BBC acne natural treatment

"Grow your own drugs"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/features/growyouro.../episode2.shtml

They tried it on a few people only for a couple of weeks though, looked pretty promising.

Topical ibuprofen gel is blooming good for acne!

I noticed you can get 5% ibruprofen sports gels in all the supermarkets and chemists where I live, I assume it's the same elsewhere.

I wondered if it would help my acne, so I bought it and cautiously started using it on my face once a day. It seemed to improve and then I stopped and it got worse, then I started again, and it improved so I upped it to twice a day, and OMFG, yeah!

Results after a few months were spectacular, the number of spots went down by about 20 times (when used with 5% tea tree oil cream-both twice a day) and my skin tone was hugely better. You'd think it would make existing spots shrink, and it probably does, but what it seems to do best is prevent spots. Dunno why exactly.

I'm thinking it should work just as well with BP, but my skin loathes BP so I haven't been able to try it- if you try this, just don't put it on at the *same* time, leave an hour after BP or something or put the ibuprofen on half an hour before. They're just bound to quarrel, the BP will mess up the Ibuprofen, I just know it. Probably nothing bad would happen, but the ibuprofen wouldn't work.

I'm also thinking that other UK people need to try this. It's invisible, non irritating and a 35g tube lasts about a month for me, so not terribly expensive.

You should be able to use it with anything like BP, tea tree oil or antibacterial facial washes.

Honestly, nothing I've ever got over the counter has worked nearly this well for me. Others need to try this.

Too much carbohydrate shuts down testosterone level control

http://www.physorg.com/news113902673.html

"Too much sugar turns off gene that controls the effects of sex steroids"...

"Glucose and fructose are metabolized in the liver. When there's too much sugar in the diet, the liver converts it to lipid. Using a mouse model and human liver cell cultures, the scientists discovered that the increased production of lipid shut down a gene called SHBG (sex hormone binding globulin), reducing the amount of SHBG protein in the blood. SHBG protein plays a key role in controlling the amount of testosterone and estrogen that's available throughout the body."

"If there's less SHBG protein, then more testosterone and estrogen will be released throughout the body, which is associated with an increased risk of acne, infertility, polycystic ovaries, and uterine cancer in overweight women. Abnormal amounts of SHBG also disturb the delicate balance between estrogen and testosterone, which is associated with the development of cardiovascular disease, especially in women."

"The discovery dispels the earlier assumption that too much insulin reduces SHBG, a view which arose from the observation that overweight, pre-diabetic individuals have high levels of insulin and low levels of SHBG. This new study proves that insulin is not to blame and that it's actually the liver's metabolism of sugar that counts."

(In spite of the article saying sugar, it doesn't seem to be a specific mechanism due to sugar, it looks like any excess carbohydrate would do this.)

Ibuprofen gel

I've been using ibuprofen gel as an anti-acne product for a while. It seems good.

It's meant to be a sports gel, but I've been putting it on my face twice a day; I checked with the pharmacist and he seemed OK with me doing that, provided I keep it away from my eyes and mouth.

It's a strong anti-inflammatory, and using it topically means you don't have the potential problem with stomach bleeding, and because you're using it more specifically, the overall dose is much lower, so there's less risk of side-effects.

It's known that anti-inflammatories are great for acne, minocycline seems to work that way for example; even if you use mino at low dose than that that can kill bacteria it still works.

When I'm using ibuprofen topically I seem to get a lot less spots, and it greatly improves my skin tone. Has anyone else tried this?

Seems to take 2-3 weeks to begin to kick in; you could probably use it with other things like antibacterials; unlike aspirin masks it's not a exfoliant so you can use it everyday. I was using it with TTO.