I just wanted to write out my new theory here in case anyone is interested. This is totally half baked though. A little pretext first: I found that I became clearer when supplementing with an animal sourced Vitamin A & D (without soybean oil) & eating a sweet potato or some carrots daily, and was getting a decent amount of natural sun exposure as well as going to a tanning salon twice a week. My purpose wasn't to get tan but to stimulate Retinoic acid and its metabolites in the skin. Alternativista posted about it here:

This led me to investigate hypothyroidism as I found out that hypothyroid patients cannot convert beta-carotene to its active vitamin A form. This led me to do more research in which I found out this:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v340/n6235/abs/340653a0.html

and

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC364826/

and

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1331778

To sum up, the abstracts explained to me that a deficiency of thyroid hormone, thyroxine, in the body results in a retinoic acid deficiency. This is because the thyroxine accepting hormone receptor and the retinoic acid hormone receptor are similar in shape and can bind to each other in what is known as heterodimerization. The Vitamin A and UV combo worked well for me most of the time but I continued to breakout. (I would like to note here that my acne is moderate now but it was at one point very severe on my face, back, chest, and neck). My new theory that I will attempt is to supplement with natural dessicated porcine thyroid hormone which contains both T3 and T4, supplement with Vitamin A and occasionally eat beta carotene food sources (i also read that eating too much beta-carotene can suppress thyroid function. who knew?) and to also expose myself to uv light in order to stimulate the production of retinoic acid in my skin. Maybe since the thyroid hormone receptors will be in use by my thyroid hormones that I will be supplementing with, my body will be able to better synthesize retinoic acid from my vitamin a intake and sunlight exposure. THis all runs consistent with my philosophy on health and nutrition. In our most prime healthy form, humans would be eating nutrient dense food, would be exposed to constant natural sunlight, and would have a healthy operating thyroid. To me, the correlation between lack of sunllight and my acne is apparent since acne is most commonly found on the face, shoulders, neck, back and chest. These would be the areas most exposed to sunlight in the wild.