Dear databased,

After reading through all the 21 pages I can say your regimen is inspiring to say at least and it makes SO much sense!

I have already cut dairy and sugar from my diet, and I now plan to give apples "the axe". I will be relying on blueberries, strawberries and raspberries in fresh leafy green smoothies (consisting of some berries and lots of bok choy, baby spinach and parsley) for natural sugars (surely can't live without). My diet is more or less balanced in other aspects (I also eat decent amounts of meat every day), so I think I can keep this up.

Where I live, it's about 7 hours from sunrise to sunset right now (roughly from 9am to 4pm) and the sun is very inactive. From now on I will try to get as much daylight as possible every day, by walking outside and looking in the sky. I have already taken up parts of your regime before and started normalizing my sleep (I go to sleep every day at 10pm, installed thick dark curtains and eliminated all light sources within my room so it's really dark). I will install new lightbulbs to my living room lamp, where I stay during most of the day. I never kept it on before and only relied on my small table lamp, so once the sun set at about 4pm, it was really dark in my room and I instantly started feeling really tired, like I could go to sleep any minute. Today, I've kept all the lights (although weak) on and I feel like I have energy! I expect this feeling to subsidize instantly when I turn them off and draw the curtains to fall asleep. This should surely get me somewhere.

My question is, if I keep up this geographically "impaired" regime, while not interrupting it at all with diet/fructose/lactose, is it better than not doing it at all? If so, should I supplement? I've been taking 2000IU D3 for about a month now.

Thanks in advance!

how about full spectrum lightbulbs?

I use them. They are better than nothing, but they are nothing like sunlight, IME.

When marketing says they emulate sunlight, they really mean they make the colors of things more "true". Compared to sunlight, they:

 

• Are much less bright.
• Have peaks in only a few frequencies.
• Have very little UVA.

I can't tell whether the full-spectrums are any better for affecting digestion than normal bulbs. The Japanese study on light and digestion used normal fluorescents, but the subjects stuck their heads in a lightbox, so they got more brightness then you are likely to get in a normal setting.

 

i barely go outside..especially in day light, im depressed, i dont eat right, i go to sleep late and wake up late.. my new years resolution is to change all of this so i better get to it.

Do it! IMHO, depression, sleep, and acne are all connected. A lousy sleep pattern can contribute to depression. And acne pushes most people to stay home and sit in the (relative) dark. It's a vicious cycle. I was just reading an article on improving Alzheimer's treatment via non-drug means. One expert said if there was anything he could change in all such facilities, it would be to make them brighter. Brighter light helped normalize sleep and decrease behavior problems. We evolved to get these two gigantic daily environmental signals of very bright days and very dark nights, and it should not be unreasonable to expect problems after screwing those signals up for years at a time.

 

I live in arizona and the sun shines for like 95% of the days of the year through my window, does it work too if i stay close to the window?

I never got much benefit sitting next to a window. Maybe there's just not a big enough field of vision contributing intensity. Maybe UVA is a significant part of why sunlight is effective and glass is too good at blocking UVA. Whatever the reason, I never got any drastic benefit from sunlight by trying to sit next to windows. YMMV.

 

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You know i was actually thinking about using this uva/uvb lamp i have that i used to use for my lizard will this help anything? of course im going to try the whole going outside thing but i was just wondering

Databased - As your theories expands frequently, can you please tell what supplements you recommend taking and how much of each every day? And how you think the doses should be adjusted due to f.ex only 2 hours bright light per day or f.ex 6 hours?

I think that would be very helpful for many of us! Hehe, thanks!

to all the vitamin "junkies": most of your questions if not all have been answered many times in this thread... the rest probably can't be answered or they are too trivial...

I have already cut dairy and sugar from my diet, and I now plan to give apples "the axe". I will be relying on blueberries, strawberries and raspberries in fresh leafy green smoothies (consisting of some berries and lots of bok choy, baby spinach and parsley) for natural sugars (surely can't live without).

Well, those berries have way less excess fructose than others you could choose. But why not just eat the berries and greens whole?

