Riddled

Hey man, just keep experimenting whilst not becoming too obsessed, try to keep it balanced, easier said than done i know. Hopefully eventually you will find the answer. Personally i have allowed acne to control my life when it should have been the other way around. 

One thing to consider is something like fructose malabsorption or some other kind of malabsorption and SIBO and all that BS. - The whole good/bad/too much/wrong place gut bacteria thing. I also have bad gas, i'm a walking human gas machine and i know that for me it is caused by fibre, basically all the "Healthy" foods but i have tried various diets that reduce my gas and make my digestion better and it never correlates with better skin - doesn't mean it wont with you. I think probiotics like Sauternes etc can actually bad for people who have "too much" gut bacteria or gut bacteria were it shouldn't be etc. 

If you can try to isolate variables as much as is possible and stick to different things as long and as best as you can, i and i'm sure many others on here, switch from one thing to other and never really get anywhere apart from going round in circles.

Do you know what percent of people with this inherited sensitivity to androgen hormones exhibit acne? Is acne basically like male pattern baldness then, ie i think the only way to prevent baldness is to interfere with your hormones like you mention. Aren't hormones and this sensitivity just part of the problem/puzzle?

As far as i know the only guaranteed way to stop male pattern baldness is castration [which no doubt also works wonders with acne] but with acne there are many ways other than hormone manipulation that get results in reducing or stopping it. 

I know this is a bad analogy [but off the top of my head] people with hay fever etc often find themselves trapped indoors at certain times of the year to avoid their allergen. Their allergen is causing their condition so by avoiding it they avoid any problem, but not going outdoors isn't any fun and seeing as completely removing the allergen from the outside isn't an option they have to come up with another way of dealing with the problem.

Aren't there many factors/parts needed to cause acne, as well as needing sufficient androgen hormones present, there also needs to be sufficient sebum made, the presence of P-acnes bacteria [and whatever others] and an inflammatory response.

If you remove or reduce one of these factors [parts of the puzzle etc] then you consequently reduce or remove the acne?

Hence all the different treatments available ie drugs to reduce/manipulate hormones [spiro, the pill, propecia etc], drugs to reduce/manipulate sebum [acutane etc], drugs to reduce/manipulate bacteria [antibiotics].

What about the inflammatory response?

As others have no doubt said diet does play a role with the immune system and inflammation [as well as the others, sebum production maybe etc].

In my opinion controlling or reducing my hormones isn't an option, yes i would love completely clear skin but not if it means having living with the side effects of having less androgens etc, hence if/when i go bald i will not take any drugs to prevent etc.

I am not sure you can really do anything about the bacterium itself, this websites regime doesn't really work for me and actually kind of destroys my face. I am not sue about antibiotics either, it is something i want to look into much more.

I can't really take tane for one reason or another.

This leaves the inflammatory response and the role of the diet. 

In my opinion one of the keys [ if not the key] with inflammation and autoimmune diseases is our gut flora/bacteria and how it mediates/controls our immune system. Diet no doubt plays a role with gut flora etc.

Also, obviously, food intolerances/ sensitivities etc are no doubt connected to an inflammatory response as well. See the topic i posted recently on celiac disease, in my opinion acne is an autoimmune disorder like celiac and asthma etc and it seems that gut flora plays a greater role with these than we realized. 

To quote the article:

"Yet the more scientists study celiac disease, the more some crucial component appears in need of identification. Roughly 30 percent of people with European ancestry carry predisposing genes, for example. Yet more than 95 percent of the carriers tolerate gluten just fine. So while these genes (plus gluten) are necessary to produce the disease, they’re evidently insufficient to cause it."

Also, maybe lactose intolerance isn't strictly an allergy etc but a lot of the world suffers from it so it is relevant. God knows what the connections to Gut flora are.

http://www.statistic...nce-statistics/

http://www.milk.co.u...x?intPageID=138

I would love to get involved in a discussion on the ethics of the American Health Care System but i have to go.

