good for you! are you taking any supplements? and what about nuts? how bad was your acne to begin with, was it cystic?

Sorry, but i hope you dont mind me asking your age?

Cause maybe you grew out of acne.

In any case, congratulations!

What do you mean by skin is improving? Like scars getting shallower? Texture improvments? Even skin tone?

.

I'm glad to hear that you got clear by dietary changes i'm doing a lot of dietary changes myself right now. I'm trying somekind of paleo-diet proposed by Loren Cordain in his book "The Dietary Cure for Acne". Things are clearing up slowly.

Congrats! That's wonderful news!

good for you! are you taking any supplements? and what about nuts? how bad was your acne to begin with, was it cystic?

I take magnesium taurate, ALA, Vit D and a multi, but honestly very few supplements have ever made any improvement in my acne. However, I still think vitamins have merit since they let you cover all your bases with more certainty.

After doing the holistic thing for years, I can confidently say now that I no longer get acne. If there's anyone out there doubting that there's an "acne-free future," there is. The good news is that it's very possible to reverse your health to the point where your skin is actually IMPROVING, the bad news is that it takes a while to get back there and requires you probably do some "unorthodox" things. As you can see, I've been a member of this board for years and only in the last few years have things finally "clicked together."

My diet currently:

Moderate amount of starches, to restore muscular glucose over liver glucose. Usually in the form of russet or sweet potatoes. Sometimes I get organic potatoes when I can afford them.

Sometimes oatmeal for breakfast, soaked for a day or two.

Fruit, very little. I like lemons, limes and coconuts. Trader Joe's has really inexpensive lemons (cheaper than the grocery store for some reason.)

A decent amount of coconut/coconut-derived products, mostly in the form of coconut milk. But also sometimes shredded coconut, coconut water, and coconut oil (which I buy by the gallon.)

Kerrygold Butter, suet and tallow are all fats I use to cook my food.

Bone broth and liver every few weeks.

Large amount of meat. Lots of uncured organic bacon, shellfish, and beef/pork. Usually free-range/pastured. Very rarely eat chicken. Eat most of my meat medium-rare/semi-raw.

Soups regularly, often with "starchier" veggies like beets, carrots, turnips, parsnips, etc.

Salads rarely, green smoothies more often than salads.

Also I can gladly say I've never had to go through a coffee enema/vegetarianism/veganism to get clear skin.

Hey I remember you posting on here years ago too with success! I am glad you finally cured your acne

I kind of stopped posting and browsing on here until a week ago after my disaster oil pulling cleansing method .. lol

Before that I had been using benzoyl peroxide wash and complex 15 moisturizer for years.

I pretty much follow a very similar diet to yours for almost 2 years. With a few exceptions: I do eat fruits (1 to 3 pieces a day) and on occasion eat cheese. Also I probably don't eat enough greens. I have tried removing all fruits and cheese in the past for a short amount of time but I still got breakouts so I figure it didn't make a difference for me.

However, unlike you, I am definitely not clear at 32 years of age and after trying the oil pulling method a couple of weeks ago my acne went back to severe again. LOl this is what I get for trying to go "natural". Before that I think I ranged from 95% to moderate acne. Even when I was 95% clear, my face was really oily. Even though I was avoiding gluten, soy and most of dairy almost 2 years.

How long did it take you to get to this point of no acne? What do you use topically?

~d

After doing the holistic thing for years, I can confidently say now that I no longer get acne. If there's anyone out there doubting that there's an "acne-free future," there is. The good news is that it's very possible to reverse your health to the point where your skin is actually IMPROVING, the bad news is that it takes a while to get back there and requires you probably do some "unorthodox" things. As you can see, I've been a member of this board for years and only in the last few years have things finally "clicked together."

My diet currently:

Moderate amount of starches, to restore muscular glucose over liver glucose. Usually in the form of russet or sweet potatoes. Sometimes I get organic potatoes when I can afford them.

Sometimes oatmeal for breakfast, soaked for a day or two.

