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So Many Factors, And Idk Which Ones Really Cause Acne 🙁

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(@havefaith22)

Posted : 11/24/2012 8:43 pm

Ok so here's the deal.. I am 22 and completely obsess over my acne. It's literally only on my lower cheeks, never my chin, nose or forehead ( knock on wood) I just drive myself crazy on here reading thread after thread trying to figure out what the hell is causin my acne. I started breaking out at age 20 and I just turned 22 recently. I read that stress causes it, food such as dairy, grains, and caffeine and sugar.. And that just drives me crazy that I'd have to possibly limit my diet due to acne. I am very healthy and workout everyday. I drink plenty of water and wAsh my face twice a day, sometimes 3 if I workout I the middle of the day. It just has really torn me apart, which I know everyone on here can relate to no matter what severity of your acne. I currently have been using ziana gel for the past two months, but so far it has made my condition significantly worse, but I do understand that I must wait 3 months. Sometimes I wonder why I come on here cuz I think it might stress me out even more and reading other people's success routes makes me think I'm doing something wrong or not doing enough :/ this is my routine.... Wake up and wash my face with cetaphil face wash , but occasionally dove sent less bar. Then I wait a few minutes and apply cerave am moisturizer. I am a girl who is EXTREMEMLY self conscious of this so next is when I apply my makeup. I used Mac long wear concealer and then pure minerals on top. Idk if the liquid makeup is a good idea?? Throughout the day I SELDOM touch my face. At night I was my face with the same wash then pat dry and apply a pea sized amount of ziana gel. I then apply cerave pm after about 20 minutes.. Am I doing this right ?? I just often find myself looking up med reviews on here or looking at my horrible skin in the mirror :/ it has DEF affected my social life and I almost always avoid social/ family functions to hide. I know I make it worse then it is but there are just few reviews on ziana gel so it's hard to relate to ppl. I am going back to the derm Thursday and plan to interrogate my doc with a shit load of questions! Just needed to vent, I don't write these theirs often and I really hate to be negative. I know everyone is different and I need to stop crying and be patient. Easier said than done, yes???

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(@michelle-reece)

Posted : 11/24/2012 9:47 pm

About the diet-acne connection: I may make a few readers disappointed or frustrated by writing this, but diet is overblown. It's easy to get desperate and start blaming a whole bunch of foods and cut them out in the hopes their acne will subside. The Nutrition and Holistic health forums are, unfortunately, mostly conjecture. They quote scientific studies oftentimes without knowing what it actually means and count it as evidence to support their beliefs. The only clear evidence supporting nutrition involving acne are zinc deficiencies. If you get enough nutrition in a day, you're fine -- don't fuss over the so-called bad foods.

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(@bmariewantsnoacne)

Posted : 11/24/2012 11:32 pm

I agree about the diet factor. I eat healthy foods, get plenty of exercise and sleep, and drink water constantly and yet I have cystic acne. You can't tell me it is diet causing my acne at least...

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(@jarrit)

Posted : 11/25/2012 5:36 am

I will tell you that diet plays a large role.

 

The body is comprised of a series of systems working together. Your skin, muscles, skeletal, endocrine, digestive, nervous, and the most key factor here, the lymphatic system.

 

Your entire body is connected together in a very deliberate manner - the nervous system interweaves your entire body to alert you of pain, when you've eaten too much, or when you have indigestion. It allows you to feel pain outside, as well as inside for good reason.

 

Do you feel full after you've eaten? When your stomach becomes full, your nervous system will alert your brain that your stomach is now chock full of food. Whether it is a bunch of processed food, or nourishing food, your stomach will make no distinction - but your body later will.

 

Consider that the lymphatic system is another system that is interwoven throughout the body. It's essentially responsible for cleaning your blood. Here's a brief excerpt from wikipedia :

 

The lymph system is not a closed system. The circulatory system processes an average of 20 liters of blood per day through capillary filtration which removesplasma while leaving the blood cells. Roughly 17 liters of the filtered plasma actually get reabsorbed directly into the blood vessels, while the remaining 3 liters are left behind in the interstitial fluid. The primary function of the lymph system is to provide an accessory route for these excess 3 liters per day to get returned to the blood.[2] Lymph is essentially recycled blood plasma.

