Category: acne

A reader writes:

I suffered from moderate acne as a teen, which continued well into my adult years. In my early forties, I sought help from a dermatologist, hoping that progress had been made since my teenage experience which included tetracycline and sunlamp therapy to induce drying and peeling. I was disappointed to have this doctor recommend basically the same treatment twenty five years later. I declined.

Fortunately, a friend recommended drinking lots of water, and I began doing so, attempting to drink eight glasses a day. This was in December. The acne actually got worse . . . but I received a Brita water filter pitcher for Christmas and began drinking filtered water. Within a week my skin was totally clear, and remained so with minimal exception thereafter, even when my water consumption waned over the years. I was delighted and grateful to have found such a simple and healthy solution, and annoyed that no doctor had even suggested it.

But about 15 years later — about a year ago — I began to experience significant breakouts again, this time confined largely to my nose. I assumed that I needed to simply up my water intake again. This time it didn’t help. Maybe the filter was overdue for a change, I thought (we’d long since upgraded to a reverse osmosis filter), so I had it changed but still no improvement in my skin.

I began cutting out various foods, eggs, coconut oil, whey protein, things I was eating lots of, thinking maybe I’d developed a sensitivity. Nothing worked, although I did see immediate improvement when visiting family in the states, which made me wonder if it was the change in the water. So  back home I tried to drink bottled water or club soda exclusively and it seemed to help maybe slightly.

I continued to search for a more complete solution. While perusing several online blogs devoted to acne treatment, I read a comment from a self-described longtime sufferer who claimed to have recently discovered a cure for his acne — milk thistle and NAC [n-acetyl-cysteine]. I got some milk thistle, took a few capsules a day for maybe three days, and voila, clear skin again. I never had reason to add NAC since the milk thistle worked so well.

I have reduced water consumption to normal levels (meaning I try to drink several glasses daily but don’t bother to track), take a few milk thistle capsules a week (don’t track that either), and only start to get breakouts if I happen to miss taking any for about a month, which I did just recently over the holidays. I still don’t know what causes the acne, and I don’t know why the milk thistle “cures” it, but it works wonderfully for me.

Here is more evidence for the effectiveness of milk thistle for acne.

Recently I posted that my work resembles the work of commented:

Your work and discoveries, just like Hong’s, are very inspirational. . . . They send a message that every individual has the potential to contribute something to society even with no or limited budget.

This hadn’t occurred to me. It should have. I could have made this point in talks, for example.  Beyond the obvious point, David was saying that the more your personal science could help others, the more likely you would be to do it. The prospect of helping yourself and others will surely be stronger motivation than the prospect of helping only yourself.

How can one person’s personal science help others? This doesn’t happen automatically, it has to be arranged. My Journal of Personal Science and the Make Yourself Healthy Meetup group are two ways of facilitating this. What about other ways?

David’s comment made me think of another way: Acne Club, that is, a high school club for people with acne. The purpose of the club is to promote personal science about acne. Members of the club try to find the causes of their acne, partly by self-experimentation. They meet to share results and ideas (e.g., treatments to try, how to measure acne) and encourage each other. The discovery of two groups of “primitive” people who have no acne suggests that all acne has environmental causes. If a high school group could identify even one environmental cause, it would be a huge contribution to human well-being — especially the well-being of high-school students. I think this is quite possible.

I had acne as a teenager. If you start such a club, I would be happy to help you however I can. For example, I could give advice about measurement and experimental design and could publicize what you learn.

Looking around for evidence connecting glutathione level and acne (it has been proposed that low glutathione causes acne), I found this at acne.org, from a 20-year-old woman:

As a personal choice research and viewing other people’s experiences with supplements is safer than taking my doctor’s advice. My doctor insisted I go on the pill, insisted I get on antibiotics [a common prescription for acne], insisted nothing was wrong with me and even did a hormonal test…said I was “healthy and normal” and to leave the office because my hormones were normal as well as everything from the liver onwards. I stared at him and told him he was wrong: 1. hormone tests will lie if I’m on the pill and 2. I have acne, never had it before in my life and it came about too fast … If acne is a symptom then something is wrong. I personally don’t trust doctors because they generalize [too much] and from personal experiences [where] I’ve been laughed at and dismissed and even told “leaky gut doesn’t exist”. Personal research goes a long way and it’s so great to have communities like this where everyone can help each other out.

This is personal science in the sense of trying to learn from other people’s data. What’s interesting is that she says this. Nobody forced her to. She isn’t try to sell something or look good. Her discovery of the power of “research and viewing other people’s experiences” — better than trusting a doctor — (a) interests her and (b) she thinks will interest acne.org readers. Her own experience certainly supports what she says.

Long ago, it was discovered that the Earth is round. Before the discovery, nobody said that. After the discovery, people discussed it for a while (“Have you heard? The Earth is round.”), maybe a few hundred years. When knowledge of the Earth’s roundness became part of everyone’s belief system, people stopped discussing it.

In other words, this comment suggests that a new truth is coming into being. Her experience is the same as mine with regard to acne: Can’t trust what a doctor says. My dermatologist prescribed two medicines. Studying myself showed that only one of them worked, a possibility my dermatologist seemed to have never considered.

A reader of this blog named Tony Mach explains how he figured out that his acne was caused by pasteurized dairy products:

In summer 2010 my health problems got noticeably worse (unrefreshing sleep, strange pains, strange sensations in the skin and other stuff I don’t want to share here ), and I had to do something. Furthermore I was gaining weight,  so I was suspecting something along the lines of diabetes or other metabolic problem.

As I was looking into dietary changes, I stumbled over Wolfgang Lutz’s and Robert Atkins’ work. Being an engineer by training, I figured that if blood sugar might be the problem (which, as it turned out, wasn’t the case for me), then reducing carbs might be a solution (stop fueling the problematic sub-system) – so both Lutz and Atkins appealed to me. I thought let’s give it a try. I was a bit frightened about such an radical change of diet – you read all kind of BS – but hey, I felt like I was going to die anyway. Continue reading “Acne Caused By Pasteurized Dairy: How One Person Figured It Out”