March 19, 2023 • 15 mins
Westerners have a problem many primitive cultures did not: Acne. So what is it about our lifestyle that causes acne? Arguably our hygiene is much better than our ancestors. Could it be something we're putting in our bodies?? Listen in and find out.
Show Notes:
1:40 - Structure of skin and how acne can form - https://qima-lifesciences.com/en/acne-vulgaris-symptoms-treatments/
2:23 - Different types of acne - https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/acne#:~:text=Acne%20is%20a%20disorder%20of,Acne%20is%20very%20common.
4:29 - A low-glycemic-load diet improves symptoms in acne vulgaris patients: a randomized controlled trial - https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/86/1/107/4633089
5:47 - Androgens are known to increase sebum production - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/exd.12291
8:03 - Predictors of severity of acne vulgaris in young adolescent girls: results of a five-year longitudinal study - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002234769770307X
9:38 - DHEA and it's androgenic potency - https://pediatric.testcatalog.org/show/DHES1
10:40 - Dietary Fat and Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Intakes during Childhood Are Prospectively Associated with Puberty Timing Independent of Dietary Protein - https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/2/275
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
hello my fellow Health Seekers and welcome back to Primedy where we find simple techniques to
help address modern problems for our primitive bodies my name is Andrew Pafford and I'm a
health and wellness professional with over a decade of experience helping Olympic athletes
desk jockeys and seniors achieving their goals and improving their quality of life
in the spirit of wanting to undermine our complex Lifestyles with more simple primitive Alternatives
(00:23):
today I want to discuss a link between nutrition and skin Health more specifically
technique can affect populations for all kinds and for various reasons in that statement I
would like to note that today's suggestions are by no means meant to countermand doctor's
orders I am not a physician nor do I pretend to play one in the real world or the internet
(00:45):
that being said the information discussed today can be used to better help drive a conversation
with your doctor or if you have not yet begun treatment then these are some easy at-home
lifestyle modifications that are well within the realm of attempting before seeking treatment
further these could very well provide a means to supplant any over-the-counter creams Cosmetics Etc
(01:07):
that you may be currently using with little to no effect so with this in mind today we're going to
discuss some of the mechanisms through which one might develop acne how nutrition can affect those
mechanisms and how we can better control nutrition to prevent the hijacking of those mechanisms that
can lead to tack as is typical we need to give ourselves a baseline of how the Body Works which
(01:30):
enable us to understand the mechanisms that cause it to go awry to then better ascertain possible
solutions so plotting this thought process on today's topic we will begin with the skin
a great deal of our skin not only contains hair follicles and not just on scalp but also
oil glands called sebaceous glands these glands are responsible for secreting oil called sebum
(01:55):
that helps keep our skin moist or rather to trap moisture under the layer of oil to prevent it from
evaporating and thus leading to a quickening of becoming dehydrated since we would be dumping
water at that point and turning into crusty Critters these glands lie just beneath the
surface of the Skin So once the oil is produced it can quickly reach the surface through our pores
(02:18):
now knee can form when these channels become blocked different types of acne can arise
depending on the consequence of that blockage we'll quickly cover some of those scenarios
first type is what we know as a whitehead or in the medical term a closed comedone
(02:38):
a whitehead is when the poor gets covered with skin with bacteria trapped inside the bacteria
can feed on the sebum and continue to replicate creating an infection blackheads or open comedones
are when the pore is not blocked but the sebum has become stuck possibly from bacterial obstruction
(02:58):
and the sebum has solidified sebum oxidizes with the air causing it to turn black hence the name
papules are larger than the first two where the bacteria have replicated to such an extent that
the immune system has begun become aware and begun to mount an immune response this can cause
(03:18):
an increase in size that can then lead to pustules which are now red with inflammation and typically
quite large due to the amount of bacteria white blood cells mounting their defense and bacterial
product typically known as pus so this gives us a little of a rundown of different quote types
of acne but also the mechanism through which that they can appear now the classic convention
(03:43):
has been that hormones play the critical factor in acne development and this is certainly true
however as many people can attest acne is not limited to a puberty issue or necessarily a
hormonal imbalance other factors that cause acne might be well within our purview of prevention
today in particular we want to explore the role of nutrition on acne yes the very food that you
(04:09):
can eat can affect the formation of acne if malnutrition or poor nutrition can lead to
brittle nails dehydration Etc and can cause rough dry skin is it really hard to believe
that different types of food that we eat could have control of other factors regarding our skin
so the kickoff today we'll look at our first study called a low glycemic load diet improves