 

 

What one might consider healthy, is actually unhealthy. Have you ever been told that fat is bad for you? Ridiculous crap. A good amount of saturated fat will actually repair blood vessels and aid the body in internal healing.

 

The truth is that people that suffer from cystic acne have auto-immune responses, meaning, they trigger a reaction in the body which causes an overproduction of hormones. The body needs to get the junk out, and will create small cysts where it can deposit the excess fluid. Cysts are simply the body's defense mechanism when it has run out of things to do to keep the junk at bay.

 

The key is finding these triggers.

 

I've discovered my body is quite intolerant to wheat gluten, and that I also needed to stop eating processed foods. It's quite important to understand how processed foods can damage the body (without obviously considering that ingesting something that has been so far removed from its natural chemical form is bad for you).

 

Consider that when your fat cells can no longer do their job, your liver is damaged from the 20 or so odd years you've been feeding yourself "healthy" foods and inhaling weird chemicals from pollution and just living through the rigors of each year, your body is going to take some measure to compensate.

 

If anyone has any questions about "healthy eating," I'd be happy to respond. I've been free of cysts for the past 2 months for the first time in 15 years.

 

If you want to write off diet as a cause of acne, well, that is your loss. I personally don't feel most people have the discipline or willpower to really go through with actually cooking their meals and researching what healthy fats, carbohydrates, proteins, and various nutrients do for the body.

 

(Thiamin is used to regrow nerves. I'm pretty sure those are important to the body)

 

I can only say this in conclusion : heal your body, heal your acne.

 

 

 

 

About the diet-acne connection: I may make a few readers disappointed or frustrated by writing this, but diet is overblown. It's easy to get desperate and start blaming a whole bunch of foods and cut them out in the hopes their acne will subside. The Nutrition and Holistic health forums are, unfortunately, mostly conjecture. They quote scientific studies oftentimes without knowing what it actually means and count it as evidence to support their beliefs. The only clear evidence supporting nutrition involving acne are zinc deficiencies. If you get enough nutrition in a day, you're fine -- don't fuss over the so-called bad foods.

 

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39
(@michelle-reece)

Posted : 11/25/2012 4:38 pm

I will tell you that diet plays a large role.

The body is comprised of a series of systems working together. Your skin, muscles, skeletal, endocrine, digestive, nervous, and the most key factor here, the lymphatic system.

Your entire body is connected together in a very deliberate manner - the nervous system interweaves your entire body to alert you of pain, when you've eaten too much, or when you have indigestion. It allows you to feel pain outside, as well as inside for good reason.

Do you feel full after you've eaten? When your stomach becomes full, your nervous system will alert your brain that your stomach is now chock full of food. Whether it is a bunch of processed food, or nourishing food, your stomach will make no distinction - but your body later will.

Consider that the lymphatic system is another system that is interwoven throughout the body. It's essentially responsible for cleaning your blood. Here's a brief excerpt from wikipedia :

The lymph system is not a closed system. The circulatory system processes an average of 20 liters of blood per day through capillary filtration which removesplasma while leaving the blood cells. Roughly 17 liters of the filtered plasma actually get reabsorbed directly into the blood vessels, while the remaining 3 liters are left behind in the interstitial fluid. The primary function of the lymph system is to provide an accessory route for these excess 3 liters per day to get returned to the blood.[2] Lymph is essentially recycled blood plasma.

What one might consider healthy, is actually unhealthy. Have you ever been told that fat is bad for you? Ridiculous crap. A good amount of saturated fat will actually repair blood vessels and aid the body in internal healing.

The truth is that people that suffer from cystic acne have auto-immune responses, meaning, they trigger a reaction in the body which causes an overproduction of hormones. The body needs to get the junk out, and will create small cysts where it can deposit the excess fluid. Cysts are simply the body's defense mechanism when it has run out of things to do to keep the junk at bay.

The key is finding these triggers.

