My english is not the best and this will be long, but totally worth it. Anyways there is a tl dr at the end of the post.
I always told myself that the day I find a way to cure my acne I would share it with other people. Only a personal who suffered severe acne knows how hard your life can be with this problem.
For start I have to advice that I will NOT discuss if this is effective or not, I have to tell you this because I have seen many people in this forum through the years who is more concerned about discuss, that about to find a real cure.
I have tried everything, and with this I mean almost every topical, antibiotics (even accutane), dietsthrough all this years with little or not success.
I have readed so much information in forums, blogs, cientifical papers, etc that i could assure you that not even medical papers are serious in most of cases because they are financed by companies who sells acne trataments.
Ironically, the way I found the cure for my acne was half reading, half drinking a shit load of alcohol while taking roids and having the worst diet in my life.
WHAT?
Yeah, im not kidding.
The past year I started reading a lot of info about the skin acid mantle, and starting a regimen of NO SOAP and cold water helped me a lot. But it wasnt enough.
So far so good, in the summer I was in vacations still following my only water regimen expecting something that happened to me every vacations because for some reason in vacations my acne was always better. I found why.
Usually in vacations I started to go out with my friends every night, drinking like hell ( average 3 liters of wine or more every day) eating the worst foods you can imagine and stopping exercising. In this times I bathed less because I waked up around 14pm and only showered at night before going out ( bathing less helped a lot).
But this last time was too much, I was doing the same that most of summers plus taking oxymetolone and stanozolol, two of the most toxics roids with the worst acne side effects with A LOT of alcohol, drinking an average of 3 liters of cocacola every day and eating mostly fast foods( DO NOT TRY THIS).
And my face was 100% clear.
I told myself, if now Im clear my acne is not going to come back anymore. 2 months later when the vacations ended and I was going to the gym, following a perfect diet and not using roids again my acne came back.
So... whaaaat the actual fuuuuuu...?
It seemed like my body was trolling me, it didnt made sense in any possible way. Well, until I found something.
I was doing my every day research about the skin acid mantle and its ph levels trying to find If there was something that I was not seeing, when I readed in a blog something about that while the skin acid mantle have to be acidic, the body have to be alkaline.
The answer came to me in just a second.
Every time I started drinking tons of alcohol, I started taking also tons of Alikal, a "hangover medicine" selled in my country that comes with a analgesic pill and an anti acid,and most of the anti acid compound was SODIUM BICARCONATE or baking soda, call it like you want.
Baking soda ( do not put this on your face, it can help in short term, but will destroy your skin acid mantle in the long term), is one of the most alkaline things that you can ingest, and whileyou cant change the ph of your body very much, the process that your body uses to regulate itself when you are becoming acidic can, and WILL give you acne.
At the moment that I found this my face was having a very bad break out, so I searched about maximun dosages to know how much baking soda I could take and the result was magic.
I started drinking one glass of water with a half tea spoon of baking soda every 2-3 hours (No, it wasnt the water what cured me, I usually drink tons of water anyways), and in the second day my face started to get better, not new active pimples and the ones that I had were getting smaller, also the redness started to go away and my skin tone better.
By the day 5 my acne was clear, and I mean 100% clear.
It has passed about a month of this, and now im only taking half teaspoon of baking soda 2 times a day and planning to reduce it to one, still following the only water regimen since soap doesnt help me in any way and hey!, wasting less money.
To resume:
TL DR: stop washing your face with soap and hot water, do it only with lukewarm or cold water, you face can get oily and full of dead skin like for 2 weeks but it will get better and you wont need to use soap or cleansers, all the "cloged pores thing" is bullsh*t, if your skin acid mantle is fine, it will kill al the bacterias by itself, you dont need that super antibacterial soap.
Drink a glass of water with half teaspoon of baking soda every 2-3 hours till your acne is gone, then start reducing the doses and see how it gets. Baking soda IS SAFE, this is not even near to the maximun dosages you can take.
I hope this helps you like it helped me, many of my friends who had acne tried this and it worked for them too, for some of them is took some more days but the result was the same.
This is interesting. Weird but interesting. So much so that I'm going to have to try it, not out of desperation or need, but for the sake of experimentation. I'll update my reply whenever I'm done. My concern is safety regarding oral consumption and I'll look more into that.
But anyone that's as curious as me to try this: make sure you're not taking an antibiotic as it interacts with it and take folic acid (or a B-complex) as antacids inhibit folic acid absorption and thus B12 utilization. Also prolonged consumption may lead to long-term health complications, so make sure you consult a doctor before taking this long-term.
