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A Zinc-Less Zinc Regimen For Adults: Draft 5

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(@databased)

Posted : 02/28/2014 2:13 pm

 

Revised due to: caffeine's effect on melatonin, and folate's ability to influence light-induced melatonin suppression. Morning EGCG + caffeine along with moving folate intake to evening is about the only significant trick I've discovered in the last couple of years.

Recap:

Zinc is one of the longest-studied nutrients that correlates with statistically significantly less acne. Some months years 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. [Well, I have to disagree with that. A fast food diet will be low in zinc. And "organic" foods contain zinc in proportion to how much zinc the farmer added to the soil, not necessarily related to how much we evolved to get.] If I could remedy my deficiency in "X", then I should be able to be acne-free without taking any zinc. [Maybe, but a small amount of zinc could still be plausibly required if you ain't getting it from diet. For males, ejaculation also loses you a chunk of zinc, which could be a factor.]

 

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.

[NEW] I kept searching for a compelling acne-relevant effect of sunlight on skin without particular satisfaction, but have finally found one that seems to have a detectable effect for me. UV may be degrading folic acid in the blood. The pineal gland burns folic acid to make melatonin, so that could be a secondary method by which bright summer sunlight helps keep melatonin shut down during the day. It is possible that EGCG, an ingredient of green tea, interferes with folic acid. So having EGCG in the morning and trying to push folate consumption (for me, a folic acid pill) to evening could help restore the melatonin cycle you would get if you lived naked in the equatorial sun all day.

 

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.
  • Do get caffeine first thing in the morning (not after noon!); it helps keep melatonin from decaying to other forms.
  • If you did not get that morning caffeine from green tea, take a single morning EGCG pill, in the hopes of surpressing daytime levels of folate.
  • Try to postpone folate-rich foods until evening.
  • Spend all day in outdoor light without sunglasses (or prescription glasses!) 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.

[NEW]

OK, I can't really arrange to have a natural relationship with light, there must be a pill to fix it!

If you said you were going to kill my dog if I didn't cure your acne with pills, this is what I would do, based on my experience of what pills are most relevant. And I would still assure you all efforts to manage your relationship with sleep/light will make the pills work better. This is for a 200lb male, so if you're a 100lb female, please adjust the dosages down. And as always, this is hypothetical, not medical advice, consult a doctor before taking pills of any kind.

  • 50mg zinc (any form but sulfate) twice daily with meals.
  • B vitamins are the fuel for some other molecules (besides ZSOD) that can help mop up superoxide anions that trigger the acne autoimmune response. Slam them only in the evening (I would shoot for, say, after 3pm but before 7pm assuming a bedtime of 10-11pm): 1mg folic acid, 500mg niacinamide, and one B-50 pill. Yep, that's a lot. You will by-God not be short of Vitamin B.
  • One morning EGCG pill with your morning caffeine. I really would not try upping the dose on that.
  • 200mg alpha lipoic acid, twice daily with meals. To make the red marks go away faster.
  • One big-ole fish oil pill, twice daily with meals. Your choice of dose/brand (but fish oil is not something I would skimp on price for; don't want a dose of mercury). I don't see fish oil as a highly effective acne treatment directly, but it does seem to reliably help me sleep better, which means it can indirectly influence my acne.
  • One baby aspirin, in hopes of reacting with the fish oil to create resolvins to shut down inflammation. WARNING: aspirin can kill you, despite the innocent sounding "baby" in the name. Consult a doctor.
  • Take one exercise pill daily. Oh, crap. Exercise doesn't come in a pill. But it absolutely can help people sleep better, so if you can exercise at least once a day, prefereably outdoors with your eyes naked to the sky, that would be a plus.
  • Selenium? Meh, yeah, maybe for some people, not much. It's really not hard to harm yourself with excess selenium, so, yikes. You could just eat a Brazil nut a couple of times a week. Selenium is relevant in moving zinc around, so I suppose it's possible there would be some people for whom a tiny dab of selenium would work magic. Make sure somebody hasn't already stuffed some into some pill you're already taking.
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MemberMember
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(@michelle-reece)

Posted : 02/28/2014 2:32 pm

EGCG is not very bioavailable. I'm not sure if alpha lipoic acid is bioavailable, either.