Fruit, very little. I like lemons, limes and coconuts. Trader Joe's has really inexpensive lemons (cheaper than the grocery store for some reason.)

A decent amount of coconut/coconut-derived products, mostly in the form of coconut milk. But also sometimes shredded coconut, coconut water, and coconut oil (which I buy by the gallon.)

Kerrygold Butter, suet and tallow are all fats I use to cook my food.

Bone broth and liver every few weeks.

Large amount of meat. Lots of uncured organic bacon, shellfish, and beef/pork. Usually free-range/pastured. Very rarely eat chicken. Eat most of my meat medium-rare/semi-raw.

Soups regularly, often with "starchier" veggies like beets, carrots, turnips, parsnips, etc.

Salads rarely, green smoothies more often than salads.

Also I can gladly say I've never had to go through a coffee enema/vegetarianism/veganism to get clear skin.

Congratulations! How do you get bone broth and liver? I recently started eating meat again after 16 years being vegetarian and I'm still trying to figure out how to get the best meat sources. Is smoked ham a no-no, even with no additives?

Still going strong.

You guys should be strong too. Happy Early Valentine's Day everyone!

 

" How do you get bone broth and liver?

I recently started eating meat again after 16 years being vegetarian and I'm still trying to figure out how to get the best meat sources. Is smoked ham a no-no, even with no additives? "

Robertitoo: Anyone can cherrypick examples to make their 'side' look good. While both veganism and paleolithic diets have little evidence behind them, only in one of these diets is it possible to obtain all essential nutrients without artificial supplementation. This can lead to health risks down the road, as this 2012 study on the vegetarian diet suggests:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899900711001523

Of course, correlations don't prove causation, and studies like these are weak at best. But if one were to therefore use evolutionary logic, a vegan diet again falls out of favor. I'm very happy that veganism worked for your acne; but unfortunately you are a minority among many more who have fixed their acne on a paleolithic style diet. Moreover, nobody knows why exactly these diets work. A vegan diet could work by starving a specific kind of bacteria that you have, but for the majority of people who don't have that bacteria, they would see no effect - or even detrimental effects, which are more often than ever associated with increased grain/carbohydrate consumption. Carbohydrates are, after all, the most dangerous of the energy macromolecules.

Anyways, I just don't want people to be misled, and that picture you posted is pretty misleading.

at 25y it was your last train to catch. i think even on this site it says acne should go away by 25, or even 27, so don't give people false hopes and mention your age from the start. one of my ex-girlfriends also got clear by 25y and she had pretty bad acne even at 21-22. she did a couple of clay masks (which i also did), bullshit.. her hormones got fixed like normal people.

u do realise people are not scientists and yet, 80% of all people have some form of acne from 12-24y period, and only 20% older than that still have acne.

..eating milk, cheese, butter, chocolate, gluten, carbs, this is a joke (for me), look at those stats and it all becomes clear.

Dan, What becomes clear? Where are you getting those 'stats.' what's clear to me is diet & lifestyles effect on acne. It simply isn't possible for it not to. I maintain clear skin via diet, but if my diet worsens, the acne returns. I did not grow out of it. Neither did 2 of my siblings. Or my father. How many times do you have to be told this?

at 25y it was your last train to catch. i think even on this site it says acne should go away by 25, or even 27, so don't give people false hopes and mention your age from the start. one of my ex-girlfriends also got clear by 25y and she had pretty bad acne even at 21-22. she did a couple of clay masks (which i also did), bullshit.. her hormones got fixed like normal people.

u do realise people are not scientists and yet, 80% of all people have some form of acne from 12-24y period, and only 20% older than that still have acne.

..eating milk, cheese, butter, chocolate, gluten, carbs, this is a joke (for me), look at those stats and it all becomes clear.

Have you considered the possibility that the reason people "grow out" of acne is that, generally, when people get older they start to realize they can't eat the same crap they did when they were kids and thus seek to make beneficial changes in their diet which inadvertently lead to a clearing up of skin?

