bryan

You've been "popping", or you've been "POOPING"??

I like plain old "vitamin C" from any store, which is simple and inexpensive. An example is ordinary vitamin C tablets, like I get from my local HEB supermarket!

I don't recommend the product called "Ester C", which is a rip-off. Just use ordinary ascorbic acid tablets, which are easily and inexpensively available in numerous stores.

Yeah, I know. You'd be surprised how many times I've used that same joke on people who type "diary" when they meant to type "dairy"! By the way, I'll mention something else here which I've always found very peculiar: the surprising number of people who use the term "dairy" in this context! Why would anybody say something like "eating dairy can cause acne", instead of simply saying "drinking milk can cause acne"?? It sounds really hillbilly to use the word "dairy" in that context!

No no no, writing in your daily diary is perfectly okay! It won't cause a problem!

Only if you use wash your face with chemicals which have an effect on sebaceous glands, like androgens and/or estrogens.

Dr. Albert M. Kligman MD, PhD, was probably the most famous name in the entire history of dermatology (he died a year or two ago). You can find a large quantity of studies by Kligman on PubMed, having to do with anything about dermatology. You can find lots and lots of references to what Kligman said in articles and studies that were't even authored by him. One of the most important things Kligman did, and something which I've referenced an ENORMOUS number of times, is the early work he did i

First of all, I have no idea who "Whitmore" is. Second of all, I'm astonished that even though you've apparently been a member here since March of last year, you haven't run across any of the posts I've made challenging the "feedback" theory of sebaceous glands! I've done that, oh, maybe HUNDREDS of times here on acne.org! Another thing you (or your source) are vague about is the issue of "drying out your skin". You don't bother to specify whether you're talking about being "dry" from a lack

Baloney! I don't think there's any kind of "feedback" system that the skin uses to control how much sebum it makes.

Something I should add here, that I forgot to mention in my previous posts: when you apply an oily substance from a bottle that you bought at a drugstore (a "moisturizer", in other words), you're probably applying GRAM quantities of that substance, by applying it to your face, and rubbing it in nicely. But sebum is something that occurs in MILLIGRAM quantitites, or possibly even MICROGRAM quantities, depending on the exact body location. It shouldn't be surprising to anybody that sebum doesn'

It doesn't really surprise me very much that a doctor (especially just a general practitioner) would say something like that. That strikes me as something a doctor would say, just to make a person feel better: "Don't worry about your oily skin, it means fewer wrinkles as you age!" I'm not really saying that sebum on the surface of the skin has no effect at all on moisture retention, just not nearly as much as people think. For the umpteenth time now, I've talked about Kligman's experiment w

I think you're conflating three entirely separate things: how much sebum a person makes, how much moisture is in his skin, and how many wrinkles he has!

Not to any significant extent. Another of the famous studies by Kligman which I've talked about is the one where he found that you have to apply about TEN TIMES the normal amount of sebum onto a person's face (and, I might add, the face already produces a great deal of sebum) before there's even a noticeable amount of extra water retention. The fact that young, prepubertal children aren't exactly famous for having moisture-dry skin, and the fact that you have to apply ENORMOUS amounts of sebum

Huh?? You mean OIL-dry, or WATER-dry??? What do you mean by "extreme dryness"? Do you mean OIL-dryness, or WATER-dryness?? You do know, don't you, that the palms of the hand and the soles of the feet don't even HAVE sebaceous glands? They don't secrete sebum at all.

If sebum is just a barrier to protect the skin from environmental damage, then why does the amount that's excreted across the body vary so hugely?? The amount produced on the face is VAST, as we all know, while the amount on other parts of the body like the feet, legs, hands, and arms is almost vanishingly LOW, by comparison. How do you explain that?