I've discovered my body is quite intolerant to wheat gluten, and that I also needed to stop eating processed foods. It's quite important to understand how processed foods can damage the body (without obviously considering that ingesting something that has been so far removed from its natural chemical form is bad for you).

Consider that when your fat cells can no longer do their job, your liver is damaged from the 20 or so odd years you've been feeding yourself "healthy" foods and inhaling weird chemicals from pollution and just living through the rigors of each year, your body is going to take some measure to compensate.

If anyone has any questions about "healthy eating," I'd be happy to respond. I've been free of cysts for the past 2 months for the first time in 15 years.

If you want to write off diet as a cause of acne, well, that is your loss. I personally don't feel most people have the discipline or willpower to really go through with actually cooking their meals and researching what healthy fats, carbohydrates, proteins, and various nutrients do for the body.

(Thiamin is used to regrow nerves. I'm pretty sure those are important to the body)

I can only say this in conclusion : heal your body, heal your acne.

About the diet-acne connection: I may make a few readers disappointed or frustrated by writing this, but diet is overblown. It's easy to get desperate and start blaming a whole bunch of foods and cut them out in the hopes their acne will subside. The Nutrition and Holistic health forums are, unfortunately, mostly conjecture. They quote scientific studies oftentimes without knowing what it actually means and count it as evidence to support their beliefs. The only clear evidence supporting nutrition involving acne are zinc deficiencies. If you get enough nutrition in a day, you're fine -- don't fuss over the so-called bad foods.

 

I'm sorry but the statements in your post are false. Your post does not disappoint or frustrate me - it just gives me an idea of how far behind we all are in understanding acne (let's face it, discoveries are made everyday outside of laboratories).

You say that diet cannot be a factor, and yet people are "temporarily cured" by use of pharmaceuticals - namely Accutane.

To keep it simple, accutane is a drug that stops production of sebum. How exactly is this a good idea? The body produces sebum in order to naturally moisturize the skin.

The production of sebum can be controlled through diet. It would be silly to say otherwise. Isotretinoin is an isomer of vitamin A. It is currently known to cause serious problems :

Among the side effects are severe birth defects, including mental retardation, if taken by pregnant women or women who become pregnant within a few months of completing it.

Some seriously bad stuff. It's unnatural and the body was not evolved to interact with synthesized chemicals.

The good news is that oil production can certainly be controlled through diet. Vitamin B5 and Vitamin A are known across all forums to aid in decreasing oil production. But mega-dosing on vitamins not only leaves one feeling quite imbalanced - it isn't going to cure you in the long run. The more supplements are consumed, the more work your liver is doing.

Even more good news is that these nutrients are all available in our food.

You claim that the holistic forums draw from scientific sources in order to further feed their own speculations. What's interesting to me is that the holistic forums incorporate more research and knowledge into their "solutions" than any of the other forums that I've visited.

Here's what the other forums suggest :

- Take a pill (Really? You'd just put some random synthesized pharmaceuticals into your body without even knowing its mode of action?)

- Blue light therapy (It looks expensive, and unnatural. Acne is not a disease that requires an array of powerful lights to fix. It has also proved unreliable for many)

- Put some topicals on your face (Let's heal what appears to be a formation that lies deep underneath the skin by trying to get chemicals to penetrate the outer layer of skin, and just magically zap away that cyst)

- A magic acne suction device from ebay (wtf?)

If I'm missing one of the many "scientific approaches" that have been taken by other communities within acne.org, please correct me.

 

Several points here, but let me touch on the biggest ones:

The whole problem with the studies is that people have no idea how to read them -- most non-scientist laymen don't know what makes a good study, nor do they know when to apply a good amount of skepticism when reading them. Take milk and acne, for example. People on here frequently cite this one or this one and occasionally this one to support that milk causes acne. There is a huge problem with these studies: they're only questionnaires. That's it. How could anyone gauge an accurate reading of milk's possible hormonal effects through a questionnaire? Where are the blood hormonal tests? The number of volunteers are sufficient, but that's rendered meaningless since the results are just correlations and in a study of poor quality you can't exclude the possibility of investigator bias. If you really want to know if milk does indeed exert hormonal effects, you must conduct a double-blind, placebo controlled study in post-menopausal women and check their hormone levels. So far I haven't seen any study done, probably because it's too expensive at the moment or are allocating their funds somewhere else.

