The exact same thing happened to me. Certain foods triggered my acne so I learned to avoid them. Over time it got worse and worse until even the smallest amount would trigger an inflammatory reaction. The simple fact is: an avoidance based diet is not sustainable. You need to actually target the cause of the problem and correct it with supplements (zinc, vitamin A or D) and the right food. What worked for me was vitamin D supplementation and drinking lots of green tea. My body was in a pro-inflammatory state and unless you actively eat certain foods (in my case, omega 3 oils to counter the omega 6) your acne will never get better. I've found that now I can eat inflammatory foods without having a breakout. It really is annoying to have to avoid foods that you like. You really shouldn't have to. The only exception to this is dairy, which is full of hormones that are terrible for people with acne. You should be allowed to eat anything else in moderation: rice, bread, grains, fruit, even chocolate occasionally without your skin being terrible. To sum up, target the cause of your acne and fix it instead of just avoiding the problem.

I had a similar experience. I would always get chest acne after eating wheat. Now I eat minimal quantities of wheat daily and do not get chest acne. I think it has something to do with antibodies in the blood. If you don't eat something for a long time, then eat it all of a sudden, you'll have a robust reaction to it because you don't have antibodies to the food in question - and the food particles thus float around and cause damage. If you do have antibodies, then the food particles are marked for destruction before they can cause an immune reaction. Your body will make antibodies in response to these food particles. So my guess would be that if you eat small amounts daily, eventually the acne will stop happening (once you have antibodies to the food once more). The purpose of continuing to eat small quantities of food is to keep antibody production up.

I had a similar experience. I would always get chest acne after eating wheat. Now I eat minimal quantities of wheat daily and do not get chest acne. I think it has something to do with antibodies in the blood. If you don't eat something for a long time, then eat it all of a sudden, you'll have a robust reaction to it because you don't have antibodies to the food in question - and the food particles thus float around and cause damage. If you do have antibodies, then the food particles are marked for destruction before they can cause an immune reaction. Your body will make antibodies in response to these food particles. So my guess would be that if you eat small amounts daily, eventually the acne will stop happening (once you have antibodies to the food once more). The purpose of continuing to eat small quantities of food is to keep antibody production up.

The antibodies are the immune system response.

I had a similar experience. I would always get chest acne after eating wheat. Now I eat minimal quantities of wheat daily and do not get chest acne. I think it has something to do with antibodies in the blood. If you don't eat something for a long time, then eat it all of a sudden, you'll have a robust reaction to it because you don't have antibodies to the food in question - and the food particles thus float around and cause damage. If you do have antibodies, then the food particles are marked for destruction before they can cause an immune reaction. Your body will make antibodies in response to these food particles. So my guess would be that if you eat small amounts daily, eventually the acne will stop happening (once you have antibodies to the food once more). The purpose of continuing to eat small quantities of food is to keep antibody production up.

The antibodies are the immune system response.

Antibodies are one part of the immune response. Antibodies themselves are somewhat useless, unless they disable a protein or enzyme. But when it comes to antigenic fragments, their real purpose is to mark the target for removal by other white blood cells.

I'll give a good parallel. If you have a bacterial infection, your immune system will make you sick while it responds to the bacteria, and then once you have protective immunity, the infection will be cleared. Now, say food particles elicit a similar immune response as the bacteria does (obviously the manifestations of sickness are different). Once the body gains protective immunity against that food particle, the symptoms of you being sick go away.

Now; we're constantly being exposed to bacteria, so our protective immunity is constantly being modulated. It might make sense that we should be constantly exposed to a food in question, but not enough to cause 'infection'. I'm not saying this is a solid theory by any means, but it does fit my own observations in dealing with my acne that was caused by food sensitivity. It's really more of an autoimmune disease than anything else.

I had a similar experience. I would always get chest acne after eating wheat. Now I eat minimal quantities of wheat daily and do not get chest acne. I think it has something to do with antibodies in the blood. If you don't eat something for a long time, then eat it all of a sudden, you'll have a robust reaction to it because you don't have antibodies to the food in question - and the food particles thus float around and cause damage. If you do have antibodies, then the food particles are marked for destruction before they can cause an immune reaction. Your body will make antibodies in response to these food particles. So my guess would be that if you eat small amounts daily, eventually the acne will stop happening (once you have antibodies to the food once more). The purpose of continuing to eat small quantities of food is to keep antibody production up.

The antibodies are the immune system response.

Antibodies are one part of the immune response. Antibodies themselves are somewhat useless, unless they disable a protein or enzyme. But when it comes to antigenic fragments, their real purpose is to mark the target for removal by other white blood cells.

I'll give a good parallel. If you have a bacterial infection, your immune system will make you sick while it responds to the bacteria, and then once you have protective immunity, the infection will be cleared. Now, say food particles elicit a similar immune response as the bacteria does (obviously the manifestations of sickness are different). Once the body gains protective immunity against that food particle, the symptoms of you being sick go away.

Now; we're constantly being exposed to bacteria, so our protective immunity is constantly being modulated. It might make sense that we should be constantly exposed to a food in question, but not enough to cause 'infection'. I'm not saying this is a solid theory by any means, but it does fit my own observations in dealing with my acne that was caused by food sensitivity. It's really more of an autoimmune disease than anything else.

