Ok, time to post some anecdotal results: I was away 2 weeks taking vacation by the sea. I got at least 2 hours of direct sunlight a day, usually around 13-15h. I was eating everything including considerable amounts of soft drinks. I also got to bed pretty late (around 2 o'clock) and not reguarly, but I used to sleep very well and long (9h+ each day).

Result: My acne was greatly reduced, NO cysts at all, only a pimple maybe every two days or so.

So far this really supports the theory.

Now, I'm back and I got one big cyst again.

PS: I also didn't masturbate for 2 weeks, which for whatever reason, seems to also affect my acne (cysts especially) considerably...

I don't think you have mentioned it before databased: Do you dim your lights in the evening, close before bedtime?

My lights are in my office. I just don't work in the office for an hour or two before bedtime.

Eating walnuts can increase your melatonin levels:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15979282

The article says: "Mean +/- standard error melatonin concentrations were 3.5 +/- 1.0 ng/g of walnut." A nanogram (one one-thousandth of a microgram) is 10E-09g, so to get a milligram (10E-03G) of melatonin you would have to eat about 300,000 grams of walnuts, or over 600 pounds, assuming my math is right.

Of the many plausible reasons to eat a handful of walnuts per day, I can't see that the fact that they contain extremely minute trace amounts of melatonin is one...

I'm also not sure whether there's any evidence that the rat colon manages its own reservoir of melatonin as in humans. If not, then extrapolating from rats stuffed with walnuts to humans eating modest amounts would likely be misleading.

I have low Vit D due to lack of animal protein in my diet (or low levels of it)

One does not follow from the other. Most modern meat-eating humans do not get enough UVB exposure to avoid Vitamin D deficiency (especially as defined by the latest consensus of researchers). Most clinicians are not up to date on Vitamin D research, so your doctor may or may not know that it can take 3 months of a new daily dose before your serum levels reach their new equilibrium. Hopefully, your doctor does at least know enough to give you D3 and not D2.

If you have a lack of animal protein in your diet, then the odds are good you have a lack of tryptophan in your diet, and that you eat serious amounts of fructose (e.g., apples, pears, etc.) which can further reduce your ability to digest whatever amounts of tryptophan, Vitamin B, and zinc are in your diet. That along with bad sleep habits (irregular bedtimes is like regular jet lag) should be completely sufficient to mess up your melatonin cycle, making you easy to wake up and making it easy to feel like crap even after 8 hours of sleep. I sure remember what that feels like!

Did you give up tomatoes as part of your no-fructose diet? Also, can you stay acne free while eating something such as an entire box of wheat thins every day?

I get a large dose of tomato sauce about once a week. I don't eat wheat thins, but I do eat plenty of bread. When I cook a loaf of wheat bread (every other week or so, 3-4 cups of flour), I usually end up eating most of the loaf myself the day it was cooked (slathered in butter and jelly as well).

=============================

After going a couple of months without any detectable acne whatsoever, I was stricken with the irrational thought that maybe I just "outgrew" it, or that something else I didn't understand had changed to keep me acne-free. Easy (and tempting!) to test, so I spent a few days eating lots of fructose, staying up late, and working in dim indoor light. Took about 3-4 days, but acne appeared. So, back to no fructose (fortunately Coke doesn't taste quite so wonderful after I've been off it long enough), regular long sleep, and working in outdoor light. I would like to complain about what I'm giving up, but the truth is the mental benefits of being able to forget about acne are immense.

databased,

not sure if you've touched on this in this thread or elsewhere, but do you have an opinion on meal frequency? do you think this is a consideration for the acne condition? do you generally eat three meals a day or do you usually take many more smaller meals?

do you have an opinion on meal frequency? do you think this is a consideration for the acne condition? do you generally eat three meals a day or do you usually take many more smaller meals?

My theory is that food affects acne, not via insulin or calories or salt or [...], but only because certain sugars (and living in dim indoor light) can keep you from digesting the nutrients (zinc, Vitamin B, tryptophan) you need (via a long chemical chain of events) to keep cell production of superoxide dismutase upregulated.