It's possible that the people who find "eating healthy" helps their acne are those that are really eating more whole, leafy greens and non-sugary vegetables, while those who find "eating healthy" makes their acne worse are those that are just finding ways to get more sugar out of plants. I really can't believe that eating a carrot is going to make anybody's acne worse, but I sure can believe that carrot juice could!

I remain dubious that using the blender to get veggies down is a Good Thing. I speculate the primary benefit may (if you shove enough greens in) just be increasing the amount of boron you're getting (which probably is a Good Thing).

My question is, if I keep up this geographically "impaired" regime, while not interrupting it at all with diet/fructose/lactose, is it better than not doing it at all? If so, should I supplement? I've been taking 2000IU D3 for about a month now.

Yes, better than not at all. Anything you can do to increase light intensity during the day is a plus, but not magic. I'm not quite as far north as you, but still have not many hours of sun (and the sunlight has little UVA this time of year). My diet is not perfect, and I have to supplement to prevent acne. If you're still getting acne, the simplest combo I can come up with (to add to the Vitamin D) is:

• 3 times a day with "Super Nutrition Calcium Blend" (iron-free)
• 1 B-50 Vitamin B complex pill per day.

That will add 1,000 IU/day of Vitamin D (highly unlikely to hurt you in any way), as well as zinc, selenium, and boron (hard to find in normal vitamin pills). If you can take those rigorously for a month and have a good sleep cycle, I would be very interested to hear what results you get.

should i take the vitamin B complex everytime i take the Optizinc or just Once a Day?

You probably have either a B-50 or a B-100 pill (look at the list of ingredients and probably most of them are either 50mg each or 100mg each). Either way, just one per day with a meal is fine, and you really don't want to take 3 per day! Not all the Vitamin B family is benign in huge doses.

You know i was actually thinking about using this uva/uvb lamp i have that i used to use for my lizard will this help anything? of course im going to try the whole going outside thing but i was just wondering

Hard to say. I actually have a 40-watt UVA ("blacklight") bulb in the array of bulbs I sit in front of at my desk. I can't tell that it helps at all, but then it's a very small amount of UVA compared to what is outdoors on a sunny summer day.

can you please tell what supplements you recommend taking and how much of each every day? And how you think the doses should be adjusted due to f.ex only 2 hours bright light per day or f.ex 6 hours?

My experience continues to indicate that boron should be in the list of nutrients not getting digested well when we live in indoor light that can affect acne. That's the main change I've made and it seems to make it significantly easier to avoid acne in winter while not avoiding all problematic carbs. Boron is hard to find so, again, the simplest combo I know of is:

* Super Nutrition Calcium Blend Iron-Free (3 times/day with meals, covers most bases except Vitamin B)

* Any B-50 or B100

* at least 2,000IU Vitamin D3/day (assuming you're an adult and weigh >100pounds)

I wish the 1st pill didn't have so much calcium, but taking additional Vitamin D is a hedge against that. Other than that, it's got plenty of zinc, selenium, and copper. If you're taking any other supplements, make sure that 1st pill isn't supplying the same thing and giving you more dose than you want.

I finally found boron in a "standalone" pill, so I'm going to order some and give that a try to see if it's as helpful as the two other "combo" pills that contain boron that I've experimented with.

How to adjust the doses? My (winter time) rule is, if my normal amount of pills isn't preventing acne and I'm sleeping fine, then I have to cut back on the Coke, have oatmeal for breakfast instead of pancakes and syrup, etc. OTOH, if I'm staying acne-free, then I may start skipping the evening pills and see what happens. I don't try to megadose my way out of acne. (Though I certainly have used megadosing of certain things in the past to try to be sure of what has an effect and what doesn't.) The list of pills above is already a pretty hefty dose (well, the Vitamin D may be low, only way to know is to get tested.). If I can't stay acne-free at that level, then I'm invariably either abusing my sleep or my diet too much, either of which I figure is asking for other health consequences and needs to be attended to.

