From the live of September 22, 2026. Jaime goes live every Tuesday and Thursday at 11am Mountain. The full conversation is at the bottom of this page.
It started with my dad and a $200 face wash
My dad put me on skincare when I was thirteen. He was the one who taught me to put on makeup and the one who did my hair, and he bought me the expensive line, the one in the glass bottles. Within a week my skin broke out. We blamed hormones, the way everyone does with a teenager. By the time I was grown I was still going to bed with something new on my face and waking up to check whether it had worked. It had not. One morning he asked me why I had bruises on my cheeks. My skin was bumpy and dark in patches and I did not have an answer.
At fourteen my mom started dropping me at the library on her way to work. The first book I ever pulled off the shelf was about botanical skincare. I did not understand it then, but I kept reading, and years later I understood what it had been telling me all along: the products were the problem. I tried everything in between. Salicylic acid, the peroxides, hyaluronic acid. Each one helped for a little while and none of them cleared my skin for good. The first time it cleared was when I started working with raw plants and simple fats, and started paying attention to what I ate.
That was sixteen years and, if I am honest about what we have spent on formulation, sourcing, failed batches and a decade of working with clients, more than a million dollars ago. Here is the short version of what I know.
Skin is internal first
Every skin condition starts on the inside. Your skin has its own intelligence and its own microbiome, and it knows how to keep itself clear. What gets in the way is congestion: a liver that is overworked, a bloodstream carrying more than it should, mucus-forming foods, and a layer of products on top that were designed to feel good rather than to help.
So before we talk about what goes on your face, the first thing I do with anyone who comes to me about breakouts is take three things off the plate for five days. Dairy, which is mucus-forming. Refined sugar, which has been shown over and over to make breakouts worse. And anything that came out of a bag: chips, crackers, bars, the things sold as healthy that are not. Even one day helps. Five days and you will see it in the mirror. I keep fruit around for the teenagers so the swap is easy, smoothies, bananas, apples, oranges, and I do not fight about it. I just make the better thing the easy thing.
What is in most acne products
If you pull up the full ingredient list on the popular acne lines, past the aloe and the kojic acid on the front of the box, you will find silicones (anything ending in cone), paraffin, petroleum fractions, a run of chemical preservatives (the ones with numbers in the name are usually preservatives, there to keep a water-based product from growing mold), and perfume. These are there to give a cream its slip and to keep it on a shelf for two years. They are not there to help your skin do its job, and whatever goes on the skin ends up in the body.
The thing almost nobody says out loud is that you can skip all of it if you go waterless. Water is the unstable ingredient in skincare. Take it out and you do not need the preservatives. That is why everything we make is a balm, a bar, or a tonic made from plant water and tea, and why the label fits on one line.
Three steps, two minutes, simple enough for a teenage boy
I have five boys. Anything that takes more than two minutes does not happen in my house, so this is the version that actually gets done.
Wash with Charcoal 27. Activated charcoal has pockets in it at the molecular level; on the skin it lifts what is sitting in the pore. Raw honey keeps the skin calm while it works. The bar is formulated so it clears without stripping the oil your skin is supposed to have, which is the part most cleansers get wrong, natural or not. This replaces the salicylic wash. Most people see a difference in the first day or two.
Reset with Rose Flower 34. Rose, aloe, and a little kombucha we brew in the shop. Spray it on a cotton pad and sweep it over the skin after the wash. It takes what the wash left behind, brings the skin back to calm, and sets it up to take in whatever comes next.
Finish with Rosehip 29. This was the first facial product I ever formulated, the original balm. Beeswax is the anchor, and beeswax conditions and softens the skin like nothing else I have worked with. Rosehip, dandelion and moringa support it. It is waterless, so there is nothing in it that needs a preservative, and it is the moisturizer for skin that wants to look clear and stay soft.
If your skin is very oily and you want to go further, cleanse with the Blackberry Leaf oil cleanser before the bar; oil attracts oil and breaks up what is in the pore. If your skin is dry and still breaking out, use the Moss and Plum oil cleanser instead, which is the soothing one.
The warning nobody gives you
When you take the chemical products off and start supporting the skin instead, some people see more breakouts in the first few weeks, not fewer. The redness and the irritation go down, but the skin pushes out what it has been holding. It looks like it is getting worse. It is clearing. I had a client who stuck to the whole ritual for six weeks and told me her skin had never been worse, and then at the end of the six weeks that it had never been this clear since the day she first broke out, that it looked like it did when she was ten. Give it thirty days. Stick with it.
Four herbs for the inside
These are the teas I put people on, and you cannot get them wrong. A little too much or too little, you will be fine. Find them at a local apothecary if you have one; the herbalist there has usually done the sourcing for you.
Burdock root is the number one herb for breakouts taken internally. It cleanses the blood. Roots need heat to give up what is in them: an ounce of burdock to four parts water, simmered on low for thirty minutes. It is bitter. Add raw honey.
Dandelion, leaf or root, supports the liver, which is the body's first line of defense and the organ most of us have never thought about. The root is stronger than the leaf.
Calendula and yarrow are the calming, anti-inflammatory pair, and leaves and flowers do not need heat. Fill a 64 ounce mason jar with water, add an ounce of herb, leave it overnight. In the morning combine it with the burdock and drink a cup three times a day.
For the boys, and for anyone who works out
The daughters will do the twenty minutes. The boys will not, so the ritual above is the whole program: bar, tonic, balm, two minutes, done. We put blue labels on these for a reason. Then the dirty three off the plate for five days, and the milk and the sugar at the very least.
Body breakouts, back and chest and anywhere a workout happens, follow the same rules, with the charcoal bar doing most of the work. Two things to look at there: the fabric you are sweating in, because synthetic fabric is plastic against the skin and the skin cannot breathe through it, and the bars and shakes sold as fitness food, which are often the most processed thing in the house.
The whole conversation
Jaime goes live every Tuesday and Thursday at 11am Mountain. Subscribe on YouTube and bring the question you have never asked anyone.
Nothing here is medical advice. It is what sixteen years of reading labels and working with real skin taught one herbalist. If you are under a doctor's care, keep them in the loop.