(04:32):
symptoms and acne vulgaris patients a randomized controlled trial by Robin Smith and others
acne vulgaris of course being the official medical term for acne 54 male participants
began the study of which only 43 could be counted as the others withdrew for varying reasons one of
their meaning of participants were placed in a control group and 23 were placed on a low
(04:55):
glycemic load diet be sure to see the show notes for links as we're not stating many of the other
critical factors that were controlled for for the sake of time and for us to get to the juicy part
at the end of the 12-week period the low glycemic load group had a 45 reduction in inflammatory
lesion count and a 51 reduction in total count of lesion compared to the control group so they
(05:21):
had fewer whiteheads blackheads and pustules Pro Group only saw a reduction of 23 percent and 31
respectively meaning 23 percent lower inflammatory and 31 overall count suffice to say those numbers
are not insignificant one possible explanation provided is that insulin stimulates the synthesis
(05:46):
of androgens which are known to increase sebum production remember we already identified puberty
plays a role in acne androgens are a group of hormones that basically make puberty happen the
big one being testosterone so if insulin increases Androgen production and androgens increase sebum
(06:06):
production and increased sebum production is tied to acne then surprise surprise are high glycemic
diets AKA Foods in highly available carbohydrates now have a direct connection to acne now regarding
the previous study for the sake of transparency we need to make a couple points number one the
(06:27):
patients were male only this is a detriment to the power of the study now not to fault them because
sometimes we have to work with what we're given so this but the study certainly sheds light on
possible correlation but with no females in the study it can't be seen as being terribly strong
two the number of participants was not terribly high with only 23 participants being involved in
(06:48):
the experimental group and three it was also noted that participants that all participants
lost weight during the study weight loss is correlated with increased insulin sensitivity
meaning the body doesn't need as much insulin to get the job done which in turn would have
an effect on Androgen production this reason it's hard to identify it was if it was the lower carbs
(07:12):
or the weight loss that lowered insulin and thus its effect on Androgen and thus the effect on acne
suffice to say if people are cutting out carbs and losing weight that's still a win-win and they're
getting less acne so decreasing your carbohydrate intake or I'm sorry having foods lower in glycemic
(07:33):
index might not be a bad idea if your diet currently consists of lots of foods that are high
in the glycemic index foods that are with simple sugars that your body can really absorb like candy
bars and soda and junk food this means we can't definitively say that the lower carbohydrate diet
can cure acne however it does make a compelling case for controlling insulin to help mitigate its
(07:56):
effect on Androgen production and the best way to do that is eating Foods as I mentioned now
another study was done in 1997 called predictors of severity of acne vulgaris and young adolescent
girls results of a five-year longitudinal study by aw lucky and others the study followed 871
girls approximately age 10 to 11 years for five years each what they were able to determine is
(08:22):
girls who received their menarchy earlier or when they first received their menstrual cycle
had more severe acne than those who receive their menarchy significantly later They concluded that
the girls who had higher dheas a compound you might recall is talking about in episode 5 and is
(08:43):
also subsequently an androgen underwent menarchy sooner and had more severe acne they indicated
that dheas levels appeared to be an indicator for acne severity now this is pretty important as we
now have a study with 871 individuals that they were able to tease out and make a correlations to
(09:08):
this is a high high powered number of participants which gives this study strong strong power
but let's consider some things first as we've previously established dheas is the storage form
of DHEA which is the active form so the shorthand you can think of as the S stands for storage
(09:31):
so dhas does not directly have an impact on hormones as it's just storage
second DHEA the active form actually has very low androgenic potency meaning DHEA in and of itself
does not actually act upon any of the channels mechanisms what have you that androgens do
(09:56):
however DHEA does and I'm going to quote the Mayo Clinic Laboratories here serve as the major direct
or indirect precursor for most sex steroids translation the more DHEA slash dhas one were
to have the greater the likelihood the body can convert those compounds into sex hormones that
(10:21):
drive puberty testosterone estrogen Etc this is important because not only does it reaffirm
how sex hormones drive acne this is another angle to look at from a nutritional impact
and nutrition impact sex hormones and through the transit of property acne so now comes a
very strong piece of literature this is dietary fat and polyunsaturated fatty acid intakes during
(10:45):
childhood are perspectively associated with puberty timing independent of dietary protein
and others now this one is very important as this pulls information from a large-scale nationwide
ongoing longitudinal study in China this means that the data is gathered from a large body of
(11:06):
participants over a long period of time giving it extreme strength in terms of drawing connections
