Suhana's amazing recovery from debilitating acne

A true story about how a beautiful young woman’s life changed with Manuka Natural acne treatment.

A couple of years ago when I was shopping at our supermarket, I couldn’t help noticing that one of the young female supervisors – who I’m going to call Suhana, had very bad acne, in fact it was as bad as I had ever seen. She had an attractive face, but her acne was so severe that I felt really sorry for her and I just knew that she would be really self-conscious about her appearance.

I felt that I could help her because my company www.manukanatural.com makes natural manuka essential oil and manuka honey based products specifically for treating troubled skin conditions including acne.

I discussed approaching her with my family at home, with an offer of our natural manuka oil, cream and soap acne treatment products which we knew had been successful for others, but my daughter said DO NOT discuss it with her and my partner said I could be on very risky ground to approach her personally as well.

So what to do?

On return trips to the supermarket, I would come into contact with Suhana if we had wine in the trolley as the checkout supervisors have to certify that customers are over 18 years when buying alcohol - younger customers may be asked to show ID to prove their age -- not a difficult decision in my grey-haired case I would have thought, but the checkout operator still has to get approval from a supervisor regardless!

Suhana was always friendly and greeted me with a smile, but I still wanted to try to help her with her complexion.

However, there was another perceived problem, she was from India, and I had little knowledge of Indian customs, religious beliefs or social behaviour so if I was to say something to her about her skin condition there was a real risk of insulting her, causing great embarrassment or breaking social etiquette.

I had a real dilemma. As an older man, approaching a young woman in what I would have guessed was in her late teens or early 20’s, drawing her attention to her serious skin infection could have had a disastrous outcome, she could have rightly laid a complaint with her employer for harassment or worse and even had me trespassed from the supermarket for insulting her.

However, against my family’s advice I decided to go ahead and risk it because I sincerely believed that I had products that could help improve her life.

I knew that these products had helped several hundred other people who had used them to treat their acne and we had university microbiology studies proving the efficacy of manuka oil and Manuka UMF honey on the bacteria causing acne - Acne vulgaris. 

So, the next time I went into the supermarket when Suhana was on duty, I said to her do you mind if I could have a word. She said yes, so I told her that my company makes natural products for acne and I wondered if she would like to have some to try.

Then came the real surprise, she said “I have tried everything”.

At this stage I thought maybe I had really overstepped the mark and that since she had tried every treatment on the market that mine would not be effective either – because although we had been selling these products with positive reviews for over 20 years, it was always on-line, and I was aware that I had never actually seen any of our customers before they bought the products, so I literally had no idea how severe our other customers' acne had been. But I certainly did know in Suhana’s case it was really bad with serious swelling, pustules and severe nodular acne.

Suhana was most accepting and said yes, she would try the Manuka honey cream, essential oil blend and soap that I had offered to her, wow, what a relief, at least she was not offended and appeared happy to try them.

So far so good! The next day I went back to the supermarket with the products and left the unmarked package with the manager for her when she was next on her shift. Now it would be interesting to see if it would work for her.

About a week later I saw her again and already I could see that her skin had started to improve which she also acknowledged.

This went on for several weeks with a noticeable improvement every time I saw her, to the point where she was at least 90% improved from when she started the treatment, and she was so appreciative that each time she saw me she would leave her station and come over and give me a big hug! 

A few months later she returned to India for a holiday to see her family and she told me that her mother burst into tears on seeing how beautiful her new complexion was.

At this stage she had only been using the 25% Manuka essential oil on individual spots with a light application of the Manuka honey cream all over her face and the Manuka soap for washing. Then another interesting thing happened, a friend of hers who was returning to India permanently, purchased a pot of pure Manuka UMF honey to take with her as a gift, but because honey is considered by airlines to be a liquid and potentially dangerous item, it is prohibited as carry-on luggage, so she was not allowed to take it with her, and she gave it to Suhana.

In the meantime, Suhana had found that the cream I had given her which contained 30% Manuka UMF honey was effective, so she told me that she started to apply the pure Manuka UMF honey directly to her face at night, and this completed her recovery, finally, she had completely banished acne from her skin.

I’m not sure if her holiday in India was when she met her fiancé but a few months after that she told me that she was getting married in about a year and invited me and my partner to her wedding.

Her wedding invitation was an unbelievable recognition of what we had achieved, and I was so flattered to receive it. Sadly, we were not able to attend her wedding but very much appreciated her invitation all the same.

Unfortunately, Suhana and her husband no longer live in New Zealand so I am not able to continue to see that she has retained her beautiful complexion.

PS I have always found it hard to ascertain the age of young women from Asia and India and I would have guessed her age at around 20 years, much to my surprise she told me later that she was 29! So she had endured the terrible effects of severe acne infection for probably about 15 years! No wonder she was so happy with these products and so grateful for my rude intervention, it had literally changed her life!

Suhana is not her real name, for privacy reasons I chose it, because it means beautiful in Indian (Sanskrit) language