I can't see any mechanism this theory allows for meal frequency to affect acne either way. Of course, you could always create some correlated effect. For example, if you add a breakfast that's full of fructose (e.g., a glass of orange juice), you might declare that more meals had worsened your acne. But if you dropped that new breakfast and put the same fructose into your existing meals, I would predict that would do about as well to worsen your acne. Likewise, if by switching to more-smaller meals you incidentally reduced fructose/glucose ratios in each one, you might see an improvement that would be incorrectly ascribed to eating more-smaller meals.

Personally, I often only have 2 meals per day, though I've gone through phases where I had a regular breakfast, making it 3. I do nothing to alter my meal frequency when I turn acne on or off by adding or subtracting fructose and productive sleep.

so to get a milligram (10E-03G) of melatonin you would have to eat about 300,000 grams of walnuts, or over 600 pounds, assuming my math is right.

Do we know how much melatonin the body produces each night when under optimal conditions? Is it definitely measured in milligrams (as opposed to nanograms)?

Putting the math question aside, what struck me was that the melatonin ingested - even if only measured in nanograms - produced observable increases in antioxidant capacity.

Databased: that experiment you did of going back to a pro-acne lifestyle is very interesting, because it gives us a better idea of how long it takes acne to emerge after diet/sleep changes. You say 3-4 days, whereas previously I would have guessed - without any good evidence - 24-48 hours.

databased, did you think about making a lactose intolerance test? and fructoe malabsorption test? I read that you can test for this stuff.

Obviously we, as acne sufferers, do not have particularly strong symptoms that even indicate the intestines as a cause. That's why a test might prove to be negative for malabsorption, even though we have a very slight case of it. Wikipedia says, that the symptoms are heavy stomach cramps, which we clearly don't have.

The only reason I'm still hesitating to make it myself is, because I have to wait >1h at my doctors to get an appointment in my country. And that first appointment is just to determine if I can get the appointment for the actual specialist. Yeah, that's the benefit of universal healthcare... At least it's free then. If I knew the cost for such a test, I would go to the specialist immediately and try to get a refund later.

databased,

Does dairy still cause you acne problems despite getting enough light during the day and sleeping well? Im most interested in whey protein as i like to eat healthy but i swore off all dairy for the time being with good results.

You said earlier based on your experiments that it took about 3 or 4 days to revert back to acne with the pro-acne lifestyle. But you also said that it took 48 hours to see results of a bad sleep habit. This past week has been really good ive been getting sunlight and getting to sleep at a decent hour and my acne has been improving. But last night i was really stressed out and couldn't sleep the whole night! then the next day i tried to spend as much time int the sun as possible and did not nap at all even though i was very tired. Do i have a chance or will acne come back in 48 hours for sure? Will i have a chance at beating the upcoming acne if i get good sleep tonight and the night after? Have you ever experienced anything like this?

Also about my bout of insomnia last night: The day before i spent in overcast sunlight(inhibiting daytime melatonin production) and during the night i couldnt sleep but i was in pitch darkness. Do you need to fall asleep for melatonin to be produced? I guess this is wishful thinking on my part. Part of me wants you to say that melatonin in produced if you are spending time in pitch darkness but prob not enough as if you were sleeping right?

i went ahead and bought the 4x 4 foot flourescent lights exactly how you specified. How many hours per day do you think it take to be enough light from this artificial source? Have you found a cutoff point? or a ball park number to shoot for? Does this method totally replace direct sunlight in treating your acne 100% if you get enough hours of fluorescent light in?

Can i still take 100mg of zinc gluconate daily as an insurance policy? will that help with anything? especially with any slip ups like last night?

few more questions. what do you tihnk about the supplement ZMA?

In case you dont know of its basically just 30mg Zinc aspartate, 450 mg magnesium and 10.5mg vitamin b6

Im thinking about taking this in addition to my 50 mg zinc gluconate at night? Do you think this is overkill? should i just take the ZMA alone?

How much zinc per day would you say is too much? my daily multi already has about 35 mg and i take an additional 50mg a day at night.

Now i am thinking about taking another 50 mg pill during the day and also the 50mg pill and zma prior to bed. totaling about 165mg zinc throughout the day not counting the amount in food.

