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This may sound like a dumb question but whatever. So if we happen to be taking zinc, would it be best in the morning or afternoon?
IIRC, the most recent zinc study required taking zinc 3 times per day, and did not show (statistical, group) improvements until multiple months had elapsed.
The dumb answer is, it probably won't matter which you choose, but it's easy to experiment and see if you see any difference.
Hi all,
Just wanted to note that I recently moved into a new office space with about 200 degrees of 8 feet high windows. My skin has been remarkably clear since I began working from this well-lit office. On two different week-long occasions I worked from a windowless conference room, I broke out fairly dramatically.
Also eating an anti-candida diet, sleeping 8.5+ hours, avoiding alcohol, and taking boron/zinc/vitamin b complex, multivitamin, etc, but the sun continues to be a powerful factor, seemingly.
Databased, I was curious if you ever experimented with supplementing SOD into your diet? I only ask this because I bumped into it the other day at the store. As I take it from reading your thread it is the precursor to ZSOD.
Went through 2 bottles of the stuff. Couldn't see that it had
any effect. I doubt it can get where/when it's needed in any quantity
by taking it orally. Pineal melatonin, OTOH, goes to the skin cells and
stimulates each cell to ramp up production of SOD. If you don't have
the SOD right there in the cell that got touched by P. Acnes and
started spewing superoxide anions, lots of SOD elsewhere will
be no help. IMHO.
After doing many "vitamin experiments" on myself for the past 3 1/2 months, I decided to revisit zinc one more time. I started on July 22nd @ 1X 25 mg of Zinc Picolinate daily. After each subsequent week, I added 1 more pill. I will say that my skin did, in fact feel less oily, but did it the acne ever really calm down? A big resounding...N-O!!! By the time I got up to the 4th week this past Friday, I'm sorry, but I had to throw the towel in on zinc one more time! This concludes the zinc portion of my experiment. I do wonder why calcium is added into most Zinc Picolinate supplements 
I'm not sure what my next "vitamin experiment" will be yet.
Databased, Ok, so I know tanning is bad but do you think the powerful blue lights from tanning beds would have a good effect on malabsorption from the light to the eyes?
Anything's possible, but I doubt it. And the tanning booth operator should be pretty upset if they find you not wearing the blocking glasses; they don't want to get sued if you get cataracts. 😀
A big resounding...N-O!!!
I too can take zinc and still have acne. And not take any zinc and be clear.
Hi Databased,
Just finished reading all 26 pages of this fascinating thread, which ironically I've allowed to mess up my sleep schedule a bit lol. First, thank you for sharing your theory and research. I wish there were more people like you, scientifically minded and dedicated to figuring out this hell called acne. Second, bravo on the patience you've consistently shown as posters ask the same exact questions again and again. I'd have given up long ago 
I want to eventually start your regimen, but unfortunately I just started the fiber-probiotic one to see if it works. I'll give it 6 weeks or so and then try yours. Couple questions - someone else mentioned hearing horror stories about taking b-complex pills. Acne.org's reviews section is filled with them, so obviously it worsens acne for some people, probably b/c of B6. If that ends up being true for me, could I take folate and B5 separately, and whatever other B vitamins you think are important to your theory, instead of B-complex?
Also, I've been looking into getting a SAD lightbox for a long time, because I've always been aware of how sensitive my mood is to how much light i get, and I'm moving back to dreary NYC soon as winter approaches. Seeing as these boxes affect the seratonin/melatonin levels, they should theoretically for work acne too. You said that intensity is the main thing, so if the box is 10,000 lux and concentrated on the blue part of the spectrum, as long as I keep my head within the right distance for x hours everyday, it should work, right? I know they're overpriced compared to your setup and a lot smaller, but I like that they're portable between home and office. I'm trying to imagine how I would position mine to somewhat mimic your setup. I'm thinking partially raised on a shelf that is a few inches above eye level as I work, how does that sound?
Thanks so much again!
Sorry another question - have you come across in your research any understanding of why acne is so heavily concentrated on the face? is there simply more bacteria there, or is there maybe a psychological dimension to the problem? this is what I find so frustrating. i would think that your theory would apply to all skin cells, not just the ones on your face, yet mainly people suffer from facial acne, though of course many suffer from chest and back acne too. but why not the arms, legs, stomach, feet, etc?
As a long-time lurker on here and someone who has tried just about everything I've read about on Acne.com, I can confidently say that the principles that databased puts forth here work.
When adjusting my actual sleep time from 7 to hours, and getting just 2-3 hours of sunlight in the eyes per day, I notice a dramatic difference. After 3 weeks of the change, I am almost entirely clear (which I attribute to a few slip ups).
I realized that the times when my skin was at its best were times when I was outside all day and able to sleep however much my body needed to. Also, after a few long road trips with my eyes constantly on the blue sky, I noticed a few drastic improvements.
A few things I've noticed that will hopefully help everyone:
-Making sure you sleep in as dark a room as possible is key. I've noticed that if I have to get up in the middle of the night, being exposed to light seems to make all the difference in how my skin looks the next morning.
-Going to sleep earlier seems to work better, for whatever reason
-Stick to your schedule religiously for a few weeks. Once you notice dramatic improvement, a day here and there of slipping up will make much less difference.
A big thank you to databased for all the work. His theories here have had a big effect on my life. Hopefully my endorsement will encourage everyone to try it out and live a little more healthfully.