But yes, people do often quote studies to as you put it 'feed their own speculations'. It happens quite a bit. However, if it's 5 or 500 studies, if they aren't good quality you can't take them as evidence. Quantity counts, but you need to look at quality more. There are so many ways a study can be poor -- not to mention skewing with P-values!

And with the "unnatural" part. Unnatural does not make it worse, nor does "natural" treatments automatically mean better. This is the naturalistic fallacy -- anything "natural"/"herbal" is better than "artificial"/"synthetic". You say that using lights is "unnatural", but what about sticking needles in your skin (acupuncture) to reduce acne? What about OTC herbal supplements (the pills) that people buy a lot for an acne "cure"? Also, it is actually better to have a "synthetic, unnatural pill" where the active ingredient is standardized and has been proven in rigorous scientific studies to work than to have an unproven "natural" pill with no standardization and hoping it would work! Yes, Accutane does have side effects, but what better alternative is there? Especially those who have severe acne or babies born with Harlequin-type ichthyosis? Remember that every drug has side effects, some more than others.

No, I'm not and hadn't said that diet has 100% nothing to do with acne -- I mentioned zinc deficiencies after all -- but like I've said before the diet-acne connection is overblown and much of these forums are riddled with speculation on that part.

Edit: grammar correction.

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(@michelle-reece)

Posted : 11/25/2012 5:26 pm

A note: sebum does not "moisturize". At most, they may (that's a big 'may') act like an occlusive agent (prevent water loss from the skin), but it wouldn't be a very good one at that considering its composition and how much your skin would have to produce. See http://www.nature.co.../jid19872a.html for more details. There was another study about sebum that was in PDF form, but I can't seem to find it (only the abstract), so I need to do some digging around for a bit.

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(@member1)

Posted : 11/25/2012 6:57 pm

Look, everyone has their own opinion on what does and what doesn't work.

 

To be quiet honest you can't say something doesn't work if you have never tried it. In my opinion ACNE is telling us something in our bodies isn't right. YOU don't just get acne. There are many factors which cause acne and people really don't bother looking into it enough, hence why doctors just prescribe you a tropical medicine and ask to see you again in a few months. To treat something, you need to find what is causing it, that's why a lot of people have good results then acne comes back, you're not treating what is the main problem. A lot of people think DIET is overblown because it hasn't worked for them and that's the same with tropical creams and antibiotics.

 

The message I'm trying to get across is, don't put people off trying things if it hasn't worked for you. Everyone is different and different things work for different people, let people see what works best for them. Also, people really need to have patience when trying anything new. Think about how long the problem has been there, it isn't going to cure over night, give it time if it doesn't work move on and try something else, there is plenty of stuff out there.

 

To the original poster, there is many factors and you just need to find out what is yours, best of luck :)

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(@bmariewantsnoacne)

Posted : 11/26/2012 3:10 pm

That is true. What causes one person's acne might not be the same as someone else. Experiment and see what works for YOU! While diet doesn't play a part in mine (I don't think, but I might still be wrong. Who knows?), it might be the reason for yours. Good luck!

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(@havefaith22)

Posted : 11/26/2012 10:00 pm

Thank you all very much for your VERY detailed information!! I, like most of you probably, am not a MD, but definitely have done my share of research and greatly appreciate some new things I just learned from this thread! With me, I just don't know much about acne, or even what type I have and I DEFINITELY do not know if mine is hormonal or not. Which I was told that if my acne is hormonal, then ziana will not treat it? Hopefully that is NOT the case and I am simply going to wait out my prescription for a couple more months and hope for the best. Also, I will talk to my derm at my appointment Monday, where I have already compiled quite a list of questions for her, and will gladly share her answer on here!! Thank you all very much, it's greatly appreciated as always

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(@jarrit)

Posted : 11/27/2012 1:40 am

A note: sebum does not "moisturize". At most, they may (that's a big 'may') act like an occlusive agent (prevent water loss from the skin), but it wouldn't be a very good one at that considering its composition and how much your skin would have to produce. See http://www.nature.co.../jid19872a.html for more details. There was another study about sebum that was in PDF form, but I can't seem to find it (only the abstract), so I need to do some digging around for a bit.