I guarantee you my skin is still acne-prone if I was to slack off, but I don't because I've become accustomed to my diet (becoming accustomed to eating healthy food consistently is another challenge altogether, even if you're not worried about acne) and frankly I enjoy eating healthy now.

Not sure where you got this 80% statistic from. Thinking back to my high school days, I'm thinking that in my circle of 15 or so males and a few females, me and one other male were the only ones with acne. Everyone else had clear skin. That's certainly less than 80%.

There are plenty of women and men ages 30 and up that still battle with acne. If you don't fix the root problem, you won't fix your acne. Acne doesn't just magically go away one day because your body decides "oh, you're 25 years old now? No more acne for you!"

I'm afraid biology isn't so merciful.

i go the stats from googling the words "acne stats". actually the first link is from american academy of dermatology "Nearly 85 percent of all people have acne at some point in their lives"

but i wrote it from acne-resource . org

although i should have taken the time and searched it on wikipedia. let me do it now.

ok, so type "acne wiki" and this comes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acne_vulgaris "Acne occurs most commonly during adolescence, affecting an estimated 80-90% of teenagers in the Western world."

like i said people are not scientists and they still make their acne go away. like i said, the reasons hey tell are mind buggling (like, "i got rid of acne by flossing"). oh don't tell me arguments on this because i exhausted my dentist a couple months ago, scaning my teeth, and assured me i have nothing left.

chunkylard, did it ever occured to you that in some other parts of this world NO ONE thinks of a connection between acne and diet? in my country, EVERYONE sees a connection between acne and sex-life. or better lack of sex-life, or wrong type of sex-life. i have some friends that got rid of acne in their ~19y some by using tea tree, andlike i mentioned clay masks and other stuff like this, urine, etc. they never thought about diet, i often speak to them about this. now, while they do have some (very minor) effect, they are complete jokes (to me. of course i tried them all). the only common thing is their age range (before 25y).

oh, on the sex thing, i had a lot of sex around 22-24y, (without a condom. some people, actually a doctor-friend told me sex parts could potentially interact and exchange or regulate hormons. crap imo.)and it did not help a bit, but there could be a connection with feeling agitated/unsettled and acne, (not necessarily sex could repair).

why i am here on this forum? because it's a forum, where we have the privilege to share what worked or didn't work in treating acne. i would gladly have left this topic alone, or even promote it - taken it seriously if the guy was older.

i put my whole trust in saw palmetto, because a guy said it was his solution, so i wasted my energy and money on this when i think the guy was a youngster also. i saw that there are more mature people on this topic, and taking it seriously, and i ust wanted to remind them, or present them these stats, so that they have a more complete picture.

i'm not speaking without knowing or even tested on myself about different theories. like, in the no oils diet case, i shut up, although i always ran from oil as i could, i did ate wallnuts and did put a small drop of oil, but only after the food got less hot. anyway i'm not entitled to comment on that until i don't try it. you see there are soo many wrong theories out there that actually practically work for people, but they are dead wrong. there are other explanations why their false theories work which they don't see.

i actually wanted to leave this site(not just subforum) a couple of weeks ago, but of course i check from time to time for the magic "i found out how acne can be treated" which would be a complete elegant theory that explains everything, and which you can draw from any personal specifics you need.

In my experience you can outgrow of acne without doing any change in your diet/life. For the past 10 years I have eaten the same, really healthy, nothing processed etc. Just same food ingredients the whole ten years and five years ago my forehead and nose suddenly got clear, I don't even have to wash my forehead or nose with cleanser and those parts stay clear. Maybe this same thing happened to you chunkylard, you just think that it was your diet but like my case proves, your body and hormones change without you doing nothing.

