I’m just curious.. you hear so many things about clearing skin with diet. Some say dairy, some say gluten. Does anyone know any real research on of all this and have the best advice?
It seems to be individual. If you have a problem with soy, for example, and your make up has soy in it, skin problems can happen.
Time outside in clean air helps for me. When I seriously cut back on sugar, that helped a lot.
Skin problems can even indicate a deficiency. It’s so hard to say for sure what’s causing troublesome skin for any one person. There are so many unknowns.
At the root, our skin is also an excretory organ, hence the sweat.
But when our other excretory organs, our bowels and kidneys need help, our skin can pitch in. So poor gut health and dehydration play a significant role for some of the issues in skin health, like cystic acne.
Eliminating dairy or gluten are recommendations that hope to lessen the load on our gut while it heals. A high fiber diet with a variety of fruits and vegetables across the rainbow, hydration with sufficient electrolytes, a good quality probiotic from food or supplement, exercise and good stress management are the other top habits that affect skin health. Everything we eat, or don’t eat, play a role in skin health to be honest.
It is very individual to be honest. There are overall guidelines, but there is no guarantee that it will help you. And also it takes weeks/months at best to figure out which product causes acne. Personally, I have cut on pork, chocolate and fat diary. I have breakouts from time to time when I eat some shitty food, but it is much better than it was.
41f here and just putting it out there that I haven’t had acne of any kind for going on at least 3 months now ever since I started drinking 64 oz of tap water mixed with an electrolyte powder mix called HydroMate (about the only way I can actually drink the tap water here and in such amount) plus Benefiber. I usually get it cystic and otherwise right before my period would start and it’s been nothing nada since doing that. I’m quite amazed tbh as I’ve never been acne free until now.
Generally I would avoid inflammatory foods like processed sugar and meat and even dairy, although some people do not have problems with it, many do. I personally get acne from it.
Drink a lot of water and eat veggies (polyphenols). You can do extended fasting to make your body burn some old cells in your face, this will make it look a bit slimmer. Microneedleing works because it activates the healing abilities in your skin. Hyaluronic Acid has also been proven to improve skin condition.
You may have some degree of intolerance to some common allergens. An elimination diet(FODMAPS for exemple) and slow reintroduction of foods, one by one, will show you the effects of said foods on your body.
Additionally, for the skin, mega dosing vitamin A has shown to have a positive effect to some people.
As others have said, very individual. I know that my trigger foods are caffeine and chocolate. I do feel like my skin is better when I consume large amounts of berries (specifically blueberries) and dark leafy greens, essentially foods with a high density of micronutrients.
I don’t know of any real research on this stuff, but I haven’t looked, as it seems like research into something like this would be incredibly complicated, given the many additives in our foods, as well as interactions between various foods, etc., and then attempting to isolate effects of diet from other possible variables that may interact with this stuff, such as prescription medications, antibiotics, and other lifestyle factors, such as how sedentary one is, exposure to various forms of pollution…
But, here’s what worked for me if you’re interested in some n=1 research:
Hope this helps!!
Yes, for sure food makes a difference. Everyone is individual to what their inflammatories are. I get the MRT test done every few years. Also, you inflammatories can change. For example, I was not able to have chocolate when I was first tested, few years later I was and still able to. It’s been 3 years since I took the test and was thinking of taking it this year to see what changed.
Pulling dairy and sugar out, and getting my vitamin D levels up, legit turned my skin from a deep acne mess into the clearest skin I have seen in my life. I read about casein protein being inflammatory for some folks, and sugar messing with skin by inflaming the microbiome by feeding pathogens, but that was years ago. I haven’t followed up to see if that research was since disproven or changed. But the results have been substantial and lasting. It’s pretty wild.
High sugar and high fat foods.Anything highly acidic, frequently eaten.
All of these things require them to be a major/main part of your diet, not just sometimes things.
Dairy does seem to be pretty commonly linked.
Overeating calories is also pretty strongly linked with acne, but also that could be due to overeating diets typically being high fat and sugar.