How to Tell if You Have Acne Prone Skin
April 19, 2008 by Peter Whittington
Filed under Acne Causes
You have noticed that while you generally have clear skin, there are some times when you wake up with acne on your face or body. You are not sure where this has come from, so you are wondering if, perhaps, you have acne prone skin.
About Acne Prone Skin
The first way that you can tell if you have acne prone skin or not is to find out what kind of skin your parents have. There are generally only a couple of types of skin: normal, dry, and oily. The people that have oily skin are they ones that are prone to acne prone skin, so if you and your parents have oil skin, that is a good indicator when it comes to acne.
Another form of acne prone skin is caused by having very sensitive skin. If you have lighter skin, chances are that you have more sensitive skin than those who have darker skin. People that have lighter skin are the ones who are easily freckled and sunburned too.
If you have sensitive, acne prone skin, chances are that you will need to consult your doctor before you try any of the acne remedies that are available at your local grocery store. This is because the salicylic acid in the acne treatments that are available can make sensitive skin irritated.
There is, however, a natural remedy that might be able to help you if you have sensitive, acne prone skin. Think back to when you were younger and had the chicken pox. Do you remember taking a bath to ease the itchiness? Chances are that it was an oatmeal bath, and that is a gentle way for you to reduce some of the irritation that comes along with acne.
The next thing that you need to think about is how allergic you are to certain clothing materials and how much you sweat. If you are the kind of person who likes to go to the gym, you should take a shower after you are done exercising. This is because when you sweat, you clog pores, and those clogged pores can result in acne.
If you have an allergy to certain kinds of clothing materials, you will break out is a rash which might be mistaken for acne. You will know if this is the case, because you will only break out when you wear that material.
For more information on whether or not you have acne prone skin, consult your doctor. Your doctor will be able to tell right away, and also be able to give you an effective and safe treatment plan, so soon you will have skin that is clear.
What Does And Does Not Cause Acne?
April 19, 2008 by Peter Whittington
Filed under Acne Causes
Many people have suffered from acne at one time in their lives. This skin affliction, though it’s common, has negative connotations attached to it that cause self-esteem issues among some. In addition to these negative connotations that this affliction has, there are misconceptions over what causes people to suffer from it. In order to better understand the truth about what causes acne and to better understand how to treat it, let’s discuss what can and can’t lead to an outbreak of this skin problem.
Hormones Lead To Outbreaks
One thing that is often linked to acne outbreaks is the presence of extra hormones in the body. For women, this can mean that outbreaks are more severe during one point in the menstrual cycle than during others. In all people, the extra hormones the body produces during puberty often results in outbreaks of acne, making it a normal part of growing up. In the same way, increased stress often leads to an outbreak, since stress stimulates the adrenal glands to produce more hormones.
Dirt Is Not A Culprit
Often, the appearance of acne on the face includes blackheads, which are little black spots in the skin. Because of the way these look, people often misinterpret acne as a result of dirt on the face, meaning that those with acne have poor personal hygiene. In reality, those black spots are usually composed of keratin, which is the substance that makes up skin and hair cells. Because this affliction is caused by unshed skin cells blocking pores, these black spots often show. This is normal, and reflects a symptom, not a cause.
Bacteria
The ultimate cause of acne is small bacteria that infect the clogged pores mentioned. These bacteria breed and result in the inflammation that usually shows itself as reddened skin or as pimples. The whiteheads that often form from these pimples come from your body’s immune response, with that white fluid consisting mostly of white blood cells. So though whiteheads are unsightly, it’s a sign that your body is working to wipe out the bacteria.
Food As A Contributor
Currently, the jury is still out as to how much or how little food contributes to outbreaks of acne. While old-fashioned suggestions for preventing outbreaks includes cutting out things such as chocolate and fried foods, studies have not proved that easing up on consuming either definitely helps. Milk, however is a culprit in causing acne, though doctors aren’t sure why yet; they suspect it’s the hormones in the milk. Similarly, some studies have suggested that cultures in which few people eat refined sugars have fewer cases of acne, but since outbreaks are sometimes determined by genetics, that’s not certain yet. However, with this information at your fingertips, perhaps you will better understand what can and can’t cause outbreaks of this skin problem.
Acne Awareness Can Help Reduce Acne Outbreaks
April 19, 2008 by Peter Whittington
Filed under Acne Causes
One of the best ways to fight acne is through acne awareness and in taking the right steps to prevent it from forming in the first place. However, regardless of the efforts to prevent its formation, there is still a good chance that a person will suffer acne throughout their lifetime. How severe it becomes will depend on the precautions taken as well as being the acne awareness that results in response to the first signs of a problem.
Understanding acne awareness may also help in preventing it from forming. Adjacent to hair follicles, there is a gland, or tube, called the infundibulum through which the hair passes on its way to the skin surface. This gland produces sebum, a mixture of wax and fat that is responsible for maintaining the skins moisture. As the gland produces sebum it flows through the gland, it reaches the surface and spreads over the skin to help hold moisture.
