The web is filled with bad acne advice. Q&A sites are full of well-meaning but simplistic advice about how to cure acne. Often how to cure acne questions are answered with put toothpaste on it or use this homemade skin care recipe type of advice. While there\u2019s some truth to such answers and they miss the complexity of acne, and therefor fail to be useful to other than a handful of lucky people.<\/p>\n
The truth is that acne is a very complicated condition. The complex causes vary from genetic sensitivity to hormones to skin irritation. This means that you probably have to do more than apply toothpaste on your skin to get over it. Lucky few will find simple solutions, but the vast majority will have to do more.<\/p>\n
In this post I want to give you an idea of what you have to do to get over acne.<\/p>\n
All acne is hormonal. Because of genetics acne-prone skin is far more sensitive to many hormones. This causes excessive sebum production and skin cell growth and ultimately leads to blocked pores and pimples.<\/p>\n
I talked about this in detail in the hormonal acne<\/a> page. In summary, the hormones responsible for acne are androgens (male sex hormones), insulin and insulin like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). Aside from dangerous prescription drugs there\u2019s not much we can do to androgen levels. But the good news is that insulin and IGF-1 multiply the effect of androgens on the skin, and there\u2019s a lot we can do to insulin and IGF-1 levels.<\/p>\n What you eat can affect your skin, though the diet-acne relationship is not as strong and common as many people claim. How much diet affects the skin varies between people a lot. That\u2019s why I\u2019m not a fan of strict dietary regimens, because often they are useless (in curing acne) and adhering to them causes a lot of stress.<\/p>\n However there are some things that I would recommend for everybody to at least try.<\/p>\n These tips are a good starting point, and probably cover most diet changes you have to do to cure acne.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a good reason to believe gut problems are linked to skin problems, see the gut-skin axis<\/a> page for reason why. That\u2019s why you should make gut healing as part of your acne treatment program. Things like:<\/p>\n Acne is more than skin deep, but it\u2019s also skin deep (if this makes any sense). Because we acne patients for a bit unlucky in the genetic lottery our skin is far more sensitive to hormones. Genes also cause the immune system in the skin to be a bit trigger-happy. It reacts too strongly to bacteria on the skin, and this causes excessive inflammation on the skin.<\/p>\n Luckily we can mitigate these problems with smart use of topical treatments. Topical green tea<\/a> is a fantastic example.<\/p>\n Here are few things to look for:<\/p>\n As you choose your skin care products, keep in mind that they can also contain irritating ingredients<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you want a simple solution, I highly recommend Exposed Skincare. Of all the acne treatments I\u2019ve seen it has by far the best formulation, and that\u2019s why I use it myself.<\/p>\n We already talked about stress earlier in this article. But because stress has such a negative effect on the skin I want to have a dedicated chapter to it. Several studies have demonstrated a clear (causal) link between stress and acne. For example studies on students show more acne during exam periods.<\/p>\n Aside from the indirect effects already talked, stress also has a direct effect on the skin. Studies have shown that Neurotransmitter known as substance P increases sebum production, creates inflammation in the skin, and increases skin cell growth. In other words, it contributes to the three primary causes of acne<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Stress is serious, and you should take it seriously. For many acne patients it\u2019s much better to work on reducing stress than to improve diet.<\/p>\n I know that I covered a lot of issues in this post. And all this may look scary at first glance. But we can\u2019t get over the fact that acne is a complicated condition. That\u2019s why simple cookie-cutter approaches fail.<\/p>\n Acne has both internal and external causes, and that\u2019s why you need to attack it from both sides<\/a>. The things I listed on this page are known factors behind acne. But there are also lots of differences between acne patients. So everything here may not be relevant for you. For example gluten is only a problem for a portion of acne patients. Similarly, there are a lot of people who can eat a lot of sugar with no effect to their skin.<\/p>\n What I have here is not a step-by-step recipe for clear skin (there is no such thing) but a starting point. You have to do little detective work. Start implementing the changes and see what works for you and what doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n I wish I could give you simpler answers, but I\u2019m afraid they don\u2019t exist. So rather than giving you simplistic answers, I prefer to tell you what really works \u2013 even if it takes some work and dedication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The web is filled with bad acne advice. Q&A sites are full of well-meaning but simplistic advice about how to cure acne. Often how to cure acne questions are answered with put toothpaste on it or use this homemade skin care recipe type of advice. While there\u2019s some truth to such answers and they miss … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,38],"tags":[40,51,34,62],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9556,"href":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8643\/revisions\/9556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Skin friendly diet<\/h2>\n
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Gut healing<\/h2>\n
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Topical treatment<\/h2>\n
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Stress management<\/h2>\n
Oh my god! I have to do all that??<\/h2>\n