Acne Prevention & Control

full story

Early Years of the Disease

At age 13 I experienced a severe case of chicken pox and the acne began immediately thereafter. I had an extreme form of acne, and it remained severe well into my mid 20's. I was among the most severe cases in my high school. Outbreaks came on my face, nose, ears, scalp, neck, shoulders, lower back, upper forearms, chest, and buttocks. In those days I knew of absolutely nothing I could do about it. You were just one of those unfortunates that had it and therefore had to endure the stress, humiliation, and hopelessness. But alas, the experts always said you would obviously grow out of it after your teens. I never did!

The disease at that age shaped my personality. My friends were few, I avoided group activities, I found excuses not to attend events, and I especially avoided face-to-face contact with members of the opposite sex, all because I dreaded anybody seeing my face. The acne followed me right through college and into my business career without much letup. I can assure you from experience that not being able to control one's appearance can have a negative effect on career opportunities.

Somewhere between age 25 and 30 I began a serious search for answers and found little exciting coming out of the medical profession except more discussion of myths and non-myths. I tried some of the advice such as how to wash your skin properly, soaps to use and not use, avoiding certain foods, avoiding stress, using over-the-counter skin applications, and getting more sun in the summer. I saw no change. However, being forced to be conscious of this disease day after day, I unknowingly began my own personal research on the subject.

Developing an Awareness

By age 30, after having suffered from acne for 17 years, I came to the understanding that over that length of time I should have learned something about the disease. And I did. I began detecting some patterns. I also sought the help of a dermatologist for the first time. He carefully listened to the patterns and together we started a program to test some ideas. Antibiotics were prescribed in varying ways as part of the test. Over the next seven to eight years I developed an awareness to conditions that eventually provided the knowledge to control my acne entirely. I never did outgrow the disease because even today I can bring back a severe outbreak almost at will.

The following is what I learned. It is probably the case that hormones were responsible for making me susceptible to acne versus somebody else not, but I found no basis for confirming or disclaiming that. Given my susceptibility, it was evident that bacteria had a role in causing the acne sores to develop since the antibiotics could prevent the severity of outbreaks. I was not dealing with an allergy. The most severe pustules would typically develop deep within the skin, not near the surface, and could usually be first detected by a slight swelling and some pain when touched. By stopping the antibiotics and testing use of different skin cleansing methods, soaps, and topical applications, I found none of these to have any effect on preventing new acne and that skin dirt or blocked pores were not a contributing factor. Also, the continued use of antibiotics seemed over time to force the outbreaks to begin deeper beneath the skin surface, as if the bacteria were trying to establish a defense and develop an immunity. In fact, that happened. The first oral antibiotic became ineffective.

After a few years my suspicions became clearer. A pattern existed and could be confirmed by stopping and starting the antibiotics. The acne was clearly related to what I ate and drank. More testing followed to further correlate food patterns with acne outbreaks. Once I was convinced of the relation, I stopped the antibiotics altogether and began to use diet control entirely. However, this began the most difficult part of the process and took at least another 10 years before I could say that I finally beat the acne. I had developed an awareness of a relation between food and my acne, but I still did not have enough knowledge of the real extent of the relation.

What took me over 20 years to accomplish my son did in 6 months, only because I had the knowledge to pass on to him all at one time and that he was convinced of the dramatic effect immediately.

The Answer

My acne was caused by SUGAR, plain and simple refined sugar. It is absolutely no myth in my case that junk foods, chocolate, or certain other foods can cause acne . When I stopped eating sugar, no acne!

The pattern I had detected starting in my late 20's was that eating particular foods would result in new acne outbreaks exactly three days later. I began recording whatever I ate and drank to develop a correlation. The same foods and drinks always produced severe outbreaks without fail and all contained considerable amounts of sugar. But by avoiding these foods I would still get less severe outbreaks with what first appeared to be random patterns. So there was more to the overall pattern I needed to understand.

My dermatologist helped correlate the sugar effect by suggesting patterns of on-again and off-again antibiotics. I would use antibiotics without eating the sugar foods to try to clear my skin, then follow by stopping the antibiotics. My skin would remain mostly clear if I ate none of these foods. Then I would eat one of the sugar foods, confirming the acne would follow in three days as it always did. I continued this over several years confirming the correlation, but I couldn't stop the acne entirely.

The additional part of the solution started to become known as I began to develop a detailed awareness of the true extent sugar plays in our diets. While I thought I had stopped eating sugar, I didn't realize I was still eating foods with small amounts of sugar. What I further proved was that even very small amounts of sugar intake, only 1/16 teaspoon (about 1/4 gram) resulted in new acne. The bacteria appeared to be extremely sensitive to the presence of sugar in the bloodstream. By using antibiotics the bacteria were probably desensitized to the very small amounts of sugar, and I could sometimes tolerate those small amounts without new acne. I also found that oils, while not causing severe acne unless eaten in large quantities, would still seem to increase the severity of small doses of sugar if eaten together, acting sort of like a booster.

I could see the reasoning behind the claim that not even sugar has been proven to cause acne. The problem is that testing the effect of sugar is extremely difficult and will apparently come up negative because of the lack of knowledge of just how sensitive acne is to very, very small doses of sugar and the lack of understanding of the great many foods in our diets that contain small hidden amounts of sugar. I found it easy to botch a test for sugar effects by unknowingly eating a sugar-containing food.