in this particular case 5920 children were included in the study giving it great power
or translation a couple outliers aren't going to throw off the data leading to
incorrect conclusions to be made there's a lot of data in here but the takeaway is this
(11:29):
girls who had a higher intake of dietary fat were more likely to go through puberty and
experience menarchy sooner than those with lower dietary with lower dietary fat intake
similarly boys also experience signs of puberty sooner with a higher intake of fat than those
with lower fat intake this means that dietary fat plays a large role in sex hormones in puberty and
(11:55):
while not measured in this particular study is a safe connection to make that acne was increased
given the information that we've established in the previous study now this particular study
however goes on to further differentiate that not all fat contributes to this equally the study
determined that higher childhood habitual total fat and P polyunsaturated fatty acids or pufas
(12:21):
that higher childhood habitual total fat and poofa intakes were associated with subsequent earlier
timing of puberty however monounsaturated fatty acids or saturated fatty acids was not associated
with any puberty markers the study is specifically calling out pufas as driving earlier puberty
(12:44):
which means greater upticks in androgen which means greater upticks in precursors
needed to make those androgens which means those precursors that we established in the 1997 study
are associated with greater severity of acne so Foods higher in pufas and an overall dietary
(13:07):
and an overall High dietary intake of fat can be linked with greater prevalence and severity
of acne so let's recap what we've covered today acne is a condition that can be driven
by hormone changes it can absolutely be caused by hygiene but for people who struggle with chronic
acne will likely have taken steps to make sure that hygiene is not the driving Factor hormones
(13:31):
linked to acne are called androgens that have a strong role in puberty and sexual development
insulin has been shown to have a probable effect on the synthesis of androgens so Foods higher on
the glycemic index can cause insulin spikes that would drive Androgen production and thus acne
High dietary fat intake has been strongly correlated with Androgen production
(13:55):
specifically polyunsaturated fatty acids common foods that are high in those pufas include many
of your seed and nut based products such as but not limited to peanut butter and various seed
oils that you might find added to many products now let's keep our frame of reference these are
(14:15):
possible lifestyle changes for those suffering from severe acne to potentially help Abate their
condition this is not meant to demonize any of these products or call for boycotts remember
all good things come in moderation some people suffering from acne might find
that they are having sugary and or fatty foods or foods with oils on a daily basis that could
(14:37):
be driving their skin condition this would be a nice wake-up call to seek a little diversity in
their diet which I think everyone can agree on is a good thing to have so that ought to about cover
our topic today on nutrition and potential impacts on acne we're always curious to hear
what you're curious about so please send us your requests and suggestions to info at primedy.org
(15:01):
as always strength comes in many forms from within and without so be strong to be useful
I'm Andrew Pafford and I look forward to speaking to you again on our next episode take care
hello my fellow Health Seekers and welcome back to Primedy where we find simple techniques to
help address modern problems for our primitive bodies my name is Andrew Pafford and I'm a
health and wellness professional with over a decade of experience helping Olympic athletes
desk jockeys and seniors achieving their goals and improving their quality of life
in the spirit of wanting to undermine our complex Lifestyles with more simple primitive Alternatives
(00:23):
today I want to discuss a link between nutrition and skin Health more specifically
technique can affect populations for all kinds and for various reasons in that statement I
would like to note that today's suggestions are by no means meant to countermand doctor's
orders I am not a physician nor do I pretend to play one in the real world or the internet
(00:45):
that being said the information discussed today can be used to better help drive a conversation
with your doctor or if you have not yet begun treatment then these are some easy at-home
lifestyle modifications that are well within the realm of attempting before seeking treatment
further these could very well provide a means to supplant any over-the-counter creams Cosmetics Etc
(01:07):
that you may be currently using with little to no effect so with this in mind today we're going to
discuss some of the mechanisms through which one might develop acne how nutrition can affect those
mechanisms and how we can better control nutrition to prevent the hijacking of those mechanisms that
can lead to tack as is typical we need to give ourselves a baseline of how the Body Works which
(01:30):
enable us to understand the mechanisms that cause it to go awry to then better ascertain possible
solutions so plotting this thought process on today's topic we will begin with the skin
a great deal of our skin not only contains hair follicles and not just on scalp but also
oil glands called sebaceous glands these glands are responsible for secreting oil called sebum
(01:55):
that helps keep our skin moist or rather to trap moisture under the layer of oil to prevent it from
evaporating and thus leading to a quickening of becoming dehydrated since we would be dumping
