Just like my dermatologist told me once, most of the medical world today claim that diet doesn’t affect acne in anyway. A quote from the Journal of the American Medical Association:
“Diet plays no role in acne treatment in most patients…even large amounts of certain foods have not clinically exacerbated acne”
But, is it really so?
Truth is that a substantial number of acne sufferers have reported that their condition seemed to deteriorate when they ate certain types of food and some said that they saw an improvement in their acne condition when they ate certain types of food.
So why do dermatologists continue to insist that diet doesn’t affect acne?
The answer is – Money!
You cannot make money promoting healthy foods, well at least not as much as by promoting drugs and over the counter medications. Doctors everywhere are under huge pressure from pharmaceutical companies to promote their expensive products which create dependency.
And these companies have huge influence on the medical world, after all they sponsor most of the medical schools.
The right kind of diet can’t cure acne by itself but can dramatically reduce its severity. In some cases it can even remove it completely, if the acne was caused by allergic reaction to food. However promoting clear skin diet is not profitable for the drug companies.
Their products will never cure your acne. They aren’t designed to solve the causes of acne, they are designed to combat the external symptoms of a disease. And once you stop administering them, the symptoms reappear, so you always have to buy more and more. That’s what they want, a stable, secure flow of money from your wallet to their pockets.
The statement that diet doesn’t affect acne is a lie!
The theory that diet does not cause acne and acne is an untreatable genetic disorder is based upon two medical researches in 1969 and 1971. These were done to study the possible connection between diet and acne.
The conclusion from the studies was:
“Since acne is a generic disease it cannot be healed, the only way to deal with acne it to suppress the symptoms – inflammation, bacteria, excess of sebum, puss, and redness”.
This is to be done by applying creams, lotions, antibiotics etc.
However, years after the above studies were published, clinical trials and new researches tested the diet – acne link again and found that the studies from 1969 and 1971 had come to the wrong conclusion and were seriously flawed.
The new studies have found that there is a connection between acne and diet. It appears that the wrong kind of food can disrupt hormone balance and affect the process of toxic elimination. Both of which will make your existing acne more severe.
An interesting case, which supports that assertion, is the Kitavan islanders case.
Statistics show that in the US more than 80% of teenagers have some form of acne and 17 million other American suffer from it as well. However in some remote places on earth like the Kitavan islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea none of the locals have even one blemish on their face. They don’t have access to western creams, lotions or drugs, so why don’t at least some of them have acne?
Answer is… diet! The only big difference these people have from westerns is the food they eat.
Sugar the sweet poison
One example of food that can aggravate acne is sugar. Sugar is a 100% pure chemical with no nutritional value, a refined carbohydrate. What happens when you consume any form of refined carbohydrates is it spikes up your blood sugar levels.
To bring those levels down your body secrets insulin and other male hormones. The excess of these hormones overload your liver, so your body reacts by forcing your skin to excrete large amounts of sebum oil (that greasy stuff, that encourages acne prone bacteria to grow, resulting it worsening in your acne).
Another example is milk.
Milk is the single most harmful, mucus generating and acne aggravating food you consume. But after all the commercials and brain washing by the media, promoting drinking milk for strong bones and teeth, how can this be?
Here’s the truth – every sip of milk contains about 60 different hormones, which trigger hyper production of sebum oil, leading to more acne.
If there is one food you choose to remove from your diet for your acne, choose milk. You will see an immediate improvement in your acne condition. And don’t worry about calcium.
Milk is an acidic forming food, so it creates a leeching effect, where calcium is taken away from your bones to counteract its acidity. Milk actually is bad for you bones, as well as your acne. For calcium intake, I suggest you eat nuts, seeds and green vegetables, which are rich in calcium.
When doctors say acne can’t be caused by diet, it’s because they see people who eat certain foods and get acne, then they see other people who eat the same foods and don’t get acne.
What they fail to understand, or don’t want to understand is that acne is caused by multiple factors and diet is just one of them.
Diet alone can’t cause or cure acne, but specific foods can flip some switches in your body which can aggravate or improve your acne condition. Stay away from milk, sugar and other refined carbohydrates, eat more fruits, vegetables and foods that contain unsaturated fats and you will manage to clear you skin from the inside out and significantly reduce your acne!