QUOTE(frogprince @ Jun 16 2005, 10:40 PM)
Trust me. Really. Seriously. I have read many many horrific tales of people taking the so called "healthy" appoach by eating "lots of fruits & vegetables" and their face getting worst. People are so misled.
So for your sake and your skin's sake, please open your mind and really look at ALL the food you are eating. Stop assuming that what is traditionally regarded as "healthy" won't hurt your face.
Instead of unhealthy vs healthy,
think in terms of inflammatory vs anti-inflammatory.There are many threads and posts with diets with foods, and if you research well you will notice how many healthy foods some people lists as possible precipitator of acne. From there,
it is up to you customize what foods would apply to you.
Bravo. The part about Inflammatory vs. Anti-inflammatory pretty much sums up why some of us have similar "anti-acne" diets and yet are still "customized" for our own individual needs. Androgens & IGF-1 still play a role, in fact their presence can also be the reason for the production of Pro-Inflammatory products or Immune Mediators and would explain how a break out can happen "overnight". In fact, if we consider the immune response in dealing with acne, that right there would be how ANYONE can claim that they broke out within minutes, hours, days or weeks of consuming a particular food.
Granted, we can fail traditional allergy tests, yet can still be very
mildly allergic, intolerant, or sensitive to just about any food, chemical, or nutrient (in excess). While some say it's confusing, in general the foods we avoid still fall in the
major top allergen/intolerant food lists and these are the ones interested members should investigate one by one first.
I had been thinking about this for a while now, and obviously Acne is a chronic inflammatory condition, but so is Insulin Resistance (IR)... With IR, the inflammation is low grade enough to evade obvious clinical signs, unless of course one eats something that makes their IR worse, and as such ends up really irritating their skin (or some other organ). Thus, they break out in various forms of acne including cysts and develop "postinflammatory" pigmention (red, brown, purple, black) marks...hmm.
Say, did ya know that IR actually is considered asymptomatic expect for a skin condition known as Acanthosis Nigricans. A hyperpigmentation disorder occuring within the folds of the skin, back of neck, under arm, groin, and a few other areas. So if hyperpigmentation is a sign of irritation, overstimulation, and thus subsequent inflammation, and IR is a chronic low grade inflammatory disease, and acne can be a symptom of IR, then....why is it so hard for people to believe that food (its micronutrients) can be a major player for some of us around here???
Check this out:
(was going to post a nice long list of immune factors or mediators present in increased levels in acneic individuals or in acne lesions but I can't find the darn site...pout) Off the top of my head these are involved in the inflammatory process (host & microorganism induced):
Histamine
Interleukin-1, IL-1
Interleukin-8, IL-8
Interleukin-12, IL-12
Prostaglandin E2, PGE2
Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha, TNF-a
Leukotrienes
(there's a few others)
QUOTE
Three major factors contribute to this process:
1. A hyperpermeable gut (leaky gut syndrome), which can be caused by a number of factors, including irritation,
an imbalance in the types of micro-organisms in the gut [antibiotic abuse], an underlying allergic condition directly affecting the gut, and a deficiency in a certain type of protective antibody complex, called secretory IgA. When the immune system gets cranked up, the adrenal glands will produce more cortisol. Excess cortisol can cause both gut hyperpermeability and a deficiency in secretory IgA antibodies. Thus stress, which raises cortisol levels, can also contribute to food sensitivities in this way. Stress also weakens the immune system in other ways. Whatever the cause, incompletely digested food particles are more likely to activate the immune system than are fully digested food particles.
2. A slow or deficient detoxification pathway fails to eliminate toxins, which are then dealt with by the immune system cells. In some instances a particular detoxification pathway may be overwhelmed because there is too much toxin to handle. This can occur because a certain detoxification enzyme is deficient. Just as a deficiency in a digestive enzyme makes it difficult or impossible to digest a certain food substance, as when lactase efficiency inhibits digestion of lactose (milk sugar), a detoxification enzyme deficiency makes it difficult or impossible to break down a dietary toxin. Many detox enzymes also require cofactors: micronutrients, such as vitamins and minerals, which should be in the diet. However, commercial agricultural practices deplete the soil of its natural mineral content. If it’s not in the soil, then it’s not in the diet.
Thus the modern diet consisting primarily of processed and adulterated foods contributes to food sensitivities in two ways: It introduces more unnatural and foreign substances into the body, and it does not provide adequate levels of nutrients necessary for proper liver detoxification. Sometimes a large dose of a foreign chemical so overwhelms a detox pathway that the body then develops a sensitivity to new foods or chemicals that contain chemically related components. The initial insult that sets up the sensitivity is called induction. The body’s subsequent reactivity to chemically related substances is called spreading.
3. A genetic predisposition to react to a particular food substance. Some genetic tendencies are associated with place of origin. Our genetic ancestry, based on thousands of generations of previous exposures, determines our capability to digest a food. This goes a long way toward explaining today’s increased cases of food intolerance. Since commercialized agriculture and food processing began, which were only around 50 to 60 years ago, the food that we eat has now come to resemble less and less the food our ancestors ate. We must take into account factors of human migration, food migration (through preservation and shipping), food adulteration, now modification through genetic manipulation and irradiation, and less natural nutritional support for the detoxification pathways.