Of course, when summer time comes, I can spend more time outdoors and that lets me stay up late once in a while, eat ice cream, and do other things I can't get away with during winter time or when I'm spending most of my time in indoor light.

Hey Databased,

Have you ever seen this: http://www.myzeo.com/ - they claim to measure brainwaves to determine quality of sleep.

Wow -- that's going on my Christmas list for sure; thanks for the link!

I purchased the Super Nutrition Calcium Blend with boron. It arrived today and I promptly took two tablets. I'll keep you posted on the results.

As much as I like your system and find it to be fairly effective (although not the 100% cure that it is for you), it simply isn't realistic for me to be in the sun for more than an hour or two per day. It's either too cold, too warm, or I just don't feel like sitting on the porch on a laptop.

I have been supplementing Vitamin B complex, 100mgs of Zinc, 4000 IUs of Vitamin D, and virtually every other vitamin you have mentioned at one point or another. I've been trying to go for an hour bike ride every day around 2-3 pm. I have found that if I do that, go to bed at exactly midnight, and avoid all gluten / flour / sugar / alcohol / soy etc, I stay virtually acne free.

The problem is, I invariably fall off the perfect diet / sunlight / bedtime wagon. I just can't stay perfect enough. Thus I have only been truly acne free maybe 10 days out of every 30 over the past 4 months. Anyhow, I can't give up because when I have acne I cannot stand to be around people, which obviously has a severely negative impact on my life.

Also: If I eat anything with much flour / gluten / etc in it, cysts inevitably form within 24-48 hours. This happens even if I'm spending 6+ hours outside.

I should have mentioned that I *almost* always sleep 8.5 - 9.5 hours per night. The only time I don't is when I consume alcohol (which happens perhaps once/month) or a rare bout of insomnia. If I get <8 hours of sleep, it is a guarantee I will break out in the next day or two.

I purchased the Super Nutrition Calcium Blend with boron. It arrived today and I promptly took two tablets.

Be careful what else you take, as there's lots of stuff in that pill. For example, you probably don't want to take any additional selenium or zinc, as there's plenty in there. You do, on the other hand, want to try to take it 3 times a day with 3 separate meals to get the full 3mg of boron. I hope you find the boron makes a significant difference, as it seems to for me. Right now, I've dropped back to just:

2 X Vitamin B-50

3 X Super Nutrition Calcium Blend

1 X 5,000 IU Vitamin D

All taken with meals.

Databased,

You can get boron from solgar:

link:( http://www.iherb.com/solgar-multi-chelated-boron-3-mg-100-veggie-caps/8763?at=0 )

link:( http://www.sourcenaturals.com/products/GP1838/ )

link:( http://www.seacoast.com/supplement/life-extension-boron-3-mg-100-capsules-4045 )

OK, I am cutting back to:

2 X Vitamin B-50

3 X Super Nutrition Calcium Blend

1 X 5,000 IU Vitamin D

Plus 50 mg of zinc per day. I'm willing to take the risk.

I am slightly concerned that the SNCP contains iodine, as I have read that this can cause acne issues, but I will risk it.

I am slightly concerned that the SNCP contains iodine, as I have read that this can cause acne issues, but I will risk it.

You can always try just getting the boron directly so you get to control

exactly how much of each nutrient you're getting. That's my usual bent,

but I figure very few people can make themselves take 20 pills twice

a day like me. 😀 I'm waiting for the cheapest source of boron

I've found to arrive. I don't want to recommend it until I give it a try myself.

It's interesting (but of course, no form of proof) that it took a long time to establish that boron is a crucial micro-nutrient in plants. You don't need much, but if you don't have enough Bad Things can happen. It took until the 1990's to start to suspect that boron is also crucial for humans and animals. It's also intriguing that it seems to matter most for animals that are already deprived of some other nutrient (which I posit that acne sufferers are).

I don't have a problem taking 15-20 pills per day. But taking 5/day sure is easier!

