30 replies to this topic

[dandantheman]

ALL sorts of things affect acne, including hormones.

HOWEVER, it is FAR too simplistic to say that stopping masturbation or creating a schedule for yourself will reduce your acne. Your body simply doesn't work that way...

You are dead wrong. Several people here have mentioned that they have noticed a direct connection. When they stop masturbating or having sex, suddenly the acne goes away. Creating a schedule for myself is the ONLY thing that has worked so far. Cleansers haven't done shit. In fact, as long as I withhold ejaculation, I can go forever without using ANY cleansers as the site owner recommends and I'm free of acne. As soon as I go 2+ ejaculations per week, acne returns. This is empirical evidence, how is it too simplistic for anyone to say?

Stress is related to acne, right?
Ever had sexual frustration?

Masturbation, if anything, would HELP a person.

Again, dead wrong. Do you experience this problem? If so you are in denial of the solution. If you don't experience this problem, then go away! Telling people that their observations are false, or ignoring their observations because you think you're correct, isn't helping anybody here.

Nobody here is suggesting withholding ejaculation for religious reasons, or anything like that. This isn't about the devil, god, jesus, the bible, morals, etc. This is simply a scientific/empirical observation. If you can't roll with that, then bounce the hell outta here...



Also, to the guy above who suggested that this is a mental or stress-related problem... sorry dude... Outside of how I may appear on this forum, I'm a pretty stress-free person, the same sorts of mental states as anybody else, the same kind of stress responses, the same pleasure-reward systems, etc. etc. This is about genetics. This is about hormones. This is about proteins. This is about fats. This is about hair follicles and oil and bacteria. This isn't about mind games or religion. I have yet to solve this problem by pretending it isn't a problem.

[Chestercool]

mate you need for evidence, your thoughts are way too logical, logic needs evidence

The bets answer to this problem i've heard is from David "The skin" King from acne erasing secrets, he says that when the body needs to produce more spermatizoids it requires more nutrient., Lack of nutrients=acne

[Jaerid]

I have noticed multiple breakouts from masturbation. When I masturbate every other day, I break on a regular basis. When I masturbate once a week, or once every 2 weeks, I break out very little, if at all. That is just way too much of a coincidence for me.

Edited by Jaerid, 19 November 2011 - 04:18 PM.

[crystal_willow]

mate you need for evidence, your thoughts are way too logical, logic needs evidence

The bets answer to this problem i've heard is from David "The skin" King from acne erasing secrets, he says that when the body needs to produce more spermatizoids it requires more nutrient., Lack of nutrients=acne

Him writing down his masterbatory behaviour and compairing it to his outbreaks is evidence, proof and evidence are not the same thing.

The online free dictionary defines evidence as:
1. A thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment
2. Something indicative; an outward sign

whereas proof is defined as:

1. The evidence or argument that compels the mind to accept an assertion as true.
2.a. The validation of a proposition by application of specified rules, as of induction or deduction, to assumptions, axioms, and sequentially derived conclusions.

b. A statement or argument used in such a validation.
3.a. Convincing or persuasive demonstration: was asked for proof of his identity; an employment history that was proof of her dependability.

b. The state of being convinced or persuaded by consideration of evidence.



so evidence is information which indicates towards or supports a certain hypothesis
and proof is created out of evidence which is so strong that it renders the hypothesis as good as fact

for example:
Evidence that a woman is pregnant is that she has a bigger belly and is throwing up when there is no tummy bug going around
Proof that a woman is pregnant is a bunch of positive pregnancy tests and a positive ultrasound scan showing a growing foetus.

These people say they have have reasonable circumstancial evidence of their own bodily functions, proof would be (traditionally) a clinical trial involving hundreds of people then repeating the test in separate populations.... not everyone has the time or the funding to conduct clinical trials.

Also logic is a system of reasoning and does not need evidence, logic benefits from evidence if it is to be used to proove something.

@dandantheman It sounds unlikely to those of us without this issue but if you have really kept a diary of this then keep on doing whats right for you x
Althought it may be worth looking to see if any of your other behaviours change/increase/decrease when you masterbate more or less... i.e. maybe you do more physical activity or leave the house more, wash less or eat different things.. worth looking in to. goodluck

[dandantheman]

Nice. Yea, I don't understand why people have such a hard time accepting that this is possible without some holy scientific study saying it's possible. There have been a great many diseases in the past that went basically ignored or misunderstood for a long time until more research was done to reveal their nature.