Is there any danger to this?

Do we know how much melatonin the body produces each night when under optimal conditions? Is it definitely measured in milligrams (as opposed to nanograms)?

It is true that minute amounts of melatonin circulate in the blood. However, you cannot grind up walnuts and inject them into your blood; you have to eat them. So, the relevant measure is not how much the pineal gland puts out, but what quantities of ingested melatonin have been tested in humans. Doses of tens to hundreds of milligrams (millions of times larger than you can get from eating walnuts) have been tested in humans and generally not been found to be a compelling way to improve sleep.

IMHO.

Putting the math question aside, what struck me was that the melatonin ingested - even if only measured in nanograms - produced observable increases in antioxidant capacity.

I don't have the study, only the abstract. This is a rat study, not a human study. My guess is they gave the rats a very large percentage of walnuts for their diet to be able to produce a measurable difference.

gives us a better idea of how long it takes acne to emerge after diet/sleep changes. You say 3-4 days, whereas previously I would have guessed - without any good evidence - 24-48 hours.

For me personally (and subjectively), the amount of grace period varied with how "close to the edge" I was. When drinking a 32-ounce Coke every single day of the year, I believe I generally could create acne within a day or two by letting other things slide. However, it appears to me I get a significantly bigger grace period when I'm eating little or no fructose, living in outdoor bright light all day every day, and having very good/long sleep each night.

did you think about making a lactose intolerance test? and fructoe malabsorption test? I read that you can test for this stuff. Obviously we, as acne sufferers, do not have particularly strong symptoms that even indicate the intestines as a cause.

I don't see the point. You can induce lactose/fructose symptoms in pretty much any human, the only difference is how big a dose it takes to get how severe a result. I don't believe most acne sufferers are fundamentally different than the general population -- about half of adults have at least one acne lesion on any given day. My bet is that if you could study a large population, it would turn out that people with worse acne really do worse things to invoke it (have more fructose, more likely to be vegan, worse sleep, etc.). If you deprive a large group of children of sunlight, many will get rickets, though you can't predict exactly who will get it, who won't, or how severe it will be. We don't respond to that by classifying children as "rickets sufferers" versus "rickets-free" -- we simply realize that without UVB radiation, there's some nasty disease you're more likely to get.

Does dairy still cause you acne problems despite getting enough light during the day and sleeping well?

I have no personal evidence that eating dairy is any different than eating fructose. If I eat enough of either, I can easily have acne. I continue to suspect that it's simply the sugar in dairy (lactose, possibly with fructose added depending on the product) that is relevant to acne (in which case, whey protein wouldn't have any acne-promoting effect at all).

But last night i was really stressed out and couldn't sleep the whole night! then the next day i tried to spend as much time int the sun as possible and did not nap at all even though i was very tired. Do i have a chance or will acne come back in 48 hours for sure?

Nobody can predict any disease symptoms with that degree of specificity for an individual. It is interesting that experimenters generally assume the effects of daytime bright light exposure may persist at least another day, and that jibes with my experience with the grace period that comes from living in outdoor light.

Part of me wants you to say that melatonin in produced if you are spending time in pitch darkness but prob not enough as if you were sleeping right?

Without cheap and easy sleep labs for everyone, all there is to go on is how deeply you sleep and how good you feel when you wake up. I would guess that if you were too stressed to sleep, your cortisol levels were kept up, preventing much of a melatonin surge at all.

How many hours per day do you think it take to be enough light from this artificial source?

I seemed to need most of the day (e.g., >8 hours), but I was also drinking a 32-ounce Coke every day at that point. YMMV. Have you cut out all fructose? Taking a Vitamin B complex? etc.

Does this method totally replace direct sunlight in treating your acne 100% if you get enough hours of fluorescent light in?

I never found it as effective as sunlight, possibly because there's a ton of UVA in (summer) sunlight at many latitudes. I feel like I could get roughly the benefit of 10 hours of artificial bright light with just 2 hours of bright UVA-filled sunlight (and no glasses blocking the UVA) at about the noon hour.

Can i still take 100mg of zinc gluconate daily as an insurance policy? will that help with anything?

