98 replies to this topic

[Miss Josette]

That sounds like me. I'm not nervous around people, or even shy.... I'm just always on edge, almost like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop or something. I'm anxious on a pretty consistent basis and I can only a recall a very few amount of times within the past ten years that I've actually been truly content and at peace, where I didn't have that "on the edge, ready to fall off" feeling. I've never been self destructive, I just never relax, I guess that's the best way to describe it.

I'm not saying that finding some way to overcome those issues will - with certainty - give me clear skin, though I find it entirely possible that if I learned how to exist in another manner than I do now, that my skin would reflect that in a positive way. Stress and bouts of heavy emotional freak outs definitely affect my acne. I can say that with 100% confidence. I can't say the same for dieting or anything else out there that may cause acne. I can also say that when I'm emotionally miserable, my body's miserable. I've made myself sick at times in the past that way.

[blackbirdbeatle]

Yes, of course you can make yourself sick with your mindset. That's why I made the claim that I can't prove that your mind can affect acne, but it can and does everyday, affect your overall health. Many, many studies have shown this. I believe that the mind can and does aggravate acne in nearly everyone but as for starting new acne lesions, I don't know for many if this applies. I think it does for some though.

Giving your adrenal system a break after having it constantly be on full tilt can't hurt you clearing up either tough. Your organs can't handle that kind of stress, it's kind of like how morphine for pain in hospitals over a period of time eats away at your organs.

[mental-miracle]

i have a serious question. do you think that allergy to food can affect acne greatly?

[blackbirdbeatle]

I don't know much but I think that a reaction to a food allergy is just that, an allergic reaction. It's probably some type of think like a boil or somethign that looks like acne. You treat them both differently though. Of course sweetjade and others have argued quite well the opposite.

[arrshixerrr]

I'm wondering the same thing as Solros, is there a way to gain muscle and be 99% acne free? Anyone?

I know if I stop working out, I'll not get large pimples/cysts, it's been proven for me. It's just that working out makes me feel so much better and look better and I really don't want to stop. I'm going to start supplementing vitamin A and all that with hopes it will work and I'll still be able to lift while not getting cysts and such.

[sadman]

heyy arrshixerrr, i also work out. some say even wheat bread causes breakouts. but i couldn't stop eating wheat bread. without it my glycogen stores will deplete and i won't gain any muscle. i really don't know if there's a connection between carbohydrates and acne. but i'm sure any form of junk food will cause acne. I've been on a very strict diet and still get acne (and sometimes cysts under the skin ) This diet-acne relationship makes me so paranoid everytime I eat. It's not good anymore. But for sure i will continue lifting weights.

[SweetJade1980]

I'm wondering the same thing as Solros, is there a way to gain muscle and be 99% acne free? Anyone?

I know if I stop working out, I'll not get large pimples/cysts, it's been proven for me. It's just that working out makes me feel so much better and look better and I really don't want to stop. I'm going to start supplementing vitamin A and all that with hopes it will work and I'll still be able to lift while not getting cysts and such.

Solorus, Arrshixerrr, Sadman,


I wish there was an easy answer for you guys, but there really isn't. I've known of members that were able to do so and be 95% clear, but I can't recally anyone being 99% clear. Those that achieved 95% clarity were doing the following:


A) Gluten-Free daily, Alpha lipoic Acid and/or Omega 3s

Or

B) 2g B5 daily, low carb/gluten-free daily, and only consuming a quality high carbohydrate diet on weightlifting days

There's this trainer called John Berardi and he advises people that are Insulin Resistant to follow a certain type of diet, supplement and workout regimen. Again it includes antioxidants, antiinflammatories and good quality carbs and proteins. I've mentioned this method to others, but I don't know any members who've followed it as of yet:

JB - Well, typically I've seen tremendous increases in insulin sensitivity with 3-4 intense weight training sessions per week, lasting 1 hour per session. These sessions should be coupled with at least 3-4 aerobic sessions lasting 30 minutes per week. To really target insulin sensitivity, you would perform these sessions separately.

After exercise, the next step would be to supplement with 600 mg of alpha-lipoic acid and concentrated fish oils containing a total of 6-10 grams of DHA and EPA, which are the most active omega 3 fats in fish oils.

