My whole life, I’ve been a “health nut.” When my sister asked for a chocolate donut, I asked for a cucumber with French dressing. At age five, I loved chatting with my grandmother about vitamins and health foods. We connected on that stuff, and on washing and moisturizing our faces at night with beautiful products that made our skin feel nice.

So years later, after consuming countless kilos of soy products, and just placing an order for 200 bucks worth of soy meatloaf, soy burgers, soy brownies and god knows what else, I read some research on soy and all it does and doesn’t do for you (go to notsoy.com for more info), and I was stunned. I thought soy was “healthy?”

“But I just placed this huge order…” I told my husband.

“Throw it out,” he replied.

“I can’t throw out a huge box of food that is totally fine—maybe I’ll give it to Missy. She loves this stuff too.”

“It’s not totally fine,” he replied calmly, “It’s crap, so throw it out. Don’t do that to Missy.”

“Duped!!” I said in the voice that Seinfeld uses when he says “Newman!!”

My yoga has taught me well how to let go, and so it didn’t take long for that sick feeling in my stomach to dissipate when I thought about the enormous quantity of soy I had consumed, thinking it was “healthy,” when all the while it was messing with my body.

But as I spread the word to students, I watched as they had a hard time letting it go. One student hadn’t had her period for many years and the docs were baffled. After hearing and reading about the bad effects of soy, she gave it up cold-turkey, and menstruated one week later.

So last week a student of ours brought me a bunch of samples of Dr. Hauschka skin products. For the three and a half years that I’ve been a raw-foodist, I have only put things that I can eat on my face: pure, fresh water and various oils (coconut, almond, and olive).

“I am open-minded,” I thought, “so I’ll try these products that the universe has delivered to me free of charge.”

It’s been a few days and I’m sticking with them for two weeks to see how my skin responds or doesn’t. But what I’ve already learned, which is priceless, is that what the skin care companies have sold to you and me and our grandmothers for decades is not true.

We should not coat our faces with a heavy skin care cream at night before going to sleep—or put anything on our skin at night for that matter. What my student, well-versed in Dr. Hauschka wisdom, explained to me is that at night, our skin is detoxing and rebuilding (as are our organs). And before it begins this process, it takes inventory: what’s going on and what do I need to do to repair it?

So if I have slathered my skin with a night skin care cream (or even natural olive oil), then my skin reads that it’s moist and in good shape and needs no moisture/oil, and thus, produces nothing to moisten itself. It figures it’s all set.

So because I have been putting oil on my skin at night, it has stopped doing what it needs to do naturally to take care of itself. And the cycle begins. My skin doesn’t produce the oils and so my skin is dry, and I apply more oil (or dry skin cream).

Now I had a bit of fear around not putting any oil on my skin at night. “My skin is really dry at night,” I told my student. “It’s going to be soooo dry if I don’t put anything on it!!”

She reassured me that hers felt like dinosaur skin when she began, and so I knew she understood, and I took a leap of faith.

After one night, one night—my skin was already back to producing the oil it needed to keep my skin feeling soft and great. I now put no oil on at night and in the morning my skin is more balanced than it ever was when I used oil or creams. And what’s more, I had some cracking on my fingers that I would cover in Aquaphor (a heavy ointment) at night and then wear night gloves to help them heal… I stopped that as well and after only two nights—healed!!

“Duped again!!” This time by the skin care industry. Wonder how sales are going to do on night care creams when you spread the word, Sistah?