If it helps, it helps. Your doctor would be less likely to freak out if you took closer to 15mg.

No opinion on ZMA. 165mg of zinc is a lot. I would not do that for more than a couple weeks, and only as an experiment. Actually, I wouldn't personally do it all since I've done that experiment and concluded that mega-dosing zinc is just a bad patch for not getting the digestive system woken up during meals and not having productive sleep at night.

I just wanted to say again, that I appreciate your continuing effort databased! Maybe a little update on my part:

I bought two blinds for my bedroom window, which prevent almost all light from entering. I say "almost", because I want to open the window to let fresh air in during the night..and my blinds are on the inside unfortunately, which makes light leak in. My sleep is better than before, but I'm still pondering how to get the light to vanish 100%, without having to buy exterior blinds for crazy amounts of money + get fresh air.

I like to think that I already see quite good improvements, but I want to stress for the other readers that taking a Vitamin B Complex is not optional! I'm not taking the same one like you right now, but I bought "Berocca", which has Vitamin B, Zinc and other stuff in it. For the first time since Accutane, the lesions on my scalp have gone. I thought that I would have to live with those for the rest of my life, I'm SO glad they are finally gone.

BUT: I cannot already say with absolute certainty that Berocca or my daylight lamps are improving my skin. The real test will be the winter, when summer light is completely gone. I'll also buy the Vitamin B Complex you recommended once I get a credit card for international shopping. (still very doubtfull about the security risks of that)

Exercise might also play a big role, I started jogging every other day.

P.S: A funny one-liner I thought of: Don't eat fruit in the dark

Exercise might also play a big role, I started jogging every other day.

Exercise definitely increases the chances of a normal nocturnal melatonin surge. Some researchers think the correlation of exercise to less breast cancer is via its effect on melatonin. This is probably why a big mid-day walk on a big hill with my eyes in bright (summer, UVA-laden) sunshine is the least amount of effort I have to apply to be acne-free.

databased,

What do you do in the winter when it is too unbearably cold to go out?

Do you still go out or just rely on artificial lighting from lamps?

I was wondering how a short nap/siesta after lunch would influence the melatonin cycle. Does anyone have information concerning this topic?

Sleeping during the day is very common in some cultures (i.e. Spain, Middle-East)...

ried cutting

What do you do in the winter when it is too unbearably cold to go out?

Do you still go out or just rely on artificial lighting from lamps?

I try to spend most of the day in an extremely bright office.

but i still didn't sleep any more and there was no improvement with the quality of my sleep. I guess this means either fructose is not a factor for me and it's something else i'm eating or doing, maybe sleep is the significant factor. Strange thing is when i was completely clear through out my teenage years and early twenties my sleeping patterns were appalling and even though they are still bad they are much improved.

This hypothesis says cutting fructose/lactose/polyols helps only if it moves you to productive sleep. You have to get enough tryptophan/Vitamin B/zinc past the colon wall to be able to make sufficient melatonin and its downstream product zinc superoxide dismutase.

Sleep and melatonin are not identical, but correlated. Without any ability to monitor melatonin levels in real time, sleep quality is best indicator available. IMPE, getting seriously sleepy at bedtime, sleeping deeply without excessive REM and long (>8 hours), and awakening refreshed and alert is a pattern that is extremely well correlated with less (or zero) acne.

It's hard to debug somebody else's sleep problem, but:

• Do you eat meat?
• Do you get any exercise outdoors with your eyes naked to the sky?
• Do you sleep where light can't get to your eyes?
• Do you use alchohol/drugs that may affect sleep?
• Do you sleep at the same time each day?
• Are you trying to sleep when the sun is up?
• Do you have any known health problems (e.g. thyroid)?
• Do you take any prescription drugs?

I don't see the point. You can induce lactose/fructose symptoms in pretty much any human, the only difference is how big a dose it takes to get how severe a result. I don't believe most acne sufferers are fundamentally different than the general population -- about half of adults have at least one acne lesion on any given day. My bet is that if you could study a large population, it would turn out that people with worse acne really do worse things to invoke it (have more fructose, more likely to be vegan, worse sleep, etc.). If you deprive a large group of children of sunlight, many will get rickets, though you can't predict exactly who will get it, who won't, or how severe it will be. We don't respond to that by classifying children as "rickets sufferers" versus "rickets-free" -- we simply realize that without UVB radiation, there's some nasty disease you're more likely to get.