Finally, your diet can make a big difference. I recommend moderate quantities - 40-50% of the diet - of fibrous carbohydrates like oatmeal, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. I also recommend eating moderate quantities (30-40% of the diet) of high-quality proteins like casein, whey, chicken, beef, fish, dairy and eggs. And finally, I recommend eating low quantities (20% of the diet) of fats from olive oil, flax oil, fish oil, and nut oils.

All of these strategies can be combined to make the muscles more responsive to insulin while simultaneously decreasing the fat's responsiveness to insulin. This means more muscle mass with less fat gain... the eternal quest of the bodybuilder!

.............................


JB - Again, I like to spike insulin 2-3 times per day. Remember, though, that my clients are super insulin sensitive due to the training, diet, and supplementation programs I have them following. So they can handle the insulin surges and can actually grow and get lean at the same time. With this said, natural insulin sensitivity declines at night time so perhaps at night, low insulin choices are best. After training however, the goal should be to send insulin through the roof. A sensible plan is to eat 3 high-insulin meals as your first 3 of the day, and 3 low insulin meals to finish the day. This can be accomplished as follows:

1st 3 meals: Protein plus carbs with no fat
2nd 3 meals: Protein plus fat with no carbs
[Editor's note: for more information on John Berardi's eating recommendations, check out "Massive Eating, Part 1", and "Massive Eating, Part 2".]
Post-workout meals: Hydrolyzed protein, simple carbs, BCAA, free form amino acids

http://www.johnberardi.com/articles/nutrition/insulin.htm

So that's something you guys can read more about. The thing I want to emphasize is that you want to DECREASE inflammation. It doesn't really matter about your hormones, unless those hormones are raising your ability to produce Inflammatory Products. When acne appears on the skin or when you can feel a lump under your skin you are dealing with inflammation! So for some people when they work out, if they push themselves too much or they are doing really tough, anabolic exercises then they may increase their inflammatory products and, for those acne prone, also increasing their ability to produce acne.

So my suggestions are:

A) Consume ingredients or take supplements that decrease your inflammatory products:

R-Alpha Lipoic Acid
NAC
B5
Fish Oils / Omega 3s
Boswellia
Liporexin (favored on healthboards)
Vitamin C
etc.

Tea - Green, Red, White
Colorful fruits and vegetables (especially cruciferous veggies)
Berries - blueberry, cranberry, etc
Salmon
etc.


B) Get good quality proteins, but stay away from:

Whey
Casein
(Soy, unfermented)
(Nuts, for some)



C) Unless weight training and need the fuel that day, you should avoid inflammatory ingredients:

Trans Fats (hydrogenated & partially hydrogenated...ALWAYS)

Added Sugar (as much as possible, especially HFCS/Corn Syrup)

100% Fruit Juice (if it doesn't have fiber included)

Hypersensitive foods (this is individual)


Of course, if the results aren't to your liking I suggest you go deeper than prevention and try dealing more so with the root of the problem. Diet is only as good as your ability to always avoid the foods that cause you problems. If you did try consuming foods that caused you problems only 3 days a week and if those supplements didn't help (some work better than others) you are still looking at having acne on a daily basis. Why? You may have a (significant) reduction, but because most people breakout a few days AFTER consuming an "avoid food" or "unfavorable food" that means that every day you consume a food item, 3-5 days later you'll break out (1 - 5 pimples or cysts) and unfortunately, this is why the average acne suffer can't tell a difference when they mildly attempt dietary changes (if it truly would have worked for them).

Keeping that in mind, my only other suggestion would be for all of you to look into cleansings and detoxes. The liver is extremely important and some of the foods or supplements I mentioned help the liver futher detoxify, breakdown, & eliminate carcinogens, hormones, growth factors, inflammatory products, etc so you may want to go this route. The inability to properly detoxify, etc is something you may find on a lab test, but that is ONLY if your doctor runs the right test (based on various signs & symptoms) and there are probably over a hundred tests for this. For example, (without the aid of my diet) I overproduce hormones & associated enzymes & growth factors and underproduce certain detoxifying or breakdown enzymes but for all general purposes, according to basic liver function tests, I have a VERY healthy liver!