I'll update my post whenever I've tried it. Thanks to the OP for sharing his story and I hope it's something I can report is successful.
41 minutes ago, AcneScience said:This is interesting. Weird but interesting. So much so that I'm going to have to try it, not out of desperation or need, but for the sake of experimentation. I'll update my reply whenever I'm done. My concern is safety regarding oral consumption and I'll look more into that.
But anyone that's as curious as me to try this: make sure you're not taking an antibiotic as it interacts with it and take folic acid (or a B-complex) as antacids inhibit folic acid absorption and thus B12 utilization. Also prolonged consumption may lead to long-term health complications, so make sure you consult a doctor before taking this long-term.
I'll update my post whenever I've tried it. Thanks to the OP for sharing his story and I hope it's something I can report is successful.
wtf wait for me. how much u gonna take
I believe it. I had the best skin of my life in college when I was drinking a ton, eating crap & taking pills to cure hangovers.
Fast forward to me living a healthy lifestyle, eating super healthy, exercising regularly, no longer drinking alcohol or caffeine - BOOM acne.
Skin is weird.
My acne is very severe with very painful nodules. I'm hesitant to try this because I've read that a lot of people get better with hcl which is a complete 180 from baking soda. I do admit that hcl hasn't worked too well for me, but I'm still gonna wait before I try this until more people give it a shot.
I lost count on how many days it's been...I'm thinking almost a week maybe...I can tell a difference but I'm also taking a 20$ probiotic, b complex, and L lysine....I want to keep drinking it but all the articles I read said no longer than 2 weeks?? Are u still drinking it?
QuoteI always told myself that the day I find a way to cure my acne I would share it with other people. Only a personal who suffered severe acne knows how hard your life can be with this problem.
Congratulations to this attitude.
QuoteFor start I have to advice that I will NOT discuss if this is effective or not, I have to tell you this because I have seen many people in this forum through the years who is more concerned about discuss, that about to find a real cure.
I do not understand this point, because to find a cure, it obviously is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of treatment.
QuoteThe past year I started reading a lot of info about the skin acid mantle, and starting a regimen of NO SOAP and cold water helped me a lot. But it wasnt enough.
As regards terms: detergents or cleansers include among other things soap and tensids. Soap is alkaline and disrupts the acid mantle. It
has been replaced by tensids. Tensids are supposed to not disrupt the acid mantle, however, they are the real culprits when it comes to acne.
Washing without cleansers therefore helps the skin; I made the same experience. It is not enough because large amounts of tensids reside
in the laundry (washing machines do not even rinse with clear water as far as I know!).
QuoteI was doing my every day research about the skin acid mantle and its ph levels trying to find If there was something that I was not seeing, when I readed in a blog something about that while the skin acid mantle have to be acidic, the body have to be alkaline.
True, but note that promoting alkaline diets belongs to the realms of pseudo-science, as explained here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_diet
http://www.psiram.com/ge/index.php/Basische_Ern¤hrung
Quotethe process that your body uses to regulate itself when you are becoming acidic can, and WILL give you acne.
I doubt this 
On 8/27/2016 at 6:55 PM, Powita said:I started drinking one glass of water with a half tea spoon of baking soda every 2-3 hours (No, it wasnt the water what cured me, I usually drink tons of water anyways), and in the second day my face started to get better, not new active pimples and the ones that I had were getting smaller, also the redness started to go away and my skin tone better.
I would like to warn from drinking large amounts of lye, because it is corrosive and may damage tissue and the stomach, which normally has a very acidic pH.
QuoteTL DR: stop washing your face with soap and hot water, do it only with lukewarm or cold water, you face can get oily and full of dead skin like for 2 weeks but it will get better and you wont need to use soap or cleansers, all the "cloged pores thing" is bullsh*t, if your skin acid mantle is fine, it will kill al the bacterias by itself, you dont need that super antibacterial soap.
Maybe you had no blackheads, clogged pores are indeed the problem. I strongly believe that tensids clog pores, although I have no explanation for it, only evident observations and some hypotheses.
Although I deem it in principle possible that baking soda alleviated your light acne, I do not find it convincing.
When I experimented with food, I noticed that it is very hard to discriminate random fluctuations in acne
from cause and affect. Several times I thought to have found a link between nutrition and acne, where in reality
there just was a coincidence between change of nutrition habits and exposure to tensids. I came to the conclusion
that sufficiently severe acne cannot be healed by proper nutrition.