 

Accutane disables sebum production. Your skin as a result, is very dry and chapped. As you said, sebum assists in retaining moisture. The body is naturally equipped for this.

You're really going to quote an abstract from 1987?

These studies are the basis for the drug Accutane, and why it even exists in the first place.

I am very against accutane, as I've seen people who have taken it clear up, and become riddled after they stop. It's not a solution, but more of a temporary patch.

The damage it would cause on your digestive system is not worth the trouble.

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(@lekry)

Posted : 11/27/2012 7:49 pm

Acne can be caused by several different things. There is no solid answer for everybody. The truth is, everybody's skin is different. But the most common things that may cause acne is diet, irritation, hormones, or even the products you're using. Maybe all of those for some people! Just try working on them all. Gently approach your skin when treating, and maybe you just need a different acne fighting ingredient to help. try to eat healthy (which is not just vegetables. That means all food groups in the correct portions.) and consume the recommended amount of water everyday. And go without some suspicious foods, and see if it makes a difference. If it doesn't then that's not the problem so go on and continue to eat/drink them! Make sure all products don't have pore clogging ingredients which means even your hair products. Make an appointment with the doctor to check out your hormone levels and see if they can prescribe anything to balance them. There are so many approaches to treating an individuals acne successfully. And if you've tried all that at one point or another, try those common approaches all together. Like previous mentions, your skin needs sebum and things like that So don't resort to stripping your skin of these because it could result in irritation. Just keep trying and experimenting. Also, keep your mind in the right place. Believing it's going to clear up, could actually help. Anything is worth a try right? Although I do agree accutane isn't. Too many scary risks just for clear skin. :b

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(@jarrit)

Posted : 11/28/2012 6:12 pm

I have typed a lot of information here, which I hope reaches someone. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to ask.

 

Try and target the main factors of acne, all of which can cause it, and all of which can be prevented over time. The key word here is preventative.

 

The initial poster mentions that there are "so many factors". But let's take our exposed connections to the outside world :

 

-skin - tons of exposure, but this system is primarily exposed to the sun, clothing, and is responsible for actually keeping things out

-eyes - small area, but the eyes are exposed to pollution, sun, and other things

-mouth - this is your prime connection to the outside world (hello diet?)

-nose - filters air that we breathe in. being in a polluted environment will not help, but even more so, will a poor diet.

-anus - this, unless there is some other issue or hemmhoraging stays primarily closed unless a stool is being passed

-genital - also typically remains closed

 

I would have to say that the mouth is the gateway to which our bodies process things. Again, diet comes up here as a big red flag.

 

- damage from the sun. our skin, after all of that topical junk, are more susceptible to damage from the sun, and possibly excessive photons coming from our computer monitors. Sunscreen is key here. Being out in the sun with enlarged pores with no sunscreen is like asking for acne. A certain amount of sun is good, but do you really want to disrupt your skin's outer layer by toasting it with some of your own oils?

 

- disruption of the body. all things you do when you're out partying or radically disrupting your body's balance (drinking, smoking, drugs, etc) - binge drinking will most certainly cause an acne sufferer to break out even worse.

 

- skin cell proliferation. Diet will cause a big change. I believe most people are not aware that the skin is also an excretory system. The simple reason why we have more acne on our faces (and in a lot of cases the sternal region as well as the back), is because those areas tend to become the most clean. The cleaner your pores, the more cycled they will be. There are zones in which the body will use to get rid of waste. Additionally, since our lymphatic system is a uni-directional system (note, the lymphatic system begins towards the face. imagine the implications), imagine what can happen when we are to continuously subject our bodies to a poor diet that is full of excess sugars. As another example, we are constantly washing our faces, and the shower-head is usually pointed towards our chest and back. Excessively hot water can disturb the skin's natural moisture balance and even exacerbate acne.