So please keep the above in mind when you here people debate about how wonderful our liver is, it is, but that doesnt mean it's functioning at 100% in all aspects of it's ability. Therefore, when one goes about trying to heal or improve liver function (directly or indirectly), some people have good results with just detoxing/cleansing programs (candida, parasite, colon, etc), others do well on the liver flush, others do well by healing their intestinal hyperpermeability (Leaky Gut), where as others do well on just enemas/colonics. All of these obviously have their own comfort levels, but I believe the more stubborn cases require the use of ALL of those methods. Of course the benefit here is that you may be able to eat most if not all of the foods that were unfavorable for you once again! Like every other program, once you acheive desired results, you will have to do maintence work maybe 2 - 3 times a year.


I've gotta run but if I think of more, I'll add it later.

All the best!

[sadman]

do pills that promote clean liver help?
without whey isolates, enough protein and good amount of carbs, my workouts will be useless. and besides, by eliminating all these kinds of foods, WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO EAT?!

[SweetJade1980]

do pills that promote clean liver help?
without whey isolates, enough protein and good amount of carbs, my workouts will be useless. and besides, by eliminating all these kinds of foods, WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO EAT?!

PLENTY!


Seriously though you could try liver or colon cleansing products such as Colonix, Dual Action Cleanse, Ultimate Cleanse (there's more) and there's actually a rather popular thread on healthboards that you can also look into. http://www.healthboards.com/boards/showthread.php?t=306789

Again, I never said you couldn't have carbs, I just said that if you do, you should try Gluten Free Carbs daily and increase the level of these on your workouts. Some males were happy increasing their intake of Oatmeal or Brown Rice for carbs but there are other gluten-free grains out there for you to try! Or...you can eat low - moderate carb daily and high carb on the days you workout (some people only need to go low carb others gluten-free).

As for the whey protein, it bites but if you get acne, and you get cysts, enlarged pores & oily skin...you may want to find out how significant a role dairy, and especially whey/casein proteins have on this. There's still Egg protein, Brown Rice Powder, (Hemp), (Fermented soy), and Legumes (& gluten-free grains), and of course animal protein (I hear tuna is a good one).

Of course if you aren't really interested in finding out the above, definately investigate the cleansing threads and see if this route is what you need instead.

Good luck!

[blackbirdbeatle]

I agree with the above with regards to hemp. Very good source of protein and tastes amazing in certain things liek muffins, replacing flour.

I have to diagree though with regards to whey isolate. A good quality isolate that is inthe mid 90's for percent of protein content has a much different effect on the body than regular cheap whey that is like 70% protein and has a different makeup, along with many more components to it that many don't want such as fat and lactose(Although a good isolate has tons of good subfractions andless of the allergenic ones).

I should get a commission from these guys because I tote them so much but trueproteincanada.com and truprotein.com are by far the best that I've found. Less than 3% denatured isolates, high in the anti-cancer and immune boosting(Well pretty much some fo the highest antioxidants as well), subfractions with little of the bad ones like beta-lac. It is assimilated in thebody really effeciently and quickly and it is half the price of comparable quality ones.

[OOIOO]

sweetjade, I don't want to ask too much of you, because htis is all amazing, but can you post some of the things that the Acne Can Be Cured book says? I'm really looking for recipes and specific foods to eat more than anything else, because it is out of print now, and I think everyone is curious just what we can do now that we know this stuff. Thanks for everything so far, really.

There are animals that are here specifically to be food for humans because they are truly noble and support the overall goal of the planet, which is to support evolution. The planet wouldn't be able to support more than 5 million people if we were all vegetarians and we have nearly double that number here now. The animals know this and choose to incarnate here anyway to support this huge experiment called Earth.

Humans can only evolve when they are incarnated on the earth plane, and until they evolve to the point where eating is no longer necessary, they must rely on animals to survive. So the issue then becomes the need to treat our noble food animals with honor and respect, and to give them as kind a death as possible. This is why I promote only partaking of grass-fed, pasture-grazed, free ranging and wild meat sources. I would never ever eat a companion animal, but I will eat food animals like cows.

