I developed or using cortisone cream on a rash around my mouth – I noticed my perioral dermatitis flare-ups were worse after I visited the dentist.
And that was when the idea really took hold. I was desperate for something to work. There were various products that included the ingredients that I loved, but nothing streamlined and simple that was active enough or contained the ingredients that I would like to use for my sensitive skin.
I used the knowledge from all of my research to create my first samples of AMPERNA®.
The satisfaction of helping others
And now here I am a few years later, receiving feedback from the people I’ve helped by creating AMPERNA®. And that is the best reward.