 

image602.gif

 

How would diet not effect a system like this?

 

 

- hormonal imbalance. Our bodies have tons of glands which produce hormones to keep things running correctly. This type of system requires balance in order to run properly, and if we are constantly putting food into our bodies which can disrupt that balance, our livers will not appreciate this. I typically don't like to link abstracts (as it is easy to just link a few and support your own opinions), but here we go :

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/11988840

 

The key point is that IGF-1 effects gene expression. Milk from a cow is one way to get a nice dose of IGF-1.

 

And an excerpt from this site (I think it does a good job of explaining IGF-1 in an easy to understand manner) :

 

"A chemical resemblance to insulin also allows IGF-1 to active the insulin receptor. This protein triggers a process that ultimately causes a cell to take in more glucose from the bloodstream. IGF-1 does not bind to or activate the insulin receptor as effectively as insulin itself."

 

Do we really need more sugar in our bloodstream? Our bodies ideally have 5 grams of sugar in our bloodstream at all time. Here is an article which describes what our bodies will do with the excess sugars. Simply put, there will be more strain on our livers. I can only begin to imagine what will happen when our livers functionality is compromised. Our bodies are quite intelligent and will compensate. Acne is a lot better than getting cancer or heart disease or liver failure.

 

This all ties back to excessive drinking. Be kind to your liver!

 

-diet. We're finally getting to the root cause of it all. In our modern society of convenience, we're so quick to put anything we want into our mouths. The urges come from millions of years of evolution, to find the most nutrient dense foods, that will sustain us for the longest. Since we still have that pleasure connection between nourishment and food in our mindsets, it can be difficult to let go of things, like our giant plates of rice, pasta, or cookies. Yes, carbohydrates are necessary to power our muscles and other things, but our bodies do not need as much as our nutrition labels claim.

 

Onto my main point : with diet, you can help revert your body's natural functions back to their ideal working states. There can be other complications, such as obesity and heart disease, nervous system degradation, and more.

 

People seem to misunderstand their bodies with their thriving youth. You can't just put whatever you want into it, and expect your body to function properly, especially with today's modern food manufacturing methods.

 

Take your pick :

 

- acne

- heart disease

- cancer

- some-other-disease

- a combination of acne and disease (i'd imagine curing the disease or condition is better than just targetting acne)

 

(I'd choose acne)

 

Conclusion : diet is not the cure-all, and neither is a topical. There is no cure, only maintenance and healing. I personally believe that accutane is just going to replace one complication with another (chemical imbalance, and depression). We need to be eating foods that will make our bodies function well, which in turn will make us feel good. I believe that is a much more complete acne management technique, than accutane.

 

People do not want to regret their decisions. They want to hold onto them and act as if they are the most correct. However, people are wrong, and I can most definitely be wrong. This is all something you've read on the internet, so take it all with a grain of salt. Use your best judgement. Personally, I feel that altering ones diet is much safer than taking accutane.

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(@havefaith22)

Posted : 11/28/2012 11:00 pm

Again, thank you all very much for all of yourfeedback. For my last two repliers:Your posts were both very informative (replier number one broke it down very simply for me personally! haha) Replier number 2: wow. Thank you very much, you really have done your research! I agree with you on the accutane, I don't think that I would ever resort to that, nor do I think my skin is severe enough, even if I wanted to. I will take both of your advice and try things, with my diet in particulary, one at a time. I think I am going to start by cutting out sugar completely. At the same time, I am going to talk to my doctor tomorrow about possibly getting a hormone level test, to help determine if my acne is the result of this imbalance. I will do this for a couple of weeks and if I do not notice a change, I will then remove another possible factor, dairy? If you have a suggestion, please do tell!

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(@michelle-reece)

Posted : 11/29/2012 5:02 pm

Note: I have a lot to reply to in various topics, and I'll get back to them as fast as I can. Also this is a long answer and I'm responding to jarrit's last post.