I've been observing this pretty actively for about 2.5-3 years or so. Also, keep in mind, this is any form of ejaculation, not limited to masturbation. I've been with my gf for slightly less than that period of time, so this observation has overlapped all that. So far, through basically trial and error, I've seen a few different things: Reducing ejaculation to 1 day per week seems to clear up acne without fail. Ejaculating more than 1 per week, and/or more than 1 per day, seem to cause inflamed acne nearly without fail. If I've gone a while without it, like 1+ weeks, ejaculation can sometimes have a slightly reduced effect. But many times so far I have fooled myself into believing that it is no longer a problem because the acne doesn't appear immediately, (or I've tried to play mind games with myself and pretend this isn't a problem - a solution that several people here seem to think has merit), to detrimental ends - soon enough, within 1-3 days, my acne flairs up again and reminds me of this sexual prison that I'm in.

The only other thing that seems to trigger it is illness. I tend to get sinus infections, which sometimes can also cause my lymph nodes to swell up. During that time, I notice that I'm usually more prone to smaller acne. And it has an amplifying effect with ejaculation. If both, then disaster, more or less. The way I see it is the indiana jones escape scene where he outruns the boulder. Ejaculation seems to set the ball rolling and speeds it up, whereas illness slows me down, sometimes allowing me to get scraped, and other times just running me over altogether.

So many things link together that it's hard to throw anything away. Anything could be the cause. But so far, it seems that this is almost entirely hormonal. It's been found that testosterone levels only fluctuate briefly before returning to normal, but barring any other possibilities I can only wonder if this brief fluctuation causes a lot more trouble than people think. When I ejaculate, I can count on my skin being much more oily and I can basically count on having acne.

That evidence is perfectly sufficient for those of us experiencing this problem. I have absolutely zero interest in making false claims, or trying to mislead anybody. My only goal here is to A) Provide some supporting accounts of this phenomenon in case other people stumble upon this forum with the exact same questions I had, and B) Squash people's arguments that this is not possible or not true. Without being able to witness this first-hand, it's hard to accept that this is a possibility without being open-minded and maybe a bit trusting. Nobody has to take my word for anything, but A) the people who experience this understand full well what I'm talking about, and B) I don't see the point in trying to put this 'theory' down if so many people are saying that actually experience it, and the number of posts you see here bringing it up.

It's real, it ain't no joke. I wish it were. Trust me..

[ooominhooo]

Don't believe the naysayers. Masturbation does cause acne. There are millions of cases out there that shows this to be true. Don't give into the bs about it not causing acne.

[nycguy83]

This link should be a sticky on all these boards
Correlation does not imply Causation
http://en.wikipedia....imply_causation

Example 1:
As ice cream sales increase, the rate of drowning increases sharply.
Therefore, ice cream consumption causes drowning, so we should stop selling ice cream and drowning will decrease.

Example 2:
Every time I fall asleep with my shoes on, I wake up with a hangover.
Therefore, falling asleep with one's shoes on causes hangovers, so I will stop sleeping with my shoes on, and my hangovers will go away.

IE, I notice my acne increases (or decreases) when i masturbate or have sex.
Therefore stopping (or increasing) masturbation or sex will prevent acne.

If anything, there have been lots of studies touting the health benefits of Masturbation and Sex (for one, helps you sleep which helps fight acne, and strengthens the immune system)-
http://en.wikipedia....bation#Benefits
http://www.webmd.com...benefits-of-sex

In any case, you really multiple well-designed scientific studies with control groups to isolate factors, in order to claim that something directly causes something else in a system as complex as the human body, and even then, experts who know far more than we do about these things are hesitant to make claims about direct causation rather than mere correlation.

Edited by nycguy83, 24 January 2012 - 03:14 PM.

[MattN]

My sex drive has gone from 4+ times a day to a few times a month. Never noticed any effect on acne at all. For every positive anecdotal response there will be a negative one.

I have no doubt masturbation effects hormones (on a VERY SLIGHT level). What you should be asking yourself is, what are the best ways to balance hormones?

Eating more fiber so they are removed from the body more efficiently. Exercising. Staying hydrated. Reducing stress, perhaps picking up a hobby like meditation or yoga and spending time actively relaxing your body and mind every day.

I can tell you that avoiding something you want to do is just going to cause stress, which will also unbalance your hormones, so focusing on something so insignificant is a waste of time.