The claim that stress can cause acne was not valid in my case. I have experienced my share of stress and not in one case could I claim that I got new acne outbreaks directly from the stress. But there is an obvious connection. In times of stress, I like many people went to one of my favorite stress relievers, food. And of course, my favorite foods. Those foods in most cases were my favorite tasting foods, something with SUGAR in it!

Refined sugar comes in several forms including white sugar crystals, powdered sugar, brown sugar, molasses, corn syrup, maple syrup, and honey. Some of the foods high on my sugar-containing list, i.e., my worst acne offenders, include candies, ice creams, cakes, cookies, pies, sweet rolls, bars, jellies/jams, salad dressings, peanut butter, sugared sodas, beer, sweet wines, liqueurs, and sugared fruit drinks. Check out the foods and drinks I have put on my hot list. The natural sugar in nearly all fruits has never been a problem. I suspect that's because it's not refined or concentrated. Only watermelon causes a reaction, and I suppose that may be true because of its high concentration of natural sugar.

To control my acne required that I avoid these sugar-containing foods entirely.

Testing to Confirm the Cause

To test myself if eating sugar leads to new acne outbreaks, I did the following. (My son and daughters also used this test successfully.) The test required about a two week period. Everything I ate and drank during the period were written down as a record. The test was partly a test of how well I could discipline myself to not eat or drink any sugar. That was essentially the first week's only requirement. Stop eating sugar and be very conscious of every food eaten to question first whether it contained any sugar over the 1/4 gram limit. This worked best if I avoided eating in restaurants or anywhere I couldn't know how my food was prepared. Preparing meal plans ahead of time and strictly eating only those meals worked best. If new acne outbreaks continued to occur after the first three days, I would check my record of food eaten to determine where any sugar could have possibly come in. I could always find where I messed up or where some hidden sugar probably existed in a prepared food. In those cases the test would need to be restarted.

Without any sugar new outbreaks would stop after three days. The remainder of the two weeks was required to allow old outbreaks to heal. I found I could help this along by covering existing outbreaks with an over-the-counter triple antibiotic ointment. I would do this at night and use a quite heavy application on each spot.

The two weeks proved either I could stop new acne outbreaks by not eating any sugar, or I had a long ways to go to discipline myself to be aware of what foods and drinks contain significant sugar. I probably could have run this test most successfully by going off somewhere and isolating myself from society and preparing all of my own foods.

The last step of the test came at the end of the two weeks. Assuming success was achieved at stopping new acne, I then ate a good portion of one of the top sugar-containing foods, like a big dish of ice cream or a big chocolate candy bar. Without fail, three days later I would experience a nasty acne outbreak. Test complete!

Making it Work

The answer sounded so simple. Stop eating sugar. But accomplishing that fete was one of the most difficult things I have done in my life. To make it work required disciplining myself to deal with so many overwhelming factors working against me:

So many of my favorite foods contained substantial sugar.
So much of my regular diet consisted of sugar-containing foods.
Being constantly aware of the staggering number of foods and drinks containing very small amounts of sugar was overbearing at first.
I was unaware of hidden sugar in foods prepared for family meals, meals at relatives and friends, meals in restaurants, etc.
People who prepared food for me would easily become offended when I refused eating their food because of the sugar.
Picking sugar-free food from a restaurant menu was extremely difficult.
Parties and celebrations became difficult when I found I couldn't eat or drink much of anything offered.
A friend at work who brought in a special treat would be offended when I refused to eat it.
A co-worker would treat me to a can of soda from the vending machine and I would need to find a way to avoid drinking it after I found it was not sugar-free.
I needed to endure the laughs when I admitted to some people that my apparent crazy diet was for the purpose of controlling acne.

Did I become paranoid? Of course! Avoiding the big items was not too hard. Being conscious of the hidden small amounts of sugar required quite an adjustment time for me. The more I saw the gratifying results on preventing new acne, the more I developed a real fear of sugar. And why not, since this fear was stopping a disease. It became an "all or nothing" proposition.

In no way would I call what I did an eating disorder. I'd call it a diet alteration and a process of selecting alternatives. The alternatives were a case of replacing previous favorite foods and drinks with new favorites, of selecting diet drinks instead of sugared varieties, of eating fruit for desert instead of cake or ice cream, of preparing sugar-free bakery and deserts, of omitting sugar from many commonly prepared foods, of convincing people around me to hold the sugar in prepared foods, of developing new stress relievers.

Side Effects

One aspect I made sure of before undertaking this process (and before suggesting my children to do the same) was that my diet did not require that I continue getting certain minimum daily amounts of sugar to avoid any other potential health problem. It would not be a good choice to simply substitute a more serious health problem for the sake of avoiding acne.

The side effects I have experienced have all been positive side benefits. For example, I never experienced weight gain problems. I've never had sleeping problems. I can exercise and do physical work without tiring easily and with little sweating. I have just never felt better physically since stopping sugar consumption. I've acquired some new and interesting tastes for foods. I can experience the true tastes of fruit in deserts that were previously overshadowed by the sweetening of sugar. I can savor the taste of a raw lemon. I actually enjoy the tastes of all vegetables, including broccoli! By learning to discipline myself to avoid sugar, it was easy to also control consumption of or avoid some other common non-healthful food items, including sodium (salt), caffeine, fat, alcohol, and high cholesterol foods. The process forced me into a rather healthful diet.