As hormones are produced due to puberty or other physical means, the sebaceous gland may become physically blocked, causing the sebum to become lodged in the gland causing the appearance of bacteria, which will grow into one of the type of acne most common in teenagers. To treat acne blemishes, acne awareness is needed to determine the type of acne being presented to properly determine the best means of treatment.
Removing Cause Is Best Treatment Method
Frequent washing of the face or other areas subject to acne to remove excess sebum should reduce the occurrence of acne. Avoiding oily cosmetics and oily hair gels as well as frequent hair washing will also reduce excess sebum and, by using acne awareness in daily hygiene can vastly reduce the opportunity for acne to form.
Once acne begins to form, the use of abrasive skin cleansers should be avoided and scrubbing the face with a washcloth should be diminished. Acne awareness has also shown the use of alcohol swabs or those containing benzoyl peroxide are effective at removing excess sebum to fight acne breakouts.
In many cases of acne, topical treatments can be beneficial in drying out the excess sebum and eliminating the surface pustules. However, those with adequate acne awareness will be able to determine the type of acne they have. Those with cystic acne will receive very little benefit from most over-the-counter products, and will need antibiotic medications to get rid of the cysts. Squeezing them typically makes it worse, by driving the offending bacteria deeper under the skin.
Acne Diet Link Exposed: Is There an Acne Cure Diet that Works?
April 5, 2008 by Peter Whittington
Filed under Acne Causes
Acne Diet and The Money Factor: You Can’t Sell a Healthy Diet
Ask any medical doctor if there is a connection between diet and acne and almost all of them will claim there is none. Quoting from the Journal of the American Medical Association: “Diet plays no role in acne treatment in most patients…even large amounts of certain foods have not clinically exacerbated acne”.
With years of medical education and clinical experience behind these claims, how can we the simple folks who suffer from acne challenge these statements and think otherwise? The answer is: doubt. Doubt, if its stays in the borders of reason, can open many doors otherwise will stay forever shut. Believe it or not, doubt can change reality. Doubt can cure your acne and doubt can even save your life.
Fact is, countless of acne sufferers have reported that their acne seemed to get worse when they consumed certain foods and saw dramatic positive change over their acne condition when they eliminated the same foods from their diet and when certain foods with specific nutritional value were incorporated into their diet.
So why do dermatologists so stubbornly insist that diet does not cause acne? The answer: you can’t make a profit promoting a healthy diet. At least not as much money as you could make by selling drugs and over the counters. There is a huge pressure upon doctors coming from the drug and pharmaceutical companies to prescribe expensive medications and lotions that create dependency. The truth is, that your doctor is in a way, a hostage by the trillion dollar drug companies. Did you know that the drug companies, who have no interest in producing something that they cannot control financially, sponsor most medical schools?
The right diet, although not a solution by itself, can, in many cases, dramatically reduce inflammation and even completely clear one’s acne (if you’re one of the lucky ones who’s acne is triggered by allergic response to food). Promoting a clear skin diet simply means less profits for the drug and pharmaceutical companies.
The truth is that conventional medications will never cure your acne, simply because they are pre-designed NOT to fix the internal cause of acne. They are pre-designed to deal with the external symptoms of a disease as they create more and more dependency and more dependency means making more money all at our expense and ignorance.
The Theory That Diet Doesn’t Cause Acne Is A Myth
The dogmatic theory that diet does not cause acne and that acne is merely an incurable genetic disorder was based upon two dated researches published in 1969 and 1971 that were aimed at studying the connection between diet and acne.
These studies were the foundation of the ‘acne symptoms treatment strategy’, meaning, because acne is a genetic disease that cannot be prevented, the only way to deal with acne would be to tackle its symptoms (bacteria, inflammation, puss, redness, greasiness), by applying creams, antibiotics, taking prescription drugs and over the counters.
Surprisingly enough, years after the above studies were published, clinical trials and in depth researches experimenting the acne diet link have found that the studies from 1969 and 1971 had came to the wrong conclusions and were in fact seriously flawed.
Recent studies have clearly found a significant connection between diet and acne. It appears that the wrong diet is now thought to be one of the leading acne contributing factors that can negatively affect hormonal regulation and the natural process of toxic elimination, which can seriously aggravate one’s existing acne.
Diet Shapes Who You Are (Including Your Acne)
In the same way that crashing waves shape beach cliffs and just like the wind shapes the canyon walls, slowly and methodically over time, so does eating shapes and effects our physic, our internal system, our physical and mental being, from the organ down to the cellular level.
The idea that an object foreign to our body that is inserted by the food that we eat, has no effect on us, or has no impact on chronic conditions such as acne is absurd. Diet is the primary thing that affects and shapes who we are.
Diet has cumulative effect on our bodies, and that includes our skin condition and acne, which is a manifestation of a chronic internal problem slowly shaped and built by the wrong daily dietary choices over the years.
Acne Diet and The Kitavan Islanders
While in the U.S, more than 80% of teenagers between 16 and 18 have acne and more than 17 million Americans suffer from some form of acne, there is an interesting evidence that native people that live and eat in traditional ways, have significantly lower to no occurrences of acne.