On a side note, between the 15 pills/day, sleeping in room darkened by aluminum foil, sitting on my porch all day with my laptop, and eating a sugar free / gluten free / dairy free / soy free / etc diet, everyone in my life pretty much thinks I am completely nuts. And I'm not absolutely certain they are wrong.

Though trying to remain skeptical, it sure appears like boron is the final piece of the nutrient puzzle for me. Though I don't recommend it to anyone else (especially kids!), I've experimented with going as high as 9mg of boron in a single day. I've also increasingly dropped all the behavioral mods I do to avoid acne in winter: getting less time in front of the light bank, staying up late, 64oz of Coke per day, and even eating increasing amounts of ice cream.

All week, I've been having a medium ice cream sundae on top of other bad behavior. Yesterday, I decided to go all out and bought a box of my favorite, richest ice cream sandwiches, which usually guarantees cystic acne for me the next day. Yesterday, I ate half the box, and tossed down an extra 3mg of boron after the last one. This morning, nada. Not a thing.

Since adding boron to the mix, when an infrequent zit has appeared, the immune response is so dampened that it never turns into anything, barely becomes visible. One, I practically flicked away with my fingernail and then couldn't see anything. I've seen this before when I was getting all-day summer sun and doing lots of Bad Things; any detectable acne that appeared was nearly instantly gone, which is consistent with the host-response theory (the opposite of the we-must-kill-the-bacteria theory).

My theory is that sunlight in the eyes helps by increasing the ability to digest carbs (at least in the daytime when pineal melatonin output is low in most people). Because boron seems to greatly decrease my need for bright light to avoid acne, I'll guess that its primary role is also in digestion. Boron certainly appears in fructose compounds naturally, so maybe it is directly aiding the transport of fructose in the gut (if true, it should make it easier to get fat from eating the sugar). But, like other elements, it can tag along in an ever-growing list of newly discovered chemical reactions in the body, so who knows.

This doesn't mean, of course, that what cures me cures anyone else. I've heard from more than one person who got essentially a "cure" just by taking 50mg of zinc or less per day, which certainly doesn't work as a cure for me personally. But I will say that it seems like a good bet that at least <=3mg of boron should be on the list for any adult trying to decrease their acne via supplements (and certainly zinc, Vitamin B, selenium, and Vitamin D should also be on that list). If my current results continue to hold, then it means I really have found my "magic pill" (well, "pills", since nobody puts all these things in one pill), which lets me be acne-free in all seasons without going through any significant diet or behavioral contortions (not that there aren't other very good reasons to eat less sugar and get long and regular amounts of sleep).

Recap:

Zinc is one of the longest-studied nutrients that correlates with statistically significantly less acne. Some months ago, I discovered that around 200mg/day of zinc picolinate could, under some circumstances, make me dramatically acne-free for the first time ever. That led to a very long course of study, research and experiments.

For a megadose of zinc to affect acne dramatically, a good bet was that zinc is a cofactor in a reaction that affects acne. If you have a chemical reaction in the body like Zinc + X -> Y, then flooding the area with zinc will at least modestly increase the production of Y, since it makes it more likely that all the available "X" will get used up. After much study, I concluded that "Y" is actually zinc superoxide dismutase, or ZSOD. ZSOD comes with the usual labels people grope for in acne cures: anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, etc.

But then, what is the "X" that must be combined with zinc to make this reaction? If I have to overdose on zinc to get enough "Y", the implication is that what I'm really deficient in is "X". Like most people in America who eat meat, it's highly unlikely that there is any lack of zinc in my diet. If I could remedy my deficiency in "X", then I should be able to be acne-free without taking any zinc.

More study led me to conclude that "X" is melatonin. Melatonin slows cell division. It may decrease the production of androgens right in the skin. And perhaps most importantly, melatonin crosses the cell membrane and directly stimulates your DNA to produce the precursor to ZSOD, the molecule that zinc must combine with in order to create ZSOD.

Experiments with melatonin were immediately fruitful. By tending to my sleep cycle, I was soon able to be acne-free on less zinc, but still could not be acne-free reliably for long periods without any zinc supplement. Something was still missing.

