Anyone taking a statin?

I'm looking at the possibility that the precise mechanism by which P. acnes triggers inflammation has at long last been uncovered, and this fills in details in my hypothesis that zinc superoxide dismutase (ZSOD) is a key preventer of acne (which fits a great many other facts reasonably well).

In any case, I was looking for drugs that increase ZSOD levels, and noticed that some statins (pitavastatin, atorvastatin, and simvastatin) may have such an effect -- and indeed (at least in the two older drugs) have been noted to decrease acne. Just wondered if anybody here is taking a statin? I would predict that both a zinc supplement and creating a normal melatonin cycle would be synergistic against acne with one of these particular statins.

Probably easier for any adult >40 to get prescribed a statin than accutane (and certainly a whole lot safer!).

Yogurt decreases total anti-oxidant cabability

The effect of daily consumption of probiotic and conventional yoghurt on oxidant and anti-oxidant parameters in plasma of young healthy women.

I presume the researchers were hoping to find that probiotic yogurt was "healthier" than ordinary yogurt. What the study seemed to show, however, was that both forms significantly reduced serum antioxidant levels and, if anything, the probiotic form had worse effects.

This raises the possibility that yogurt may offer it's own special mechanism for worsening acne, apart from just being a dairy product, and also is not really a cheery note about using probiotics.

Some scientists dare criticize juice!

It's time fruit juice loses its wholesome image, some experts say

Funny stories about how Americans were trained to "believe" in juice as a means of selling excess oranges. Parallel to the tale of teaching Americans to eat oats for breakfast once the auto started wiping out the primary customer for oats: horses.

Still, I was surprised that the media was willing to quote a scientist arguing that there's little difference between the health detriments of juice and soda. At least with soda, you have no delusions it's a health drink, so if you get problems you're inclined to say "hey, maybe I should cut back!" But with fruit juices, you get people actually drinking more of them in the insane hope it will benefit their health. Or, as the article says, "Because juice is viewed as nutritious, limits on consumption are not usually set by parents".

I remember watching, aghast, as my nephew spent his formative years glued to apple juice boxes, since he would fuss if denied. He had his first root canal by the age of 10.

Roll Your Own Nicomide

(For adults only, since it's not clear it's been studied in kids, or that there's a known safety record for taking mega-doses of niacinamide for years on end.)

Since people are taking niacin (often, a less safe form of niacin not shown to have any relevance to acne) for acne, I thought it worth pointing out you can roll your own version of a niacin treatment that was actually studied and that produced a measurable impact on acne symptoms for a significant percentage of those studied. Though sold as a prescription med as Nicomide, you can get all the ingredients off of iHerb.com (probably many other places as well):

• 3 Niacinamide pills
• 1 zinc pill
• 1/2 tablet copper
• 1/2 tablet folic acid

Take one set of these per day with meal. Allow 8 weeks for results (if any) to be established.

Nicomide is one of the more successful supplements for acne/rosacea, assuming their study wasn't fudged.

Of course, self reporting is a lousy way to measure an acne treatment, one designed to give your product every percentage point due to placebo effect and optimistic patient bias. Still, for people dreaming of a pill solution, it's a chance to try something that was actually studied, where there's actually some record of safety (in adults, at least).

It may be that the megadose of niacinamide acts on acne exactly as one of the downstream effects of melatonin does: by regenerating glutathione, which takes out the excess superoxide that P. acnes needs to create inflammation.

Light therapy used to modulate insulin response

Less need for insulin, a surprising effect of phototherapy in insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.

Melatonin is known to influence insulin, but this is an actual case report of light therapy being used to affect insulin response via (presumably) melatonin.

This makes me happy, because my model of acne says that the primary reason acne is rampant in civilized society is that we do not live 12 hours/day in bright sunlight and sleep >= 9 hours in total darkness. While a case can be made that impaired insulin response could lead to acne, such explanations do little to explain the wild variability in acne from one person to another, or even in the same person across time. My model says that when you are getting sufficient hours of outdoor light exposure (indoor light being neither as bright, nor containing the best parts of the spectrum for suppressing melatonin), eating a high glycemic load diet becomes significantly less likely to induce acne.