{"id":267,"date":"2012-06-25T05:33:22","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T05:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/?p=267"},"modified":"2012-06-25T05:33:22","modified_gmt":"2012-06-25T05:33:22","slug":"i-break-out-every-day-why-my-diet-isnt-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/i-break-out-every-day-why-my-diet-isnt-working\/","title":{"rendered":"I Break Out Every Day? Why My Diet Isn\u2019t Working?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every now and then I see a question where some acne patient laments their lack of success despite following healthy diet. Understandably the person is confused. They\u2019ve been told how diet causes acne and they follow the diet that should get them clear to the tee. And yet results are wanting.<\/p>\n

I wanted to address this topic because I see it often and it can be very harmful to the person. The diet itself often causes some stress, and the lack of results may you feel like a failure (i.e. why don\u2019t I get results when others are so successful? What\u2019s wrong with me?).<\/p>\n

I think there are 3 reasons for this: just plain bad advice, ignoring other important acne causes, and possibly the diet itself. In this post I\u2019ll talk about these in more detail and hopefully restore some sanity to the situation.<\/p>\n

Propagation of bad information<\/h2>\n

The Internet revolutionized communication. Now anyone can voice their opinions for the entire world to see. Unfortunately this revolution comes with a downside. Now everybody and their uncle has a blog where they voice their dietary \u2018truths\u2019 and secrets they don\u2019t want you to know about.<\/p>\n

Making sense of all the conflicting claims is not easy, especially since many of them seemingly make sense. It takes a decent understanding of how the human body works before you can separate truth from fiction. You also have to be able to willing to dive into the scientific medical literature for answers.<\/p>\n

So we end up with this mess where thousands of well-meaning bloggers spread highly dubious \u2018truths\u2019 about acne. Anything from Candida to congested liver to lack of urine on the face are touted as causes. The solutions vary but often include very strict diets and various cleanses.<\/p>\n

These websites fall into the 50% good advice, 50% bad advice and 100% horrible reasoning <\/em>category. They have enough good advice that some people get results. These are then touted as success stories and proof. But because of bad reasoning and not really understanding the pathophysiology of acne they 1) overpromise what diet can deliver, 2) ignore major causes of acne, and 3) recommend diets that are unnecessarily strict and impractical, which often causes a lot of stress to people.<\/p>\n

Diet is not a be-all-end-all solution to acne<\/h2>\n

Diet is just part of the puzzle. Yes, diet can affect acne and studies show that certain dietary changes reduce acne. But none of these studies actually shows really great results. If my memory serves me correct most studies show 30 to 40% reduction in acne. Not bad, but still long way from completely clear skin.<\/p>\n

These studies really focus only on glycemic index and insulin as factors in acne. If we would tweak them a bit more we would probably get better results. But it still wouldn\u2019t be enough to get majority of people clear.<\/p>\n

So for best results we also need to address the other possible causes of acne, such as:<\/p>\n