The final piece of the puzzle was finding the fairly recent discoveries that show that, in modern life, we fail to effectively suppress daytime melatonin because we live in relatively dim indoor light. When you don't effectively suppress daytime melatonin by having your eyes in outdoor light all day long, two bad things happen. First, your gut thinks it's nighttime and you get carbohydrate malabsorption that keeps it from effectively digesting tryptophan (the fuel your body needs to make melatonin) and (tada!) zinc! Second, you get a "flattened" melatonin curve when you sleep at night -- your body simply doesn't produce the giant burst of melatonin at night that nature intended. The data fits this hypothesis nicely, including the most obvious points:

 

• Do low zinc levels correlate with acne? Yes.
• Do low tryptophan levels correlate with acne? Yes.
• Do low ZSOD levels correlate with acne? Yes.
• Can this explain why primitive tribes are acne-free? Yes.

This effect of daytime light is simply astounding. For example, I have long struggled with the ability to consume legumes. I bought into the standard advice that it's a problem of gut flora, if you eat them long enough your gut will adjust and digest them better without gas, etc. If I had a large Coke and a large burrito, the result was 100% predictable: great intestinal discomfort. However, I now know that was simply another problem of failing to suppress daytime melatonin. By living in outdoor light all day, I can slam down a Coke+burrito with zero intestinal discomfort, hardly any gas at all. I've repeated this experiment reliably several times, and outdoor light exposure is like a light switch (heh!) on my ability to digest legumes. I speculate that the growth in acid reflux disease (and the esophageal cancer it can lead to) is probably another result of living in dim light during the day that produces carbohydrate malabsorption.

The unfortunate thing is, although the pill-free cure for my acne is conceptually very simple, it's also very hard for modern people to accomplish. I had to buy a laptop with an extra-bright screen so I could work outdoors during the day -- most people have indoor jobs with no option of working outdoors. Just look at some the many ways we guarantee we won't have a natural melatonin cycle:

 

• Work indoors all day. Indoor light simply does not produce the definitive OFF signal for pineal melatonin that outdoor light does. Even on a severely overcast day, outdoor light is much more intense (and also simply contains much more of the blue-green frequencies most effective at shutting down melatonin production).
• Sleep in the midst of light pollution. Ironically, while bright light is needed to shut melatonin all the way off, very little light is needed to depress the nighttime surge of melatonin that you need to make lots of ZSOD. A night light, a street light shining into your bedroom. Trying to sleep when the sun is up. Flipping on a light when you go to the bathroom. All easy ways to destroy your nocturnal melatonin surge.
• Go to bed at different times. Want to catch that late movie on the weekend? It's just like a form of jetlag -- your body's 24-hour clock just got bumped and may take days to settle back down to match your regular bedtime again.
• Take in lots of caffeine. Caffeine will both depress your nocturnal melatonin peak and shorten the hours you sleep, both ways to become melatonin-deprived.
• Vegetarianism. Without meat, it becomes more difficult to get enough tryptophan and zinc in the diet. If you combine that with eating high-fructose foods like apples, pears, etc. and living in dim light during the day to produce fructose malabsorption, that greatly raises the odds of acne. This is not to say you can't be a vegetarian and acne-free, but it is plausible that some vegetarians might have to take a couple of pills to get there.
• Sunglasses, hats, travel in cars, etc. If you compare modern people to the completely acne-free primitive tribes that still exist, it's almost like we are comically trying to avoid getting any daylight in our eyes. We stay indoors all day. When we travel, we run from shaded building to shaded car (often with dark-tinted windows). We cover our eyes with dark glasses not just when the light is bright, but often just as a fashion statement when the light isn't even bright at all!
• Depression. Depression and a screwed-up melatonin cycle often go hand-in-hand. But of course, acne itself is strongly correlated with depression. This is a real chicken-and-egg scenario. What causes what? The mess is more complicated by the fact that anti-depressants may tinker with the melatonin cycle for better or worse themselves. What is easy to say is that it would be better to not be depressed if you want a normal melatonin cycle (but that may be a complete tautology for some people!).