Every form in existence has consciousness and intelligence. Animals aren't better than carrots just because they have voices and eyes, and you don't ever see anyone protesting the fact that we eat carrots, right? Those kind of hierarchies are illusion, just as illogical as people saying Blacks aren't human because their skin color is different.

uhh I think you're on drugs.

And beside that, given the fact that it takes way, way more resources (water, food, oil) to raise living things than it does to raise plants, it would be easier, less expensive, and less inhumane to grow all the plants we need nutrutionally than it would be to raise animals in pens the way we are now. It would be absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to raise enough cattle on pastures to feed everyone with this many people, so put that out of your head. Over 50% of America's Water is given to livestock. All the food that it takes to feed them could be going to people. I'm not even a vegetarian; I still eat meat, but I thought all that stuff was just accepted, that we can't go on living like this for too much longer.

[Solros]

Sigh I really wish vegetarians would stop spreading all their BS propaganda: http://www.westonaprice.org/mythstruths/mt...arianism.html#1

[jasota]

well i dunno if there is....but my derm has put me off of chocolate,chips,cokes,chicken.....ye basically life
well i am controlling and i dont mind doin so coz he knows best....and hopefully it will all work out for the best....

later

[Solros]

You can still get some lovely ORGANIC chocolate that tastes wonderfully. Just avoid anything with dairy in it like most of the cheap chocolate out there.

You can even make your own chocolate bars with just organic cacao, virgin coconut oil, organic maple syrup or honey and some grinded nuts (I love brazil nuts).

And chicken? Jez...

[jasota]

You can still get some lovely ORGANIC chocolate that tastes wonderfully. Just avoid anything with dairy in it like most of the cheap chocolate out there.

You can even make your own chocolate bars with just organic cacao, virgin coconut oil, organic maple syrup or honey and some grinded nuts (I love brazil nuts).

And chicken? Jez...

well apparently chicken's got some hormones or somthing.....
lolz been sober(off chicken) for a week now....

[Solros]

Always get organic food. It's better for the animals, the nature and most importantly, it's much healthier for your own body.

[OOIOO]

suit yourself, I'm not even a vegetarian. The truth is that they're not going to start making meat without hormones in it when there's money to be made off of hormone meat, and they're not going to stop treating animals like shit when there's no reason not to. All the water and fuel is still used on raising livestock, and fuel isn't renewable like all the crazies say it is.

The guy's right about the world hunger stuff, though - even if all the food that animals get could go to starving people, there's no reason to believe that it would if Americans just stopped eating meat.

The thing is, all the meat we eat can be grown relatively locally - alot of the vegetarian food can't. All these healthy citrus fruits and bananas that everyone loves are grown in countries where there are laws against subsistence farming so they can grow our vegetarian food for us, and it stands to reason that this contributes to starvation alot more than meat does.

[mental-miracle]

is there any method, to make the glands less sensitive to androgens?

[Ravenblack]

^^There absolutely is: try Saw Palmetto and Beta Sitosterol; if those don't work look into topical Spironolactone @ 5%, or a low dose of the oral version.

[mike.william]

This is a very interesting thread SweetJade. I grow tired of self-titled internet-experts who give advice based on things they "heard" or "think", so it's nice to see someone post a collection of experimental results to back up their thoughts for once.

Plus I don't have enough free time to find such a number of relevant med articles, so I'm glad you compiled them for us to read.

My current situation is I'm a 23 year old male that's had acne since I was about 20. It started mild, progressed to moderate, and has recently hit cystic levels. I have given up on BP, it just doesn't provide results for me, so just weeks ago I started a high protein/ low carb diet with nothing but spring water for drinking.


Now I'll just have to wait 3 or 4 months to see if this veggie/lean meat/water diet pays any dividends. It surely won't hurt anything. My face has turned into one big splotch of red mark scars, so I'm really hoping I can find at least a little relief from diet. If not this diet, then maybe a diet I discover later, but the antibiotic thing just isn't gonna work.

I'll probably post back in a month or two to report how the diet change is affecting me.