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MemberMember
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(@mrsrobinson)

Posted : 02/28/2014 6:06 pm

I like it, very fact based (no pun intended)....everytime I try zinc, I break out....so I've just avoided it

I've never wanted to ride through the initial breakout....I take it that never happened with you and you jumped right in with 100 mg a zinc a day? is is safe to keep at that level indefinitely?

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MemberMember
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(@databased)

Posted : 03/01/2014 9:28 am

I like it, very fact based (no pun intended)....everytime I try zinc, I break out....so I've just avoided it

I've never wanted to ride through the initial breakout....I take it that never happened with you and you jumped right in with 100 mg a zinc a day? is is safe to keep at that level indefinitely?

Never had zinc worsen acne. Never seen a zinc study that mentioned any initial increase in acne.

YMMV, obviously.

Don't know of any good studies trying to explore the safety of zinc. It would presumably

depend on how much other zinc you're getting from diet, as well. IIRC, 100mg/day has been

used in a year-long study of elderly adults.

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MemberMember
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(@databased)

Posted : 03/01/2014 10:08 am

EGCG is not very bioavailable. I'm not sure if alpha lipoic acid is bioavailable, either.

ALA is routinely prescribed for neuropathy. If it's not bioavailable enough to cause effects, no one has proven that.

They do often use even larger doses, such as 600mg/day. In mice, ALA was interestingly ineffective

when applied topically to reduce skin inflammation, but effective when delivered via feeding.

There's a fairly large research effort devoted to EGCG; apparently a large number of researchers do not

doubt it has effects in humans. The pill linked to is equivalent to about 3 cups of green tea.

If, as is currently proposed by researchers, its mechanism is by inhibiting

a folate enzyme, then it requires not so many EGCG molecules, since it's acting on the switch that controls

conversion of folate, not attempting to act on the folate molecules itself.

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MemberMember
1
(@danthenewworld)

Posted : 03/01/2014 10:11 am

i gave it a read yesterday, was very excited. a few things i want to point out:

- some meats are very hormonal > can f you up hormonally really bad. i explode after eating "industrial" chicken. same for sweet-water farmed fish. they don't have to inject hormones into the chicken's wings, it's the stuff in the food they give them. this might explain why a meat diet doesn't improve acne.

- pesticides/xenoestrogens found on plants, and the high copper- low zinc plants have might explain why i didn't improved my acne in my times of almost veganism.

-the sun works great for acne in "phase 1" but after that comes "phase 2" which gives you acne. if it's just the fact that's drying/damaging the skin and this requires more sebum < this can be controlled

- i had, and will have a few weeks in a row where i would sleep when the sun goes down, without much result, but while the food diet was healthy, i can't remember if it incorporated zinc (from food) or it was unacceptably copper balanced

- the rest is great stuff, which i want to test

great work

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MemberMember
39
(@michelle-reece)

Posted : 03/01/2014 5:45 pm

EGCG is not very bioavailable. I'm not sure if alpha lipoic acid is bioavailable, either.

ALA is routinely prescribed for neuropathy. If it's not bioavailable enough to cause effects, no one has proven that.

They do often use even larger doses, such as 600mg/day. In mice, ALA was interestingly ineffective

when applied topically to reduce skin inflammation, but effective when delivered via feeding.

There's a fairly large research effort devoted to EGCG; apparently a large number of researchers do not

doubt it has effects in humans. The pill linked to is equivalent to about 3 cups of green tea.

If, as is currently proposed by researchers, its mechanism is by inhibiting

a folate enzyme, then it requires not so many EGCG molecules, since it's acting on the switch that controls

conversion of folate, not attempting to act on the folate molecules itself.

ALA is approved in Germany, but not in the U.S. Edit: I came across a meta-analysis that states: "It is unclear if the significant improvements seen after 3“5 weeks of oral administration at a dosage of >600x2009.gifmg/day are clinically relevant" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3272801/

Getting EGCG OTC to do what you want is a little difficult. EGCG oxidizes when contact in the air, and it gets deactivated when in the intestines. A lot of the EGCG doesn't get to the blood.

I'm estimating it would take at least 5 cups a day to have some effect. I'm taking the "formulation" problems and lack of bioavailability into account.

The pills would have to be microencapsulated to "survive" the stomach. Acidic pH would deactivate the EGCG.

However, most of the time drinking green tea wouldn't be problematic health-wise. There are a few contraindications, of course, but there's nothing inherently wrong with drinking green tea. I'm just pointing out that we have to be realistic on its downsides and effects.