water at that point and turning into crusty Critters these glands lie just beneath the
surface of the Skin So once the oil is produced it can quickly reach the surface through our pores
(02:18):
now knee can form when these channels become blocked different types of acne can arise
depending on the consequence of that blockage we'll quickly cover some of those scenarios
first type is what we know as a whitehead or in the medical term a closed comedone
(02:38):
a whitehead is when the poor gets covered with skin with bacteria trapped inside the bacteria
can feed on the sebum and continue to replicate creating an infection blackheads or open comedones
are when the pore is not blocked but the sebum has become stuck possibly from bacterial obstruction
(02:58):
and the sebum has solidified sebum oxidizes with the air causing it to turn black hence the name
papules are larger than the first two where the bacteria have replicated to such an extent that
the immune system has begun become aware and begun to mount an immune response this can cause
(03:18):
an increase in size that can then lead to pustules which are now red with inflammation and typically
quite large due to the amount of bacteria white blood cells mounting their defense and bacterial
product typically known as pus so this gives us a little of a rundown of different quote types
of acne but also the mechanism through which that they can appear now the classic convention
(03:43):
has been that hormones play the critical factor in acne development and this is certainly true
however as many people can attest acne is not limited to a puberty issue or necessarily a
hormonal imbalance other factors that cause acne might be well within our purview of prevention
today in particular we want to explore the role of nutrition on acne yes the very food that you
(04:09):
can eat can affect the formation of acne if malnutrition or poor nutrition can lead to
brittle nails dehydration Etc and can cause rough dry skin is it really hard to believe
that different types of food that we eat could have control of other factors regarding our skin
so the kickoff today we'll look at our first study called a low glycemic load diet improves
(04:32):
symptoms and acne vulgaris patients a randomized controlled trial by Robin Smith and others
acne vulgaris of course being the official medical term for acne 54 male participants
began the study of which only 43 could be counted as the others withdrew for varying reasons one of
their meaning of participants were placed in a control group and 23 were placed on a low
(04:55):
glycemic load diet be sure to see the show notes for links as we're not stating many of the other
critical factors that were controlled for for the sake of time and for us to get to the juicy part
at the end of the 12-week period the low glycemic load group had a 45 reduction in inflammatory
lesion count and a 51 reduction in total count of lesion compared to the control group so they
(05:21):
had fewer whiteheads blackheads and pustules Pro Group only saw a reduction of 23 percent and 31
respectively meaning 23 percent lower inflammatory and 31 overall count suffice to say those numbers
are not insignificant one possible explanation provided is that insulin stimulates the synthesis
(05:46):
of androgens which are known to increase sebum production remember we already identified puberty
plays a role in acne androgens are a group of hormones that basically make puberty happen the
big one being testosterone so if insulin increases Androgen production and androgens increase sebum
(06:06):
production and increased sebum production is tied to acne then surprise surprise are high glycemic
diets AKA Foods in highly available carbohydrates now have a direct connection to acne now regarding
the previous study for the sake of transparency we need to make a couple points number one the
(06:27):
patients were male only this is a detriment to the power of the study now not to fault them because
sometimes we have to work with what we're given so this but the study certainly sheds light on
possible correlation but with no females in the study it can't be seen as being terribly strong
two the number of participants was not terribly high with only 23 participants being involved in
(06:48):
the experimental group and three it was also noted that participants that all participants
lost weight during the study weight loss is correlated with increased insulin sensitivity
meaning the body doesn't need as much insulin to get the job done which in turn would have
an effect on Androgen production this reason it's hard to identify it was if it was the lower carbs
(07:12):
or the weight loss that lowered insulin and thus its effect on Androgen and thus the effect on acne
suffice to say if people are cutting out carbs and losing weight that's still a win-win and they're
getting less acne so decreasing your carbohydrate intake or I'm sorry having foods lower in glycemic
(07:33):
index might not be a bad idea if your diet currently consists of lots of foods that are high
in the glycemic index foods that are with simple sugars that your body can really absorb like candy
bars and soda and junk food this means we can't definitively say that the lower carbohydrate diet
can cure acne however it does make a compelling case for controlling insulin to help mitigate its
(07:56):
effect on Androgen production and the best way to do that is eating Foods as I mentioned now
another study was done in 1997 called predictors of severity of acne vulgaris and young adolescent
girls results of a five-year longitudinal study by aw lucky and others the study followed 871
girls approximately age 10 to 11 years for five years each what they were able to determine is
(08:22):
girls who received their menarchy earlier or when they first received their menstrual cycle