But. Isn't there a slight irony that this discussion be had on an acne board? Admittedly many of the members on here are very young, but Isn't acne the height of a selfish, narcissistic, self indulgent, consuming society?

I have actually heard the true cure for acne is to simply stop thinking/worrying about your acne [and yourself] and to stop being so self absorbed, once you reach true selflessness all your problems [including acne] will go away. Give it a try. Personally i am just too much of a selfish bar steward.

I hope there is much more similar research being carried out, especially regarding acne and gut flora. To me it makes sense that acne is an autoimmune disorder similar to celiac disease, asthma and the others. Which i think essentially means one way to cure our acne would be trying to figure out a way to "control" our immune systems and changing and modifying our gut floras maybe this way.

To someone with such a lack of understanding as me this is easier said than done, hopefully some clever types will work it all out soon.

It is all such a headache, like you say, they mention how three of four Russian Karelian children harbored H-Pylori, something i associate with causing stomach cancer. Things are rarely simple:

http://www.scienceco...eet_side-106558

http://www.scienceda...30109080825.htm

http://www.scienceda...30208182829.htm

You mention eating raw fish but have you even considered the part where they say "they also suffered from more fecal-oral infections" lmao. Seriously though, i think Fecal transplants are becoming more popular. http://en.wikipedia....bacteriotherapy

http://www.celiac.co...ease/Page1.html

Maybe as well as taking antibiotics and tane soon people will be on poo tablets for their acne lol.

I wonder what happened to the appropriately named "Bizzare" off these forums:

http://www.healingwe...8&m=1865200&p=5

Before i become a fecal freak, i think the simplest thing to try, if you haven't already, would be taking probiotics such as Bifidobacteria as they mention etc. For some reason probiotics actually break me out, which i have also seen mentioned quite a lot, maybe i just need to stick with them long enough. Maybe we all just need to spend more time outdoors and less stuck inside on computers. I know i do.

Might just be the affect on your hormones like lowered T etc. I'm pretty sure eating below maintenance calories lowers your testosterone etc and vice versa [short term for excessive anyway] but this may also be affected by any "supplements" etc.

This type of thing:

http://180degreeheal...fat-loss-secret

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/23412685

I think the reason most people see early success with acne [and weight loss] when they try new diets [paleo, atkins, gluten free, pufa free etc] is they are simply eating less calories, by removing some sources of food it is almost impossible not to eat less.

Just to throw a spanner in the works, when i fast, or go long periods of time without eating, i swear i get ill more and it negatively affects my immune system, seems to put some kind of stress of my body. Can break me out also. Whereas when i eat less but more often, but still below maintenance calories, my skin does seem to  improve. In my case i think it's probably all hormonal and i am just lowering my T. Maybe cortisol is the significant factor when i fast.

I break out from probiotics. I wish i knew why. I am unsure of the whole leaky gut thing, but too much intestinal bacteria does make sense to me.

Does anyone know if your "symptoms" can give an indication of "where" you have too much gut bacteria?

The reason i ask is that i have always been prone to "Gas" problems such as bloating, belching, farting/trooping etc and i appear to have worked out some connection. Ie belching and bloating seem to be from upper intestinal bacteria and more related to excessive starch consumption, maybe legumes and also dry insoluble fibre such as oats etc.  

Whereas farting seems to be lower intestinal and from eating vegetables and salad such as carrots, beats, fibrous skins, cruciferous stuff, whole grains etc.

I find bloating physically uncomfortable but i am not bothered by farting apart from the social problems etc.

It seems i am disposed to one or the other for some reason. For a while i didn't fart much but had problems with bloating but for the last few months i have been farting badly whenever i eat anything healthy like Vegetables or salad etc and i'm talking serious wmds.

Also anifungals and antibacterials break me out in a similar fashion to probiotics.

Be interesting to know if farting is a good or bad sign of gut health and whether or not the "right" gut bacteria should lead to farting or not etc.

Also is it a case have having to much of a good thing.

Anyway this article may be related somehow to the whole probiotics - gut bacteria thing:

http://www.nytimes.c...=general&src=me