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MemberMember
2
(@databased)

Posted : 03/03/2014 4:32 pm

i gave it a read yesterday, was very excited. a few things i want to point out:

- some meats are very hormonal > can f you up hormonally really bad. i explode after eating "industrial" chicken. same for sweet-water farmed fish. they don't have to inject hormones into the chicken's wings, it's the stuff in the food they give them. this might explain why a meat diet doesn't improve acne.

- pesticides/xenoestrogens found on plants, and the high copper- low zinc plants have might explain why i didn't improved my acne in my times of almost veganism.

-the sun works great for acne in "phase 1" but after that comes "phase 2" which gives you acne. if it's just the fact that's drying/damaging the skin and this requires more sebum < this can be controlled

- i had, and will have a few weeks in a row where i would sleep when the sun goes down, without much result, but while the food diet was healthy, i can't remember if it incorporated zinc (from food) or it was unacceptably copper balanced

- the rest is great stuff, which i want to test

great work

EGCG is not very bioavailable. I'm not sure if alpha lipoic acid is bioavailable, either.

ALA is routinely prescribed for neuropathy. If it's not bioavailable enough to cause effects, no one has proven that.

They do often use even larger doses, such as 600mg/day. In mice, ALA was interestingly ineffective

when applied topically to reduce skin inflammation, but effective when delivered via feeding.

There's a fairly large research effort devoted to EGCG; apparently a large number of researchers do not

doubt it has effects in humans. The pill linked to is equivalent to about 3 cups of green tea.

If, as is currently proposed by researchers, its mechanism is by inhibiting

a folate enzyme, then it requires not so many EGCG molecules, since it's acting on the switch that controls

conversion of folate, not attempting to act on the folate molecules itself.

ALA is approved in Germany, but not in the U.S. Edit: I came across a meta-analysis that states: "It is unclear if the significant improvements seen after 3“5 weeks of oral administration at a dosage of >600x2009.gifmg/day are clinically relevant" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3272801/

Getting EGCG OTC to do what you want is a little difficult. EGCG oxidizes when contact in the air, and it gets deactivated when in the intestines. A lot of the EGCG doesn't get to the blood.

I'm estimating it would take at least 5 cups a day to have some effect. I'm taking the "formulation" problems and lack of bioavailability into account.

The pills would have to be microencapsulated to "survive" the stomach. Acidic pH would deactivate the EGCG.

However, most of the time drinking green tea wouldn't be problematic health-wise. There are a few contraindications, of course, but there's nothing inherently wrong with drinking green tea. I'm just pointing out that we have to be realistic on its downsides and effects.

I pointed out the widespread prescription of ALA for neuropathy to indicate how shocking it would be if it were not absorbed. It really doesn't matter what effect it has on neuropathy when your goal is an effect on speeding the elimination of red marks. The pharmacokinetics of ALA were established at least 20 years ago and it is well-absorbed, as you would expect given the nature of the molecule. It's a really easy experiment to perform, which I've done many times. $20 for a bottle and if you don't see faster skin healing, simply don't buy any more. Works for me. YMMV, but only costs $20 to try, far less than many other commercial remedies for getting rid of those red marks.

How do you estimate what quantity of green tea is required to have an effect if you don't know the precise mechanism of the effect? By what formula did you arrive at "5" rather than "3" or "1.67"? How were researchers able to measure the pharmacokinetics of EGCG so easily if it's terribly difficult to digest? Finally, why did researchers find pure EGCG actually produced more consistent pharmacokinetics than green tea if it were so troublesome to digest as you propose? Do you know of any study showing that popping an EGCG pill fails to produce a measurable rise in serum levels?

- some meats are very hormonal

I don't know what "hormonal" means when used as an adjective. A hormone is simply a molecule that transmits information from one part of the body to another. In my theory of acne, the only important hormone is melatonin. YMMV. For me, I've seen no detectable variation in symptoms from type of meat. OTOH, you do need to successfully digest significant amounts of tryptophan for the pineal gland to make melatonin, and I suspect that contributes to vegetarianism being no cure for acne.

- i had, and will have a few weeks in a row where i would sleep when the sun goes down, without much result,

IME, daytime exposure of sunlight to the retina is by far the most significant contributor to suppressing acne (which is part of why I believe failure to suppress daytime melatonin form the pineal gland is a primary factor in the disease). If I can have my naked eyes in the sun for a 12-hour day, then I have to work pretty hard to have acne (stay up til 2am, eat lots of ice cream, etc.). There was a study of one of the sunniest cities in the U.S. that found the average sunlight exposure was less than an hour per day.