Nearly everyone exhibits a reaction of the innate immune system initiated by exposure to common foods, additives, and other substances. The foods and other substances we are exposed to every day, if incompatible with our own unique biochemical makeup, will result in immune system creation of free radicals and cause the type of physical damage and premature aging. Phagocytes such as macrophages and neutrophils purposely generate high levels of oxygen radicals, which they store in tightly sealed intracellular compartments. When phagocytes engulf bacteria or other microbes during the course of an infection, they deliver them from these internal radical-containing compartments, where they are very efficiently destroyed. Unfortunately, after several rounds of microbial feeding, the phagocytes die and release their contents into the surrounding tissues. Oxygen radicals released in this fashion can be taken up by adjacent cells, and once inside they cause the same sort of damage as radicals produced internally. In the case of prolonged infections a chronic inflammatory state may develop, and the repeated engorging and death of phagocytes can cause serious oxidative damage to nearby healthy cells. This is also a major source of damage in chronic inflammatory autoimmune reactions such as rheumatoid arthritis, and can lead to serious tissue loss.
A chronic infection, because it activates the immune system, can cause destruction of cell membranes, organs, and other tissue and even DNA. The damage done by reactive oxygen molecules needed to operate living cells can be enormous. No molecular species is immune. Oxygen radicals can attack and deform protein molecules, disrupting structural complexes and inhibiting important enzymatic functions. Protein degradation products frequently show up in the body fluids of elderly persons or of patients with chronic infections or chronic inflammatory diseases such as arthritis. Various lipid oxidation products show up in pigment granules called lipofuscin that clog the cells of older individuals, and are a major component of atherosclerotic plaques. Oxygen radicals also attack the individual nucleotide bases that make up both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA.
Scientists now believe that chronic activation of the innate immune system underlies diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity. Today we know that it is not the pure cholesterol that initiates the arterial plaque formation that underlies hardening of the arteries. Instead, it is cholesterol oxides, that is, cholesterol damaged by free radicals, caused by activation of the immune system, which initiates this disease process. The causes are deficiencies in our antioxidant defense systems, but more than that, anything that causes chronic activation of the innate immune system is the ultimate cause.
This, of course, includes immune activation induced by food and environmental sensitivities. So is it any wonder that such diseases have now reached epidemic proportions in industrialized societies?Â
http://tuberose.com/Food_Allergies_and_Intolerance.htmlQUOTE
A food that is generally healthy for you can, a week later, set up a cascade of immune and chemical reactions in your body that have far-reaching implications if left undiagnosed. The more frequently you eat this food, the greater the strain on your systems and organs until physical symptoms may take you to your doctor. Baffled by your otherwise good health, your doctor will treat your symptoms as indicated. Unless he or she considers food sensitivities as a possible cause and does appropriate testing, your symptoms are destined to return as you continue eating the culprit food. ............
Immune Response
The immune system has total autonomy. If it believes something is bad, our immune system exercises it authority to call forth all the body’s energies to protect it. No wonder so many with food sensitivities are tired! Once the immune cells have branded a food as an “invader,� the food will evoke the wrath of the immune response each time the immune system detects the food in the blood, regardless of how healthy it may seem. And once a food is branded as an invader, each subsequent exposure confirms this. It is a perfect example of “guilty until proven innocent.� This results in an incredible amount of resources being wasted, fighting an imaginary enemy, as “invader foods� continue consuming body energy, vitamins, and nutrients to maintain the massive “immune army� necessary to keep the body safe from the persistent food invaders.
The immune system not only surveys the body for precancerous and cancerous cells, but it also eliminates debris; and it must protect the body against attack from a variety of harmful pathogens. It must do so while discriminating between what is harmful and what is not harmful. It must also not attack any of the body’s own healthy tissue. Thus it has evolved a broad repertoire of responses to deal with the various situations it encounters.
There are two main branches of the immune system—the innate immune system and the adaptive immune system. The innate immune system is the branch that is most associated with delayed-onset symptoms of food and chemical intolerance. The adaptive, or specific, immune system is more closely associated with “true allergy,� where symptom onset is rapid, more dramatic and acute, and where the association with the ingested food, or chemical, is obvious; thus laboratory testing is usually not required in order to make a diagnosis.....
When such a reaction concerns a food, the very nature of the reaction, being immediate or very near immediate, makes identifying the specific culprit food quite easy and there is little need of testing. These are functions of the adaptive or specific immune system. This contrasts with the body’s reaction to delayed or hidden food allergies, usually referred to as sensitivities or intolerances, in which symptom onset may take several hours to a couple of days to occur. Hence, delayed food allergies are much more difficult to diagnose, which is why they are called “hidden.�
Therefore, when it comes to the bodies immune system, having an inflammatory response, and thus the production of acne, CAN definately be as immediate as within several hours or days, if not possibly sooner! So of course this is
not a discussion about what is healthy vs. unhealthy but what will invoke an inflammatory response in susceptable individuals.
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oh god, here we go again!
