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mTOR, which stands for mammalian target of rapamycin, is an intermediate in all the factors you need to worry about: cell growth, cell proliferation, cell motility, cell survival, protein synthesis, and transcription. Healthy functioning mTOR allows your body to be anabolic and growing, and this extends to skin cells, and how specific foods can have compounded activation of mTOR with other chemicals that ignite sebaceous biosynthesis.
Knowing more about mTOR and how it interacts both inside the cell and outside the cell is very important, including cell signaling of different growth factors (like IGF-1, which is a buzzword for you guys).
Both benzoyl peroxide and isotretinoin have mechanisms for inhibiting mTOR, which can reduce cell proliferation and decrease sebum production. This can help explain why they can be effective at preventing acne and comedogenesis (see: mTORC1 and Comedogenesis).
The interesting part about this article is that it ties in many ideas that everyone here likes to talk about: how to reduce proliferation of keratinocytes and how to reduce production of skin oil. However, it's only hyperproliferation of any of these things we really need to prevent. Being healthily anabolic and growing is good. The opposite of that is of course, dying.
And what's more, hyperproliferation of sebocytes with bad lipid composition and cell proliferation in combination with systemic inflammation is the bad part. What you really need to focus on to prevent your body from growing unhealthily and from overriding and upregulating growth factors in the process is understanding what a healthy dose of anabolism is, and it all starts in the context of a low inflammatory diet (that should be obvious).
On a final note, some foods you should not be consuming, and they run in same theme of this article:
Oleic acid (olive oil) or peanut oil. These have a tendency to shut off inflammatory markers. I know what you're thinking: good right? Wrong. Some inflammatory markers help with a hormonal cascade of your body's own defenses against the original cause of inflammation. Hopefully more research will be put out on foods that aren't necessarily anti-inflammatory, but override inflammatory signals that your body intentionally has. There is a difference. If you're wondering: oleic acid and peanut oil specifically override inflammatory intermediates that allow insulin to work again. So you're body is trying to prevent more insulin production, and these oils help kick up that process again. Instead you should be focusing on the foods that ignited that inflammation in the first place and eliminating them.
Do not consume long-lasting insulinotropic foods with a high glycemic load. This would be the difference between white and brown rice: white rice is high glycemic, so it spikes insulin and insulin drops fairly quickly. Brown rice has a high load of carbs that will be digested for quite a while, keeping insulin high for extended periods of time. If you're worried about reactive hypoglycemia, women generally have a good ability of regulating blood sugar through slow release of glycogen, so this most likely this will not happen. Intaking some fat can help if men are more concerned.
Low-glycemic load while being low on the index is not really a problem, because the carb count is so low. So vegetables are OK.
Following these two recommendations and you're eliminating lots of vegetable oils and less-refined carbs like wheat bread, brown rice, beans, etc. These eliminations also do another number of beneficial things to the body I need not mention, as everyone with eyes and who's read in the nutrition section should know about.
http://www.landesbio..._full_text=true
http://www.lipidworl.../content/8/1/25
Edited by Vanbelle, 02 January 2013 - 12:12 PM.