A Zinc-less Zinc Regimen

I probably can't think of all the inventive ways people destroy their melatonin cycle, but here's the basic remedy to achieve natural levels of melatonin and ZSOD:

• Go to bed at the same time each night.
• Sleep in total darkness. (Black out your bedroom, go to sleep when the sun goes down, wear a sleep mask, never turn on a light in the middle of the night, etc.).
• Avoid caffeine, especially evening caffeine.
• Spend all day in outdoor light without sunglasses or hats.
• Sleep >= 8 hours. (This becomes easy when you stop megadosing caffeine and suppress your daytime melatonin.)

FAQ

That's too hard. I just can't...

Since I've been doing it for weeks now, I agree with you. I have the luxury of being able to choose to work outside, but it's a pain -- I essentially do office work out on my deck. It's a pain to say I can't go to that midnight movie. It's a pain to put tinfoil on the bedroom windows, wear a sleep mask, etc. It's a pain to open every shade in the house every morning and get my eyes outside ASAP. All I can say is, it's nothing like the pain of cringing when I have to go out in public with acne.

Can't I just take a pill?

Since there are periodic reports in the medical literature of people who hurt themselves by taking extreme doses of zinc (400mg/day, 800mg/day, even more) for their acne, I suspect you can just take a pill, but it could send you to the hospital eventually. I could argue in great detail why you cannot achieve the desired effect by taking melatonin orally, but the fact is many people have tried melatonin pills for acne and they just don't cure it. A melatonin pill before bedtime might help you sleep a little better and jumpstart a busted melatonin cycle, but you really won't need that if you effectively suppress your daytime melatonin. Put another way, if you need that bedtime melatonin pill to sleep, you probably still have a busted melatonin cycle.

Why me? How come my acne-free friends can...

I used to just throw my hands up at this and invoke the fairy dust of "it must be our genes". However, now that I have a detailed theory of the mechanism of acne that seems to me to hold water, I can say that there's a decent chance it's "you" in significant part because you are doing some things different than your friends. For example, in college, were most of my friends staying up until 4am and virtually never going outside like me? Hmmmm, not really. And once you induce carb malabsorption by screwing up your melatonin cycle, then suddenly all the Coke I love to drink does make some difference, and the formerly confusing fact that trying to eat "healthy" by eating fruit really didn't work is incredibly frustrating. The fact is, I suspect I can induce acne in most of the "acne-free" people you know: just keep them in dim light all day every day, keep them in bright light when they're trying to sleep, give them lots of high-fructose foods with every meal (Coke or apples -- your choice), and supply lots of caffeine. There may well be a genetic component to the "why me?" question, but it may be quite small compared the actual details of your acne-inducing lifestyle.

What about dairy?

I still don't know. The fact is, while living the outdoor lifestyle, I have been able to eat a suspicious amount of ice cream without the usually reliable cystic acne response, but I haven't pushed it. It is plausible that the mechanism for dairy producing acne is not beta cellulin, but simply sugar (lactose), and that once carbohydrate malabsorption is cured by suppressing daytime melatonin, dairy isn't a problem. But I do not yet feel certain of that.

Are you acne-free? What pills are you taking?

Every week that I stick with all the rules to maintain my melatonin cycle, I'm acne free. In fact, I sometimes cheat and have caffeine, or miss my bedtime. That sometimes results in a zit, but not always. I stopped taking zinc. I have stopped taking my normal complement of vitamins for a couple of weeks and stayed acne-free, but won't give them up for longer than that because I start getting arthritis.

Maybe it's just Vitamin D?

No. I've been Vitamin D replete for years (>50ng/dl) with no effect on acne. It's possible that if you're horribly Vitamin D deficient (many modern people are) you won't be able to absorb zinc well, compounding your problems. While working outdoors, I work in the shade with no direct sunlight on my skin (though as much view of sky in my eyes as possible). The only times my skin is in direct sunlight is when the sun is low in the sky (little UVB). So, despite spending massive hours outdoors, I haven't tanned at all so far this year. As always, any hope that Vitamin D is really a significant factor in curing acne has to overcome the hurdle of explaining why there's no epidemiological evidence that it varies strongly with latitude (Canadians should have way more acne than Texans if Vitamin D were crucial to the disease).