oh and speaking of sex and false theories, i can't blame some of my friends, because i tell them that the fact that acne came when they were sexually aware but still virgins, is a coincidence and a false theory. but again i try and tell them that the fact that they got rid of acne shortly after begining their sex life is also a coincidence. they get stumbled and say "shut up, my girfriend has acne around her periods when i don't give it to her" lol

i'm still trying to explain that that's yet another coincidence. and when they mention our teacher which was mature and unmarried without a boyfriend and full of acne, i still have the guts to explain that's yet another false theory because it's the acne that probably got her isolated/without a partner. but i already pushed the line so far for them that i can't blame them too much.lol

The 80 % stat wasn't really the question. It's the number of adults which s ever increasing as diet, lifestyle & health deteriorates. And they don't exactly do a census.. Or if they did, they didn't include me or my siblings. Look at the massive growth in acne products, treatments, spas & estheticians. Also, the stat is 85% get acne at some point in their lives. Many not only don't grow out of acne, they develop it for the first time as adults.

Notice your other stat about teen acne in the western world. In other words, teens eating western diets living western lifestyles with the stress, pollution, pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, and unnatural circadian cycle. Kids today are scheduled all day long. And then stare at LED screens all night.

Couldn't follow the point in the rest of your post. Not real interested in your sex stories. But it makes little difference what people believe. It's simply fact that what & how you eat and other lifestyle/environmental factors affects how your body function and high glycemic, nutritionally void diets lead to the conditions that cause acne.

And yes, of course many people's acne clears after their growth & androgen hormones stabilize enough that they no longer impair desquamation so much that it clogs pores. But diet habits today can keep those hormones elevated.

I also make a ton of bone broth and eat liver. Bone broth contains lots of gelatin that is great for your skin, and liver has basically every vitamin and mineral your body needs to be happy. I still consume a large amount of vegetables. I'm kindof a Jekyll and Hyde veg/carnivore. In the morning and through most of the afternoon, I drink tons of vegetable juice, mostly from carrots, beets, celery, dark leafy greens, but for dinner I also have bone broths, liver, shellfish, and red meat. I don't think I could do without either side, and don't agree with folks that say they can get well with only vegetables or only animal foods.

My skin is 100% clear, and I did not grow out of my acne. I'm 24. If I did not eat healthy, I would have horrible skin again, and am reminded every time I slip up and have a margarita, some pizza, or a glass of milk.

dscully, i tried to get people's attention on having a "succes story" directory/subforum, maybe one day we will, but until then, you could write your recipe in your signature section, or a link to a more detalied post, so you can easily help others. but don't be mad if i write the opposite ) because, i spent to many years on diet (as serious as one could get), and while it does help (even as much as 60%), it's not a solution to me, i mean not alone. it has many factors like how advanced bacteria is, your age, - at 23y i ate very unhealthy but had way better skin than now at 29. back then a good diet would have been enough. and also the type of acne, or acnies one has.

i don't have acne on forehead/cheeks, i don't have any severe cysts (those indeed are directly affected by diet), but the whiteheads on my chin (my nightmare, 4-5 new whiteheads every 4-5hours) were almost completely unrelated to diet (luckily brevoxyl clears me 100%). usually my back shows me diet results (and now i include lifestyle into the term diet), and also a bit of reddish patces around my nose and chin which are always moving (but i'm almost clear of these lately).

I also make a ton of bone broth and eat liver. Bone broth contains lots of gelatin that is great for your skin, and liver has basically every vitamin and mineral your body needs to be happy. I still consume a large amount of vegetables. I'm kindof a Jekyll and Hyde veg/carnivore. In the morning and through most of the afternoon, I drink tons of vegetable juice, mostly from carrots, beets, celery, dark leafy greens, but for dinner I also have bone broths, liver, shellfish, and red meat. I don't think I could do without either side, and don't agree with folks that say they can get well with only vegetables or only animal foods.

 

My skin is 100% clear, and I did not grow out of my acne. I'm 24. If I did not eat healthy, I would have horrible skin again, and am reminded every time I slip up and have a margarita, some pizza, or a glass of milk.

We have a success story thread. Please post to it.