How to Cure Your Acne - Part 3

This is part 3 in a series on how to cure your acne. The information in this series is based on over 6 years of research, experimentation and observation on the link between acne and health.

Are there certain diets that lead to clear skin?

In part 2 I covered the current scientific evidence regarding the link between acne and diet.

The evidence was clear: acne is affected by diet.

But what foods lead to clear skin? Why do certain foods break certain people out? Exactly what kind of diet should people be following in order to cure their acne?

Anecdotal Evidence

One of the things I have been studying for a very long time is the diets that people have been using successfully to clear their skin.

The Acne.org Nutrition and Holistic Health Forum has been especially helpful, because many people there post about what foods keep their skin clear and what foods break them out.

I started a thread in that forum in order to create a list of people that have successfully cleared their skin using diet and were willing to post proof in pictures of their clear skin.

The thread is located here: The Holistically Clear Skin Club

So what patterns did I find in the diets that people were successfully using to clear their skin?

Well, I have to tell you, it’s a bit confusing. There are no real good patterns.

Some people were using high carb diets, some people were using low carb diets. Some people were eating no dairy, some people were eating no bread, some people were eating no gluten.

One commonality though was that everyone had to change their diet from the diet they were naturally eating.

So how can you explain this if there are no useful patterns? How can you come up with a diet that will lead to clear skin?

Well, I’m not being completely honest. There actually were some patterns, but they weren’t the typical type of patterns you would expect and they were very hard to spot…

The Foods Your Genes Were Meant to Eat

There is something very interesting about the human species that makes it unique in the animal kingdom; our adaptability to different environments.

Humans started out in Africa and then colonized nearly the entire planet over the course of hundreds of thousands of years.

However, as the human species spread out over the world, they encountered many different types of environments they were forced to adapt to.

Humans who migrated far North and far South had to deal with cold weather and all that it entails. Humans who migrated toward the ocean adapted to advantages and disadvantages of living by the sea. Everywhere humans went, there were different foods, different weather and different dangers that all had to be dealt with.

One of the most obvious outwardly visible adaptations that you can see on every person is their skin color. All humans started out with darker skin in order to protect them from the harsh sun in Africa, but as they migrated in different directions, the sun was no longer so powerful and they actually began to suffer from a previously unknown condition to the human species which could be called sun deficiency: low vitamin D.

When human skin is exposed to sunlight it produces vitamin D. However, the amount of vitamin D is proportional to how dark your skin is. The darker the skin, the less vitamin D gets through.

So all of the original naturally dark-skinned humans who were living in these new low-sunlight environments were suffering from low vitamin D.

Luckily not all was lost: evolution came in to the rescue. There were always natural variations in how dark skinned humans were. While all of them were naturally very dark-skinned, some were slightly lighter and some were slightly darker.

The theory goes, that those who had slightly lighter skin, got more vitamin D from the sun and were more sexually successful and therefore had more kids. Evolution took over and kept producing humans with lighter and lighter skin until the typical fair-skinned person of the modern world appeared.

This is how humans adapted to different environments. But did you know they did the same thing with the different food sources they encountered in their new environments?

Human Adaptation to Different Foods

One of the most commonly cited examples of a specific adaptation to foods is lactose.

It is common knowledge that certain people can digest lactose in milk products and certain people can’t. And some people can digest a whole lot of lactose and others can only digest a little bit.

This adaptation developed in response to increased dairy product consumption in certain areas of the world. When people began to rely on dairy as a food source, those who had better lactose digestion had more babies than those who didn’t, and therefore the gene proliferated.

What most people don’t realize is that there are adaptations just like lactose tolerance for nearly every food in the world.

Wherever your ancestors came from, they ate specific foods that were available in their specific environment and over time became very well adapted to eating those certain foods…and perhaps not so well adapted to eating other foods.

To further understand how these adaptations work, let’s look at the example of the light-skinned person vs. the dark-skinned person again:

A light-skinned person would get just the right amount of vitamin D by being outside in an overcast environment, but put them back on the African plains and they would burn to a crisp.

Not only did these new adaptations allow them to survive in their new environment, but they also gave them a disadvantage in their old environment.

This is a very important point to keep in mind as we discuss the foods you are adapted to. It is not just the foods you are well adapted to eating, but also the foods that you are not well adapted to eating that are important.

You will soon find out the old saying is true: One man’s food is another man’s poison.

In the next part I will discuss:

• The Foods Cultures Ate Around The World
• Why Many People Eating Modern Foods Don’t Get Acne
• How to Figure Out What Foods Your Ancestors Ate
• How to Bring All The Theory Together and Create a Diet That Will Lead to Clear Skin

Look for it tomorrow…

Articles in the How to Cure Your Acne Series

• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 1
• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 2
• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 3
• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 4
• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 5
• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 6
• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 7
• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 8
• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 9
• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 10

Related Posts

• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 5
• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 1
• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 4
• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 6
• How to Cure Your Acne - Part 2