If you have the antibodies to the food, because you've been eating the food, those antibodies will trigger a response.

I'm a soon to be 26 year old guy and have had acne for 14 years now. 3 months ago I went on a low glycemic load diet, no diary, and no grains. I stuck to it 100 percent for 2 months and it worked perfect. I got maybe 2 small red spots which were gone in a day. The problem I am realizing now is that unless I stick to these rules for EVERY meal, I will breakout with nodules around my jawline, temples, and neck. Before going on this diet, I would get these nodules in these areas occasionally but now they come in batches.

First cheat: Full Fat Greek Yogurt ; 3 nodules

Second cheat: 3 beers ; 2 more nodules on my upper neck

Third cheat: Pasta with olive oil and chicken; FOUR NODULES (2 on temples and 2 on jawline)

When I ate food like this all the time, I never had these cluster breakouts with nodules. Clearly diet has a strong influence on my acne but I feel like I hypersensitized my body or something to these foods. What was before a slight intolerance is now a full allergic reaction.

Anyone have any experiences like this?

I get nodules in those area when I consume the food that causes them. Avoiding the food for years has not made me any more or less sensitive to them. However, following an anti inflammatory diet makes the nodules smaller, les inflamed & quicker to heal.

I had a similar experience. I would always get chest acne after eating wheat. Now I eat minimal quantities of wheat daily and do not get chest acne. I think it has something to do with antibodies in the blood. If you don't eat something for a long time, then eat it all of a sudden, you'll have a robust reaction to it because you don't have antibodies to the food in question - and the food particles thus float around and cause damage. If you do have antibodies, then the food particles are marked for destruction before they can cause an immune reaction. Your body will make antibodies in response to these food particles. So my guess would be that if you eat small amounts daily, eventually the acne will stop happening (once you have antibodies to the food once more). The purpose of continuing to eat small quantities of food is to keep antibody production up.

The antibodies are the immune system response.

Antibodies are one part of the immune response. Antibodies themselves are somewhat useless, unless they disable a protein or enzyme. But when it comes to antigenic fragments, their real purpose is to mark the target for removal by other white blood cells.

I'll give a good parallel. If you have a bacterial infection, your immune system will make you sick while it responds to the bacteria, and then once you have protective immunity, the infection will be cleared. Now, say food particles elicit a similar immune response as the bacteria does (obviously the manifestations of sickness are different). Once the body gains protective immunity against that food particle, the symptoms of you being sick go away.

Now; we're constantly being exposed to bacteria, so our protective immunity is constantly being modulated. It might make sense that we should be constantly exposed to a food in question, but not enough to cause 'infection'. I'm not saying this is a solid theory by any means, but it does fit my own observations in dealing with my acne that was caused by food sensitivity. It's really more of an autoimmune disease than anything else.

If you have the antibodies to the food, because you've been eating the food, those antibodies will trigger a response.

>I'm a soon to be 26 year old guy and have had acne for 14 years now. 3 months ago I went on a low glycemic load diet, no diary, and no grains. I stuck to it 100 percent for 2 months and it worked perfect. I got maybe 2 small red spots which were gone in a day. The problem I am realizing now is that unless I stick to these rules for EVERY meal, I will breakout with nodules around my jawline, temples, and neck. Before going on this diet, I would get these nodules in these areas occasionally but now they come in batches.

First cheat: Full Fat Greek Yogurt ; 3 nodules

Second cheat: 3 beers ; 2 more nodules on my upper neck

Third cheat: Pasta with olive oil and chicken; FOUR NODULES (2 on temples and 2 on jawline)

When I ate food like this all the time, I never had these cluster breakouts with nodules. Clearly diet has a strong influence on my acne but I feel like I hypersensitized my body or something to these foods. What was before a slight intolerance is now a full allergic reaction.

Anyone have any experiences like this?

I get nodules in those area when I consume the food that causes them. Avoiding the food for years has not made me any more or less sensitive to them. However, following an anti inflammatory diet makes the nodules smaller, les inflamed & quicker to heal.

I actually noticed that as well. While these are still nodules, they aren't as bad as some of the ones that I was getting when my whole diet was inflammatory.

What are you eating?

Have you tried taking digestive enzymes with every meal, or at least with your "cheat" meals? that might help you gradually build up tolerance for more variety of foods. When I first started an elimination diet, I would react to everything that wasn't within the range of the 5 or 6 foods I used to eat. Now I have expanded my diet and on some occasions I found that I can eat regular cheesecake (not every week, but as a treat once in a while) and carrot cake without serious flare ups. Chocolate is still a trigger for me though. Any time I have a treat, esp. if it's cheesecake, I take digestive enzymes and then at night a probiotic to help with digestion. I must say, though, that whenever I eat something that is too rich my stomach feels queasy, so it could just be that you are adjusting to a new diet and you need to stay consistent for a while then gradually reintroduce some foods in small quantities to see how you react. If you are still getting reactions, you could just have sensitivities (E.g. to dairy) that will not go away.