Can I do [...] instead?

Who knows? But if it's really important to you to get rid of the acne, set aside 2 weeks where you can strictly control your light exposure, and see whether this works. I say "set aside", because I find this regimen amazingly hard. The indoors couch is like a magnet for my butt; I initially had to literally keep a stopwatch outside to keep from fooling myself that I was spending more hours outside than I really was. If you can do it religiously for 2 weeks and it doesn't eliminate all new acne, then the heck with me and my theory. If it does, then you've gained some understanding of how you can control the disease and you can do your own experiments and make your own trade-offs.

My work does not permit me to sit outside. I can only take a walk after lunch for few minutes. I am a vegetarian so kinda zinc deficient. I have been taking zinc tablets from 3-4 months and kinda acne free. Recently broke out after having cashew nuts.

Glad you found a cure and a will power to stay on it.

I have been taking boron for a week. I currently have 4-5 small cysts on my face as well as a couple of whiteheads. However, on Friday night I consumed a large amount of wine and only slept for 5 hours. Saturday I was awakened for 2-3 hours in the middle of the night. I will begin completely eliminating alcohol consumption to see if it makes a difference.

Hi Databased,

What led you to consider the effect of boron on acne?

I currently have 4-5 small cysts on my face as well as a couple of whiteheads.

Well that's a negative data point then, if you're really managing 100% compliance on the pills (e.g., 3 times a day with meals on the "calcium blend"). Maybe you're different than me for unknown reasons, or maybe you are short of something I'm not. What are the classic candidates...

Do you have any alpha lipoic acid laying around you could add in? How about fish oil (not cod liver oil)?

I suppose there could also be a boron difference, if I'm just getting more in my diet. Any chance you get get a bottle of the straight stuff to experiment with?

What led you to consider the effect of boron on acne?

Noticing that Dr. Cannell (of the Vitamin D Council) started adding it to his Vitamin D pills, due to the mouse research that shows it reduces the effects of D depletion. I always wonder whether D has some relevance (makes logical sense), though it was never sufficient for me and I don't see data to support that. Still, as with every other substance, there's always a few people who claim it cured them, so you have to wonder whether it's possible that's true and most people are just short of something else they needed for a winning combination.

Why not cod liver oil?

Why not cod liver oil?

High dosage of retinol, which may interfere with Vitamin D.

But the Eskimos!

Evolution only cares that we live long enough to reproduce. The Eskimo lifestyle was not necessarily a healthy one at all (see medical study of exhumed pre-civ Eskimos with osteoporosis and hardened arteries at young age).

Just wondering what your diet consists of these days Databased, when you are in the cold harsh Winter and you are 'behaving yourself' in your eyes to the fullest degree?

I myself have bought the following supplements:

OptiZinc 30mg

B Complex 50

Calcium Blend (oh my the international shipping costs)

Alpha Lipoic Acid 500mg

This looks to be the best forms of supplements I have ever bought and with it I will need to continue my walking out in the often freezing cold weather to get that bright light exposure and mild exercise. It just is not feasible in colder months to have clear skin for me no matter how good my melatonin cycle is it seems.... I have to also tie in a sweet/starch free diet I think, as it all corresponds with this regimen after all.

I will tell of my progress in upcoming months... it's a shame I picked the hardest time of year to try it out fully.

In the winter Im taking the supplements, sleeping 9 hours in total darkness, get 1-3 hours in skylight, eating carbs almost only from vegetables - and i also have to cut out pasteurized dairy. Even still im not totally clear, but it's quite good.

Anyway I came over this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16371996 - it just says that arctic reindeers doesnt have a biological clock - maybe we can assume that this also can apply for humans to some extent according their heritages altitude