[Audacious R]

I never believed that masturbation and acne are related, but as soon as i cleared up, i tried to masturbate, and guess what, my face looks kinda fucked up again

[dandantheman]

Don't believe the naysayers. Masturbation does cause acne. There are millions of cases out there that shows this to be true. Don't give into the bs about it not causing acne.

Yes there are probably millions of cases of this, if you simply look online for people complaining of this exact phenomenon, but the way you've worded that is what trips people up. All the arguments against this idea are essentially based on "well, it doesn't happen to me, so therefore I don't see how it can happen to you either." As soon as you say or imply that this is a problem for everyone, somebody is bound to get all excited and make some half-hearted attempt to knock this idea down.

This link should be a sticky on all these boards
Correlation does not imply Causation
http://en.wikipedia....imply_causation

Did you even read what I wrote? If you did, I would have expected you to come away a little more understanding of the complexity of the problem of acne. I don't expect you to believe everything you read, but then again you have to realize at some point that you coming here thinking you're going to dispel some myths by first ignoring what people are saying and then trying to point out the ways in which they're stupid is quite ignorant and arrogant indeed.

Myself, and others, do not specifically WANT or NEED ejaculation to be the central causal factor in our acne. I don't have money on that being true. I'm not selling a product here, unlike the owner of this forum. I'm not trying to prosyltize people into a religion. I'm simply stating observations I've made over a span of 3 years. For you to just shout in bold about "correlation does not imply causation" is not helpful in the slightest. Do you think I'm fucking stupid? I realize that correlation does not imply causation. Here, let me wipe away the confusion hopefully for good: I'm not saying that ejaculation causes acne directly, and I'm sure as hell not saying that it is a major factor for everyone. I am saying that there appears to be an incredibly strong correlation that appears to be causation [for a subset of the population - at the very least, me, as well as the countless others who have voiced concern about this problem], without actually saying it IS causation (much less for everyone). Please tell me why this is hard for you to understand. I would love to know.

[dandantheman]

My sex drive has gone from 4+ times a day to a few times a month. Never noticed any effect on acne at all. For every positive anecdotal response there will be a negative one.

That's totally fine. A negative account doesn't negate the positive accounts of this problem. Nor do the positive accounts negate the negative accounts. What I find extremely interesting is the difference between the people with positive & negative accounts. The people with positive accounts (not just here, but on other forums as well) are generally very understanding of the complexity of acne and understand that just because they have this problem, that doesn't mean everyone does. However, the people with negative accounts love to word their arguments in a very dismissive way, and act as though their ability to ejaculate without acne repercussions is proof that ejaculation does not cause acne for anybody. How fucking stupid is that. Acne is a very complex problem, and our current medicine and therapies only scratch the surface, often with really undesirable side effects. For some of us, sex hormones and skin are in such a precarious delicate situation that something like ejaculation sets them off. For others (perhaps the majority of people), that is not the case. All of this can coexist.

I have no doubt masturbation effects hormones (on a VERY SLIGHT level). What you should be asking yourself is, what are the best ways to balance hormones?

What's very slight for you, might be not so slight for others. Ejaculation seems to cause acne to flare up for me, unfortunately. If it doesn't happen to you, that's perfectly fine, but it doesn't negate what I have witnessed for years, and what others have witnessed. The actual fluctuation might indeed be small, but the end result is unfortunate and embarrassing and ugly. Like I said, I have nothing riding on this being true. I wish it were not true for anyone. I'd much rather be able to ejaculate as I please without effects, like some of you. But I simply cannot. I don't know how much clearer I can state what happens to me: If I ejaculate 2+ times per week, I get acne. If I hold it back to only 1 per week or slightly less, acne stays under control and I have clear skin. I am not lying about it and I have no reason to do so anyway. I would love to have your skin genes.

Eating more fiber so they are removed from the body more efficiently. Exercising. Staying hydrated. Reducing stress, perhaps picking up a hobby like meditation or yoga and spending time actively relaxing your body and mind every day.

I can tell you that avoiding something you want to do is just going to cause stress, which will also unbalance your hormones, so focusing on something so insignificant is a waste of time.

From what I've seen in my own situation, stress relief is 5 steps forward, whereas the negative sebaceous activity permitted by my shitty genes is 25 steps backward. I'm sure there are other factors in this that could help reduce the effects, but so far I haven't found anything to be particularly effective, unfortunately.