 

On sun damage and topicals: I agree with the sunscreen here. However, it is partially true with some topicals making your skin more prone to sun damage. Retinoids and alpha hydroxy acids do initially thin the skin, but over time they thicken it. Glycolic acid in at least 50% concentration has been shown to thicken the stratum corneum and the epidermis which would have a photoprotective effect, but OTC glycolic acid concentrations haven't been studied for potential skin thickening to my knowledge. Prescription retinoids (retinoic acid) has the same effect with epidermal thickening when used for at least six months in photodamaged skin. I couldn't find anything with epidermal thickening with BP or salicylic acid, but again I may not be aware of such a study. Of course, using beneficial topicals with sunscreen is a lot more effective than either one alone, and you shouldn't want skin cancer!

 

On skin being an excretionary system: There are numerous problems with your hypothesis. If skin did in fact excrete waste, we'd find a lot more in the sebum and/or sweat than just fatty acids, triglycerides, squalene and cholesterol. If the skin was "making up" for a defunct liver overloaded by glucose, we'd find it in our sweat and sebum! Urination/defecation, coughing, sneezing and vomiting are the primary ways to get rid of something "bad" and are quite efficient at it -- for the skin to be a "last ditch" effort, we'd have a lot more symptoms than just acne! (If you know anything about hyperglycemia, frequent urination is a warning sign: this is the body trying to get rid of excess glucose.) And a note about hyperinsulemia: interestingly, there aren't any symptoms of this unless you have low blood sugar but hyperinsulemia goes hand-in-hand with obesity and pancreatic cancer. There are, however, signs of insulin resistance, like acanthosis nigricans. Furthermore, most people don't know how the stratum corneum is organized and how it works, see http://www.ncbi.nlm....jcad_4_9_22.pdf for details. (It's a long read, but quite fascinating. But simply put, the way the skin cells are organized it can't be another form of waste disposal.)

 

About IGF-1: The hormone itself is quite fascinating, and yes cow's milk has that hormone in it. But here's the question: can IGF-1 from a food source be absorbed in sufficient quantities and bind to the right receptors let alone the other hormones in milk? The problem is IGF-1 is a protein, and like all proteins the body will break it down into separate amino acids and use them later for other purposes. This is why collagen pills can't work for restoring the collagen in your skin. Milk may be able to stimulate IGF-1 in another way though: nutrition. The variety of vitamins and minerals especially in fortified milk (like calciumand riboflavin) are bioavaliable. As dieticians and doctors will tell you, IGF-1 is lower people who are malnourished than people who aren't and IGF-1 serum level checking is a diagnostic test for that matter. If you want to see more literature, look at: http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/11407872 ,

http://ajcn.nutritio.../5/962.abstract ,

http://www.sciencedi...009912006003857

 

Now, as for increased levels for IGF-1 and acne, that's a bit up in the air. There are very few studies tackling this matter. They are of small sample size, and the authors weren't sure that IGF-1 was directly related.

 

http://europepmc.org...2f7cPNRJLqQVA.0

 

"Of 82 acne patients, six (7%) had IGF-1 levels which exceeded the normal range, but there were no significant correlations between IGF-1 and T, FT, DHT or DHEA-S levels or between IGF-1 and acne severity"

 

And: http://archderm.jama...ticleid=393279:

 

"Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEAS), dihydrotestosterone (DHT), and IGF-1 correlated positively with acne lesion counts in women. Androstenedione and DHEAS correlated with acne lesion counts in men. Although the age-adjusted mean serum levels of IGF-1 were higher in women with clinical acne than in women without clinical acne, this difference did not achieve statistical significance [AKA: The authors weren't sure]. No difference in IGF-1 level was noted in men based on the presence of clinical acne. In women with clinical acne, IGF-1 correlated with DHT. In men with clinical acne, IGF-1 correlated with DHEAS and androstenedione. In men and women with clinical acne, the effects of androgens on increased acne lesion counts were dependent on the influence of IGF-1"

 

So, it's unclear. What I'd like to see is a large study where they measure these hormones and check for nutrient status to get a better picture to see if IGF-1 levels are in fact above normal range and/or if there is a vitamin/mineral deficiency present. Unfortunately that study would be quite expensive so I doubt such one exists at the moment, but I do hope one is out there that I'm not aware of.

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