had more severe acne than those who receive their menarchy significantly later They concluded that
the girls who had higher dheas a compound you might recall is talking about in episode 5 and is
(08:43):
also subsequently an androgen underwent menarchy sooner and had more severe acne they indicated
that dheas levels appeared to be an indicator for acne severity now this is pretty important as we
now have a study with 871 individuals that they were able to tease out and make a correlations to
(09:08):
this is a high high powered number of participants which gives this study strong strong power
but let's consider some things first as we've previously established dheas is the storage form
of DHEA which is the active form so the shorthand you can think of as the S stands for storage
(09:31):
so dhas does not directly have an impact on hormones as it's just storage
second DHEA the active form actually has very low androgenic potency meaning DHEA in and of itself
does not actually act upon any of the channels mechanisms what have you that androgens do
(09:56):
however DHEA does and I'm going to quote the Mayo Clinic Laboratories here serve as the major direct
or indirect precursor for most sex steroids translation the more DHEA slash dhas one were
to have the greater the likelihood the body can convert those compounds into sex hormones that
(10:21):
drive puberty testosterone estrogen Etc this is important because not only does it reaffirm
how sex hormones drive acne this is another angle to look at from a nutritional impact
and nutrition impact sex hormones and through the transit of property acne so now comes a
very strong piece of literature this is dietary fat and polyunsaturated fatty acid intakes during
(10:45):
childhood are perspectively associated with puberty timing independent of dietary protein
and others now this one is very important as this pulls information from a large-scale nationwide
ongoing longitudinal study in China this means that the data is gathered from a large body of
(11:06):
participants over a long period of time giving it extreme strength in terms of drawing connections
in this particular case 5920 children were included in the study giving it great power
or translation a couple outliers aren't going to throw off the data leading to
incorrect conclusions to be made there's a lot of data in here but the takeaway is this
(11:29):
girls who had a higher intake of dietary fat were more likely to go through puberty and
experience menarchy sooner than those with lower dietary with lower dietary fat intake
similarly boys also experience signs of puberty sooner with a higher intake of fat than those
with lower fat intake this means that dietary fat plays a large role in sex hormones in puberty and
(11:55):
while not measured in this particular study is a safe connection to make that acne was increased
given the information that we've established in the previous study now this particular study
however goes on to further differentiate that not all fat contributes to this equally the study
determined that higher childhood habitual total fat and P polyunsaturated fatty acids or pufas
(12:21):
that higher childhood habitual total fat and poofa intakes were associated with subsequent earlier
timing of puberty however monounsaturated fatty acids or saturated fatty acids was not associated
with any puberty markers the study is specifically calling out pufas as driving earlier puberty
(12:44):
which means greater upticks in androgen which means greater upticks in precursors
needed to make those androgens which means those precursors that we established in the 1997 study
are associated with greater severity of acne so Foods higher in pufas and an overall dietary
(13:07):
and an overall High dietary intake of fat can be linked with greater prevalence and severity
of acne so let's recap what we've covered today acne is a condition that can be driven
by hormone changes it can absolutely be caused by hygiene but for people who struggle with chronic
acne will likely have taken steps to make sure that hygiene is not the driving Factor hormones
(13:31):
linked to acne are called androgens that have a strong role in puberty and sexual development
insulin has been shown to have a probable effect on the synthesis of androgens so Foods higher on
the glycemic index can cause insulin spikes that would drive Androgen production and thus acne
High dietary fat intake has been strongly correlated with Androgen production
(13:55):
specifically polyunsaturated fatty acids common foods that are high in those pufas include many
of your seed and nut based products such as but not limited to peanut butter and various seed
oils that you might find added to many products now let's keep our frame of reference these are
(14:15):
possible lifestyle changes for those suffering from severe acne to potentially help Abate their
condition this is not meant to demonize any of these products or call for boycotts remember
all good things come in moderation some people suffering from acne might find
that they are having sugary and or fatty foods or foods with oils on a daily basis that could
(14:37):
be driving their skin condition this would be a nice wake-up call to seek a little diversity in
their diet which I think everyone can agree on is a good thing to have so that ought to about cover
our topic today on nutrition and potential impacts on acne we're always curious to hear
what you're curious about so please send us your requests and suggestions to info at primedy.org
(15:01):
as always strength comes in many forms from within and without so be strong to be useful
I'm Andrew Pafford and I look forward to speaking to you again on our next episode take care
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