Veise Beauty's Top 4 Natural Tricks for Healing Cystic Acne
Angelica Caporuscio, 28, has been a tenacious business owner for seven years, but not always in the skincare industry. “I produced electronic music, owned a craft beer store, a web design company, a clothing company, a small marketing company, oh and I modeled for a little,” she recalls while hand-bottling 1,000 lip scrubs in small glass jars for an upcoming order. But the seed for her current adventure in non-tox skincare was planted four years ago when an autoimmune disorder and acne had her cornered.
“It got so bad that I was having seizures at night while I sleeping, and was afraid something bad would happen and no one would be able to find me because I was always staying in hotels,” she explains.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
Veise Beauty was found from Angelica’s own need— a scratch-your-own-itch kind of business if you will. In between independent projects, she held a full-time job traveling around the country with a large marketing firm. She loved it, but everyday found herself lethargic, nauseous and in intense pain. “It got so bad that I was having seizures at night while I sleeping and was afraid something bad would happen and no one would be able to find me because I was always staying in hotels,” she explains.
She was soon diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Sjogren’s Syndrome that attacks the moisture glands in the body, including skin, eyes, mouth, and heart. It also prevents the body from absorbing nutrients, hence Angelica’s 102 pounds at 5’7”. “A simple ALCAT test showed my current diet, including foods I thought were good for me, like turkey and avocado, were actually toxic to my body,” she explains. In 2014 she started to systematically adjust her diet, removing things that were causing inflammation and contributing to her flare-ups.
MOVING FORWARD
Changing up diet is never easy, but Angelica faced it with the same efficient perspective she brings to her business, “What’s the point of consuming certain things when my body is clearly giving me signs it doesn’t like them?” From there, coconut and grapefruit were the next to go, along with oats, mangos, soy, dairy, and sugar. “Playing with my diet is a little intuitive and a lot of research from medical journals,” she explains. Two years later, after cutting inflammatory foods, she finds herself in her second year of autoimmune remission. “I eat a vegan diet with some fish and have to be careful not to push myself too hard,” she says. Admittedly a delicate balance when running a successful business.
Feeling more like herself, Angelica starting cooking, or, not cooking, her next business idea: a cookie dough company. “My skin went from bad to super bad because you have to test all your products—which were mainly sugar and dairy,” she remembers. “After 3 years of struggling with cystic acne and a low confidence, I told myself it was time to find a natural solution and fix the problem.” At the time she was using products, that irritated her skin.
VEISE WAS BORN
Using her voracious curiosity and meticulous mind, she dropped the cookie dough business and created Veise Beauty. “It makes me so mad that the skincare industry has that much power over women’s confidence,” Angelica says. “Why not make a product that makes your skin look good, instead of making it look worse so you have to continuously purchase more products to try and fix the issue that chemical-laden skincare products created in the first place?” She only believes in ingredients that have a clear benefit, from geranium oil that acts as an anti-inflammatory and natural antimicrobial to spirulina that infuses the skin with a complete amino acid profile and loads of vitamins to help heal and brighten skin. “Whenever I run out of something mainstream, I challenge myself to make one even better,” she smiles. “I spend a lot of money on new ingredients.”
“Whenever I run out of something mainstream, I challenge myself to make one even better.”
“I want you to feel good about yourself. I suffered from 14 years of eating disorders along with depression, anxiety, autoimmune issues, and acne—it’s okay to be you and struggle. You’re still a badass woman, and you can still accomplish whatever you want, regardless of what’s happened in your past,” cheers Angelica. She brings this heart into her business not only through social media, packaging, and marketing (#glowon) but through donating 1% of her sales to a charity called Step Up Women’s Network. “I love what they do because they build confidence in young women in low-income communities through after school programs,” says Angelica. “It’s important to uplift women around us, even if we don’t know them personally”
Veise stands for Vitamin Enriched Ingestibles Skincare & Essentials—meaning thoughtfully sourced supplements for overall wellness are part of her future game plan. Today in her line, you can find affordable skincare products like Pore Perfection (her first creation and best seller), Dream Serum, Hydrating Oil and lots more, which are all engineered from medical journals, scientific studies, and a healthy dose of intuition. “I tested the mask on my boyfriend first,” she smiles. “And after I test new products on my very sensitive, reactive, acne-prone skin, they go out to our growing community of testers. It’s really important to me that our products work for as many people as possible.”
EXPERT TAKEAWAYS
This four-year-long journey taught Angelica a thing or two about self-care. She put her autoimmune disease into remission and cleared her stubborn acne (save for the few PMS breakouts) using natural mindful methods.
I know you’re dying for them. Here are her top four takeaways for clearing cystic acne naturally:
LOOK AT YOUR DIET: You see a lot of girls on Instagram saying dairy, sugar, and soy highly contribute to their breakouts. And in my experience, it’s true. Especially if you’re struggling with cystic acne, it typically comes down to hormones. Dairy and soy contain high levels of hormones, which can further disrupt your natural hormones if they’re off-kilter. The high amount of processed sugar can spike insulin levels, which in turn causes your skin to create an abundance of oils that can clog pores. I would cut out dairy, sugar, and soy for a month and see what happens to your skin.
LISTEN TO YOUR BODY: Your body will tell you everything you need to know if you listen to it. For example, if it burns, that means your skin doesn’t like it. Burning is not a good thing. Just like you wouldn’t eat something that gives you an upset stomach because that means your body clearly doesn’t agree with it. Also, practice listening to your instincts— both physically and mentally. Your gut doesn’t lie. With the overwhelming amount of access to podcasts, social media, and self-empowerment books, it’s really easy to lose your own voice and what your personal beliefs and thoughts are. Try to step back and ask, is this my perspective?
READ INGREDIENTS: There’s such a big trend with ‘natural’ skincare right now. Big brands have caught onto this, and are producing products that look natural and non-threatening when really they’re full of artificial colors, perfumes, and chemicals. Since up to 64% of what you put on your skin gets absorbed into the body, it’s crucial to make sure you’re only putting ingredients on your skin that provide some kind of benefit to the body. For me, chemicals like salicylic acid, benzoic acid, alcohol, Phenoxyethanol, and artificial colors don’t make sense. I believe there’s always something in nature that does it even better.
BE KIND TO YOURSELF: I know it’s easy to get discouraged. What’s working for me right now is this mindfulness tip I came up with: when a thought pops into my head, I use to question, ‘is this positive or negative’ but I noticed I was saying the word negative a lot, which in turn manifests negative things into your life. Instead, when a thought pops up I ask, “let go or let’s go.” Saying ‘let’ go forces your brain to push it aside and make room for more constructive thought patterns. Let’s go means you can continue on that thought process, while still staying in a positive frame of mind. Your mind is your biggest support system if you use it properly.