In 2002, Dr. Cordain and his colleagues published a landmark study that examined 300 people living in the Kitavan Islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea that showed that none of the islanders had even one blemish on his or her face. Similar to the Kitavans, no case of acne had been observed when the same experiment had been conducted upon the South American Indians called the Ache, living in a remote jungle in eastern Paraguay.
The natives of Kitavan and the South American Indians had no access to the latest over the counters, topical creams or conventional acne medications and they had no dermatologist to consult with. The only vast difference between them and American or European citizens is their diet.
Acne Diet and Sugar: The Sweet Poison
Aside from the fact that sugar is a 100% pure chemical with zero nutritional value, recent studies have clearly shown a connection between the consumption of sugar and the aggravation of acne.
When you consume any form of refined carbohydrates (white sugar, white flour, white rice) here’s what happens: right after you insert that ‘sweet poison’ into your body, it rapidly spikes up your blood sugar levels. Your body needs to bring those levels down so it secrets a surge of insulin, other male hormones and an insulin-like growth factor called IGF-1. The excretion of these hormones overwhelms your liver and your internal system in general. The excess of male hormones encourages the skin to excrete large amounts of sebum oil: The greasy substance that encourages the p.acne bacteria to grow, resulting in the aggravation of your acne.
Acne Diet and Dairy Products: Got Milk? Got Acne
If you thought sugar can aggravate your acne, here’s another major nutritional player in the formation of acne: behold the miracles of milk. Milk (all dairy products included) is the most harmful, mucus forming, allergenic and acne aggravating food you can find. Surprised? I thought so. After years of constant brainwashing by the media, who can blame us for thinking milk is good for strong bones and healthy teeth? The truth is: every sip of milk contains 59 different raging hormones, (which trigger the hyper-production of sebum oil resulting in more acne), saturated animal fat, steroid hormones, dead white blood cells, and cow pus in abundance!
Did you know that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows 750 million pus cells in every liter of milk (about two pounds) produced in America? Think about it, the next time you pop a pimple.
Scientific studies already point the finger at milk as one of the worst acne aggravating foods: “As pointed out by Dr. Jerome Fisher, ‘About 80 percent of cows that are giving milk are pregnant and are throwing off hormones continuously.’ Progesterone breaks down into androgens, which have been implicated as a factor in the development of acne…Dr. Fisher observed that his teenage acne patients improved as soon as the milk drinking stopped.”
If there’s one element you should remove from your diet in the quest for clear skin make it this one. Not only will you see an immediate improvement over your acne, you’ll feel a huge weight has been lifted from your body. If you worry about calcium intake, don’t! Milk being acidic forming food creates a leeching effect where calcium is taken from your bones to balance the acidity. Milk actually deprives your body from its calcium resources. Green leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds are not only excellent sources of calcium they also have the powers to help you fight your acne symptoms.
Diet Is Only One of The Factors That Cause Acne
Dairy products and sugar are not the only acne aggravating foods. The two above cannot sum up the list of western made acne triggering foods. There are several other foods you should clearly stay away from if you ever wish to clear your acne. The good new is that there are tons of other foods such as essential fatty acids that are not only excellent for your skin, they can actually help you clear your acne, by re-balancing your body and promoting to an acne-free environment.
The right nutrition plays an important part in the complex process of acne formation. When doctors claim there is no link between diet and acne because certain individuals can eat specific foods and get acne while others eat the same foods and don’t, these doctors have failed to realize that there are several factors involved in the formation and aggravation of acne and diet is only ONE of them.
The Final Verdict On The Acne Diet Connection: How To Finally Overcome Your Acne Challenge
Acne is a complex condition that is triggered by several underlying factors. The only way to neutralize your acne condition is to tackle all these acne-contributing factors-holistically. Since the wrong diet is only one of these acne-triggering factors, in most cases no special diet can cure acne.
There is a however, a tight connection between diet and acne formation. Dietary factors can trigger and aggravate your existing acne. Avoiding the wrong foods such as milk, sugar and hydrogenated oils, and eating cleansing and hormonal balancing foods such as green leafy vegetables and essential fatty acids, can help your skin heal itself from the inside out and dramatically reduce your acne symptoms.
There are also several important dietary principals that you must understand and follow if you ever want to cure your acne for good.
Taking responsibility over your body and adhering to these dietary principals along with taking the necessary steps to tackle all acne contributing factors, holistically, will not only cure your acne permanently and give you the flawless acne free skin you deserve, following these principals will also significantly improve your overall health, mental well-being, look and feel.
Mike Walden is a certified nutritionist, independent medical researcher, natural health consultant and author of the #1 best-selling e-book, “Acne No More- Open The Door To An Acne Free Life.” Mike has written dozens of holistic health articles and has been featured in ezines and print magazines, as well as on hundreds of websites worldwide. For information on Mike’s Holistic Clear Skin program, visit: Acne No More
