Hi.

Your diet affects your skin.

Sincerely,

Sabine

Ok I will elaborate, but if you’re strapped for time, that is the gist of this article and something I want impregnated in your brain.

Yes, diet affects your skin and can trigger (note: not cause) acne.

I get asked about this a lot and I understand why there is some controversy about this (and why Doctors and Derms are stupid enough to think food doesn’t affect your skin and/or would want you to believe this. Don’t make me pull the pharmaceutical card. Ok, if you insist. Drugs = profit. Healthy food = not so much profit).

I don’t care you have a friend who lives off of burgers and soda’s yet still has peachy clear skin. There are also plenty of people who wouldn’t recognize a broccoli yet remain super skinny, does that mean French Fries and Cinnabuns don’t affect our weight? Nope. It simply proves there is such a thing as bio-individuality. Meaning, each body is different and each body will respond different to different inputs. Some people have a genetic predisposition to acne, or fat storage, or high cholesterol, or whatever, and believe you me food will have an impact on this.

Science, Meet Reality

How many times haven’t we all heard it? Diet and acne are not related. Chocolate and red meat don’t cause zits. There are no scientific studies to back up a correlation between diet and skin conditions. It’s a myth, urban legend.

Bla. Bla. Bla. Darling, think about it. Diet and lifestyle are indisputably linked to diabetes, cancer, heart disease and other scary stuff, and you think your skin gets off without so much as a scratch? Think again.

Your skin is your largest organ and pretty much a direct reflection of what goes (on) inside your body. Common f****** sense aye? The fact that there are no scientific studies to prove a correlation between what we eat and our complexion is simple. It’s near impossible to prove. Too many variables and researchers don’t know what to look for. Is it excess sugar? Fried fat? A vitamin deficiency? Or maybe a lack of a certain nutrient? While perhaps any one of these can cause problems in certain people, much more likely is a manifestation of D: all of the above. Too little of this and that, too much of so and so, is likely to cause skin problems if you are prone to them. So give those dorky researchers a break, they are used to tunnel visioning and ruling out single variables, not researching the cause and effect of multiple variables at once (also known as the whole-list errr holistic approach).

Here’s a nifty example for you, if you’re still on the fence. That chocolate and pimple connection that everyone claims is a hoax? That ‘scientific studies’ have actually debunked? Yet everyone knows of at least one person that claims chocolate makes them break out. What and who to believe? Both are right, actually. In the late 60s, researchers debunked the chocolate-pimple connection. Or so they thought… in fact years later it became clear that these researchers were, unknowingly at the time, on to the sugar and acne connection. You see, in this study, two study groups were fed candy bars (who in their right mind would agree to this anyway?? I digress..). One group received actual, milk chocolate candy bars while the placebo group received bars where the cacao fat was replaced by a different type of fat. Both groups reported the same skin problems and virtually no improvement of their acne and therefore, the researchers proclaimed that chocolate didn’t affect acne.

The researchers failed to realize here that in both bars, the sugar and dairy content was exactly the same. (And don’t think for a second this is the only nutrition study gone wrong…)

Since the late 60s, it has become increasingly evident that sugar and dairy are connected to acne and other skin conditions (rosacea, eczema,rashes). Though skin conditions can be caused by various underlying problems (environmental toxins, hormonal imbalance, emotional instability, etc), diet cannot be separated from the health of our skin.

Here’s the thing. It is complicated. 1 + 1 =/= 2. There is no one particular thing you should or shouldn’t be eating. There is no one specific diet that will work for all, be that health, weight or skin-wise (if there was, the world would be a happier and healthier place and people like me would be obsolete).

Truth is, some people are more sensitive to sugar or dairy or gluten or xxx than others.
Truth is, some people will never get acne no matter what they eat.
Truth is, one (skin) condition can be caused by a handful or more of underlying causes.
Truth is, a deficiency in one mineral can lead to more than one (skin) problem.

Told you it was complicated. At the same time, it doesn’t have to be. When we understand everything is connected, what we eat, what we do, how we feel, and choose a holistic way of looking at the body, things will start to fall into place and make more sense.

Stay tuned for my personal skin update and Natural Acne Treatments: Diet & Lifestyle post.