Thought you might want to see this study on the effects of lighting on school children:
Hmm... Databased, what do you think about Wikipedia's light therapy article:
Acne vulgaris
Sunlight was long known to improve acne, and this was thought to be due to antibacterial and other effects of the ultraviolet spectrum which cannot be used as a long-term treatment due to the likelihood of skin damage.[3]
It was found that some of the visible violet light present in sunlight (in the range 415430 nm) activates a porphyrin (Coproporphyrin III) in Propionibacterium acnes which damages and ultimately kills the bacteria by releasing singlet oxygen. A total of 320 J/cm2 of light within this range renders the bacteria non-viable.[4]
Since there are few porphyrins naturally found in the skin, the treatment is believed safe except in patients with porphyria;[5] although eye protection is used due to light-sensitive chemicals in the retina. The light is usually created by superluminous LEDs. This form of treatment has been approved by the FDA for some lightwave systems .[citation needed] Overall improvements of on average 76% for 80% of patients occurs over three months; most studies show that it performs better than benzoyl peroxide and the treatment is far better tolerated. However, approximately 10% of users see no improvement.[4]
Recently, I also bought blue blocker glasses. That's one possible way to get more melatonin in the evening even while using computer.
What are the side effects associated with mega-dosing Zinc? I have never had a clear day in the past 6/7 years and would be willing to give anything a try, from searching online the only side effect i have come across is that mega dosing zinc may interfere with the abortion of copper, however i have found a zinc supplement on the market that contains copper for that exact reason.
This is definitely something every acne sufferer should read! It's an interesting theory and does make a lot of sense to me.
Now then, to my personal practical issues: I remember having some success with this a few years ago when I was mostly studying for exams from home or on holiday, so I could spend my days out and work on my balcony. But, now it's winter (zero degrees celsius or colder 
) and I am mostly indoors studying at school or at home. How do you go about getting all the light exposure you need??! Whenever I'm home I try to stay close to my light box, but it's not enough. I'm still breaking out a bit and sleeping poorly (stress also being involved). I guess the only real option is to spend more money and get more light boxes, although it does cost so much. This is really inconvenient, I have to say. And most of the time I'm at school right during midday and can't really control the light environment, which sucks.
I've considered trying to compensate the lack of light by taking extra melatonin in the evenings, but I'm not sure if this would be effective (still going to try it though).
I wouldn't want to mega-dose on zinc, but I'm trying to get a lot from my diet. Other than that I don't really have any ideas on how to improve. Can't wait for summer and warmer days.
I forgot to say, I've tried the blue-blocking goggles in the evenings back when I had more insomnia problems, but they broke pretty soon and were expensive, so I never got new ones. But I may consider getting them and using them again though.
Zinc ascorbate has superoxide dismutase-like activity and in vitro antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli.
I also want to add that there was a time when I was living in central america and my sleep schedule was very regular. I went to bed at the same time every night and was outside all day with my eyes exposed to sunlight. I lived in a village without electricity where everyone went to bed once the sun went down. We were rarely inside, as the rooms were incredibly small. Under databased's theory, I wouldn't have had acne during this time but I did have a lot. I don't doubt that this didn't work for him but for me it did not. Acne is multifactorial. During this time in central america, i most likely masturbated freely which affects acne. Also alot of the families used soybean oil to cook with, which always makes my acne worse. I'm not sure if databased's cure is the best. For my lifestyle, it would be impractical and tedious. But I respect your determination. Just my two cents.
Hi everyone.
Here's one possible reason why databased had better digestion and less acne when he started to go outdoors:
Daylight contains significant amounts of red light and near-infrared radiation (NIR), which increase tissue metabolism and decrease inflammation, mainly by activating cytochrome c oxidase in the mitochondria, directly. They have actually quite huge effects on many diseases:
In theory, a similar effect could be achieved with incandescent bulbs or heat lamps, but not energy-saving bulbs.
In one study, at least red light had a good effect on acne: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3352636/
In that study, they also tried near-infrared of 890nm for acne, but it didn't work. One reason could be that the wavelength they used (890nm) might be bad at activating cytochrome c oxidase (Cox). Certain wavelengths are better, and some are worse: http://www.isan.troitsk.ru/dls/publ3/344.pdf (Figure 1).
Databased wrote about ZSOD, and it appears that red light and infrared, by activating Cox, also increases ZOD concentrations: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2637249/ "superoxide dismutase activities were also increased in NIL-treated subjects in a dose-dependent manner, suggesting an in vivo transcranial effect of NIL."
So, databased's idea about getting skylight into his eyes all boiled down to one goal: a big melatonin surge that helps produce zinc superoxide dismutase to combat superoxide anions in keratinocytes. I looked it up, and keratinocytes are found in the upper layer of skin, the epidermis. I have cystic acne that's probably caused by sebaceous glands getting plugged. I looked that up too, and those are apparently in the dermis, below the keratinocyte-populated epidermis. As far as I can tell, the dermis doesn't have keratinocytes. Any idea if this zinc superoxide dismutase surge would have any effect on cystic acne caused by plugged sebaceous glands, which are away from keratinocytes (which is where the superoxide anion problem occurs)?
Or do I not have the mechanics of this correct?
Man, I wish databased was still here ... such an interesting dude.
(Also, haha, I couldn't help noticing this thread is tagged with "vegetarian" and "depression." Wha?)
Databased wrote about ZSOD, and it appears that red light and infrared, by activating Cox, also increases ZOD concentrations: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2637249/ "superoxide dismutase activities were also increased in NIL-treated subjects in a dose-dependent manner, suggesting an in vivo transcranial effect of NIL."
Possibly relevant, but unconvincing. They appear to be talking about increasing SOD in the (rodent) brain via infrared exposure of the retina. That's nice and interestingly weird, but the brain is pretty isolated from the rest of the body and crammed full of cell types that the skin is not. It seems more exciting to me as evidence that sunlight in the eye still has brain effects that remain undiscovered.