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MemberMember
39
(@michelle-reece)

Posted : 03/03/2014 7:10 pm

I pointed out the widespread prescription of ALA for neuropathy to indicate how shocking it would be if it were not absorbed. It really doesn't matter what effect it has on neuropathy when your goal is an effect on speeding the elimination of red marks. The pharmacokinetics of ALA were established at least 20 years ago and it is well-absorbed, as you would expect given the nature of the molecule. It's a really easy experiment to perform, which I've done many times. $20 for a bottle and if you don't see faster skin healing, simply don't buy any more. Works for me. YMMV, but only costs $20 to try, far less than many other commercial remedies for getting rid of those red marks.

How do you estimate what quantity of green tea is required to have an effect if you don't know the precise mechanism of the effect? By what formula did you arrive at "5" rather than "3" or "1.67"? How were researchers able to measure the pharmacokinetics of EGCG so easily if it's terribly difficult to digest? Finally, why did researchers find pure EGCG actually produced more consistent pharmacokinetics than green tea if it were so troublesome to digest as you propose? Do you know of any study showing that popping an EGCG pill fails to produce a measurable rise in serum levels?

I hope the quoting is now working properly...

The ALA for neuropathy might be widespread for where you live, but it's not prescribed in my area. I have a few relatives who have diabetes and diabetic neuropathy (runs in the family, unfortunately), and my father was told to not take ALA for his neuropathy, also because there's not enough evidence to support it. I don't know for sure, but it seems like it's not prescribed/recommended across the U.S, and my Google searches show that most recommendations for ALA pill regimens came from alternative medicine websites. Bioavailiability is largely determined how you formulate it and what you formulate it with. A quick PubMed search revealed different formulations and ways of determining and improving bioavailability (oral dose, that is.)

I'm basing my guess on 5 cups because of the average EGCG content in a cup, and how much EGCG used in the studies.

Sources/studies: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3189735/, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20083179, http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8976471, http://jn.nutrition.org/content/141/6/1202.short, http://books.google.com/books?id=JhYxe_dRZYAC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=average+egcg+per+cup&source=bl&ots=BoOBfiZDcn&sig=YKTaMmphkT8jmcC2jAHLvMrYiMc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-RgVU8-eIKGIyAGC-4CQDg&ved=0CGEQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=average%20egcg%20per%20cup&f=false [Note: sources vary on this], http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/prevention/tea, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743597902425 [Note that 10 Japanese cups = 5 "American" cups.]

The problem with the studies vs. real life is that in the former the EGCG was optimized for bioavailability. Most of the OTC teas aren't. EGCG content can vary due to individual plants, species, what it's mixed with, storage conditions and preparation/time.

Edits for clarity and spelling.

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MemberMember
0
(@baloo)

Posted : 03/09/2014 10:01 pm

Whoa, it's databased.

Question: using the alternative lazy-man's no-skylight method you outlined at the bottom of your post, can you still have sugar / carbs / dairy and not break out, or do you find you need skylight to avoid malabsorption of those things, and thus avoid acne? Or is carb malabsorption tied to digestive upset rather than acne? And the acne is caused by the carbs competing w/ absorption of protein/tryptophan or something?

And have you really been sitting outside all day all these years? Along w/ using your indoor light setup in cold months?

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(@mimij67)

Posted : 05/05/2014 12:19 pm

Appreciate your good research. I am on a gut healing protocol and part of my tx involves erradicating systemic fungal candida. Anyone that has taken even one antibiotic pill has converted normal yeast into its fungal form and sent it into the blood stream where it travels all over the body (see Dr. Jeffrey McCombs work on candida and his 1 hour presentation) Fungal candida and low zinc are closely linked. Sugar feeds fungal candida. So there is a lot of gut flora balancing that needs to be done to influence zinc absorbtion and distribution. Poor quality gut flora will influence whether sebum contains oleic acid or linoleic acid (linoleic acid allows for sebum to be flow-y and not sticky). I think for some if they want to influence zinc levels they need to look at wether their SAD diet is contributing to candida which influences zinc. Also the old style candida diets with severe carb restriction not as effective. Some carbs good otherwise the yeast will feed on a body in a ketogenic status. So look at Perfect Health Diet or McCombs diet that allow safe carbs and some fruits.

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