Not strictly true, it sickens me that SO MANY people I know with unhealthy lifestyles - smoking, drinking, partying to early hours, eating crap, have enviable skin. No acne, not lines or wrinkes or dark circles under the eyes. You can do everything you possibly can to be healthy to the extent that you may be missing out on enjoying your self as much or letting yourself go, and it doesnt make an ounce of a difference. Although not having dark circles from not having late nights is somewhat better than dark circles AND acne. Its just some people are unlucky/have skin more susceptible to acne due to larger pores etc.

Not strictly true, it sickens me that SO MANY people I know with unhealthy lifestyles - smoking, drinking, partying to early hours, eating crap, have enviable skin. No acne, not lines or wrinkes or dark circles under the eyes. You can do everything you possibly can to be healthy to the extent that you may be missing out on enjoying your self as much or letting yourself go, and it doesnt make an ounce of a difference. Although not having dark circles from not having late nights is somewhat better than dark circles AND acne. Its just some people are unlucky/have skin more susceptible to acne due to larger pores etc.

If someone has bad acne, or acne that flairs up when they drink alcohol, they probably don't feel like going out and partying. You only see the self-selecting few who can actually get away with it.

You don't see every minute of these people's lives. One thing I've noticed with people who party frequently is that they tend to love to tan. They'll lay out in the sun for a couple hours/day. Additionally, there is a good chance they aren't concerned with a so-called healthy diet, which means they are likely not eating high sugar fruits.

I have a friend with perfect skin on his face. He goes about life as he pleases without thinking about acne twice. One day I saw him without a shirt on. His entire back was covered with acne. Some people get acne in different places.

I have another friend with perfect skin who abuses his body to a fairly ridiculous extreme with alcohol, prescription stimulants, and a fast food diet. Upon further inspection of his life, I identified at least a few things he does that might help with his skin:

1) He tans regularly. No sun screen. He just goes out to the pool around 12pm - 2 pm and stares at the sky.

2) He sleeps longer and harder than just about anyone.

3) He rarely eats fruit (although he does drink soda all day long).

4) He doesn't wash his face.

5) He generally only eats once or twice/day.

Its just some people are unlucky/have skin more susceptible to acne due to larger pores etc.

Such is what doctors try to tell me every single time something is wrong with me. I'm a calm person, almost lethargic. But when I hear bullshit like that, I get truly angry because I have heard it multiple times on different medical occasions and it was wrong every single time. Genetics don't account for shit and doctors are regularly wrong.

Doctors do not actually heal anything. Their only purpose and knowledge is to choose what medicine to take for what illness because they heard it 10 years ago on their university. They have absolutely no clue about the body, the only people that might have a clue are researchers.

I'm a very healthy person, my blood results are above average on all scores. I don't have ANY allergies. I don't drink alcohol and I don't smoke. My body fat percentage is 11%.

I look like shit, (dark eye circles, acne, skin). I still listen to doctors, because sometimes there is no other way than the brute force approach of antibiotics. I take the stuff they are giving me, but at the same time I try to find my own solutions, because I know that both the doctor and me are clueless.

Quote

It's hard to debug somebody else's sleep problem, but:

• Do you eat meat?
• Do you get any exercise outdoors with your eyes naked to the sky?
• Do you sleep where light can't get to your eyes?
• Do you use alchohol/drugs that may affect sleep?
• Do you sleep at the same time each day?
• Are you trying to sleep when the sun is up?
• Do you have any known health problems (e.g. thyroid)?
• Do you take any prescription drugs?

- I do it eat.

databased, did you notice like me that sun is more important than sleep?

I work outside now, just as you recommended. One day it was rainy all day, and I stayed inside. I got a few very small pimples. I assumed that this was because I didn't go to bed at my usual 22:00, but at 3:00 in the morning.

Today I stayed till 1:30 morning again but had a full day of real sunlight before and didn't get any pimples despite my disrupted sleeping cycle.

Seems to me that sun is much more important than sleep, which correlates to what I see with other people my age. Most don't go to sleep early! (I'm ~>20) But they definately go outside more often than me.

I'll buy more lights

Can you maybe take a picture of your light setup? Would be interesting to see, I know you described it pretty well already.

databased, did you notice like me that sun is more important than sleep?

Not exactly. My experience corresponds closely to my hypothesis. Screw up my melatonin cycle (via any of innumerable possible ways) and I get acne.

So, outdoor light with UVA reaching my eyes is definitely effective at reducing acne, but I can easily use other pathways to disrupt my melatonin cycle and evoke acne even while getting outdoor light.

For example, if I ingest lots of excess fructose over glucose at each meal, stay up very late, only sleep a few hours, it's 100% guaranteed I'll see acne within a few days.

Also as this hypothesis predicts, I get a day or three grace period after living with a normalized melatonin cycle. So, I can chug Coke and stay up late and get away with it for a a day or two if, previous to that, I had a week of "normal" melatonin.

Thank you for all the information, databased. This is very interesting to me.

Hmm... I read most of this thread last summer, it took a lot of time. It would be a bit difficult to search for the answers as I'm not even completely sure if they exist in this thread... So, some questions:

1) Just wondering... Trobriand Islanders, according to Staffan Lindeberg, have also no overweight, diabetes, heart disease etc.. Can you find any link between those other health problems and melatonin cycle?

Btw, I also found today partial answer to my question from a internet site "Blood Sugar 101". There's an article "You Did NOT Eat Your Way to Diabetes!" and some text about melatonin and DM2 etc

2) I would like to test that lamp thing. How can I know if the lamps are completely safe to my eyes.

3) I sleep in dark room. I have some electronical devices such as router and modem that with some leds (though I don't see them while laying in bed), and my windows passes very little light also. Do you think that even those minimal lights may ruin my melatonin cycle?

Hmm

1) Just wondering... Trobriand Islanders, according to Staffan Lindeberg, have also no overweight, diabetes, heart disease etc.. Can you find any link between those other health problems and melatonin cycle?

Because melatonin helps keep the insulin response functioning, some researchers are looking at screwed up melatonin as an explanation for "metabolic syndrome", which covers the overweight/diabetes. Of course, having little sugar and an active lifestyle no doubt helps.

2) I would like to test that lamp thing. How can I know if the lamps are completely safe to my eyes.

Since no one can even prove conclusively whether UV increases the risk of cataracts in humans, I doubt there's any way for you to know if any given lamp is completely safe. If most of your light is

reflected, I think it's highly unlikely you've achieved enough intensity to match that of outdoor light.

3) I sleep in dark room. I have some electronical devices such as router and modem that with some leds (though I don't see them while laying in bed), and my windows passes very little light also. Do you think that even those minimal lights may ruin my melatonin cycle?

I doubt it, though some studies might suggest otherwise. Once you get most of the bedroom light blocked, IMO most people are suffering from failing to digest enough fuel during the day to make ZSOD.

For example, if I ingest lots of excess fructose over glucose at each meal, stay up very late, only sleep a few hours, it's 100% guaranteed I'll see acne within a few days.

Ah yes, I watched fructose intake very seriously.

-

I also feared that my PC LEDs might interfer, so I hooked everything up to just two extension power switches, and now it's no hassle to turn everything down and up again each time.

btw. I found this on the internet:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/751591.html

The glucose group was unaffected but the fructose group had disastrous

results. The male rats did not reach adulthood. They had anemia, high

cholesterol and heart hypertrophy-that means that their hearts

enlarged until they exploded. They also had delayed testicular

development. Dr. Field explains that fructose in combination with

copper deficiency in the growing animal interferes with collagen

production.

And why is my skin so much worse in the evening, when a diet without fructose should be the answer? Is your skin the same in the evening?

When everything works, one would assume that eating helps the body, and not strains it. In the morning it's very good, anything I had in the evening has shrinked to almost nothing. But in the evening it has grown again Oo.