Acne

[Parsifal]

Aren't you affraid with Zn supplements? Most mineral supplements seem to be very large particules (larger than cells) from rock, nothing comparable to Zn in foods?

 

[James_001]

Here's a mildly tipsy and lightly relevant discourse about calories in history. I think under-eating causes loads of health problem and it's probably more pervasive now than ever. Smart people are probably more prone to under-eating because of their tendency to over-power instinct.

You read about relatively lightly worked monks and nuns in middle ages western europe eating 5,500 calories a day and more. We have their account books and know the foods they consumed. They kept meticulous records. The Superiors were always worried about the finances of the monastery/nunnery and the food supply because they faced revolt if they failed to serve up good grub. Loads of meat and fish and beer and bread daily. It was a population control mechanism, in part. The bargain joining most Catholic orders was you gave up having a family in order to not be hungry, and to also have some measure of professional and intellectual satisfaction and camaraderie. The average peasant (man and woman) spent something like four months a year mindlessly threshing grain with a stick. No joke, you spent a great portion of your life beating a pile of hay with a stick, when you weren't manualy cutting it with a scythe, and you were often quite hungry.

The nunneries and monasteries, on the other hand, carried out centuries running plant and animal breeding experiments and kept important records and ran other important social functions. As a novitiate you gained access to the smartest people in your society and what few books there were. (Scottish nuns bread the greyhound into existence and ran the races and set the odds, developing the beginnings of a lot of modern statistical methods.)

What's my point here? Well we can plainly see what some white people who deliberately prioritized good food over other other priorities like personal freedom chose historically. They would eat huge quantities of beer and bread and meat and dairy products. 5K calories and more every day. They lived a long time in very good health. We know this from their meticulous records. It's an interesting historical "experiment."

I think eating disorders are super widespread now because of sedentarism and social disorder. Most of us are built to burn through loads of calories walking around in the sunshine and doing a bit (not too much) of hard manual labor. Eating alone is also toxic. People who are relatively sedentary instinctively eat what the body demands (often alone, outside of healthy social contexts) in the modern world then and start getting fat. People of a certain temperament freak about the weight gain and then develop eating disorders. But the real problem is we're not built to be sitting around inside all the time, often socially atomized. It's the lifestyle, not the food. Active people eating according to instinct rarely get fat. By active I don't mean daily 45 minute gym sessions. I mean spending hours a day on your feet and doing a little bit of work. Caloric flux.

You have to get the calories up. Shoot for 4K. Wheat is fine. Butter and ice cream are great. The trick is to burn it off. Gotta find the time to walk or bicycle. Wake up early and bicycle for an hour. (**** gyms, it's gotta be outside, no matter the weather.) Do another hour in the evening. Eat and move. Move and eat. When you pop pills and rub creams and alcohol sprays on yourself you don't know how crazy you look to sane and healthy people. Quite rightly.

Yes we appear crazy to healthy people because they for some reason have resiliency that many people on this site don't have. I am happy for you that you can eat whatever and suffer no ill effects, but the people here cannot. You have to realize that just because eating "normal" or whatever works for you doesn't mean it works for everyone. I am one of those people in their twenties you talk about having health issues, and I can assure you I am eating enough I average 4k calories.

 

[Ulla]

Aren't you affraid with Zn supplements? Most mineral supplements seem to be very large particules (larger than cells) from rock, nothing comparable to Zn in foods?

It will be temporary.
Otherwise never thought of that what you've said.

 

[tara]

I never said I was under weight or in recovery so I don't see where you've got that from?

you're just simply making assumptions but thanks for your little piece.

I may have been wrong about that, but I think it is a possibility worth considering.
You are of course free to ignore or disregard my thoughts and questions on this, but I will put them here in case you wish to consider, or in case they are relevant for other readers in similar situations.
If my speculation was wrong, that's great. In that case, I imagine that attending to digestion, gut irritation, endotoxin, vit-A, Zn, etc as others have suggested, could be the next thing to consider.

but I'm already very skinny and would be scared I'd lose too much weight.

You also mentioned that you were eating low fat, which is not conclusive but increases the chances.

This was the basis for me guessing you may be undereating and that if this is the case, it may be useful to prioritise recovering from that.
I did not think you were in recovery from undereating. I thought that if you have been under-eating, it could well be health supportive to make more complete recovery from that part of your plan, and that it might help eventually to address the ongoing acne that is bothering you.

I've now looked at some of your previous posts, to see if you mention something about what and how much you have been eating. I don't think it makes sense to come up with proposed solutions to chronic issues that involve lots of supplements and local treatments without some idea of diet first, since diet is such a basic part of what supports (or undermines) our functioning.

You've mentioned that you had a period of undereating in the past, along with high activity level, and that you restored weight after that. If you've mentioned success restoring general metabolism since then, I have missed/forgotten that post. After that, that I think you mentioned somewhere that you were eating around 2500 cals.
This is not extremely low, but it is significantly less than normal for a young man you age, esp. if you were particularly physically active. You also had reduced metabolism, which seems to me was likely to be at least in part due to the under-eating with heavy exercise.
If what you have done by way of recovery is restore weight to some arbitrary value (still very skinny by your own description), regularly eat ~2500 cals, and your general metabolism is still low, then I would guess that while you have got yourself out of the severe danger zone, your recovery from the effects of that period of semi-starvation may still be far from complete.

I know you are not impressed with the scientific rigour of the youreatopia site - I don't endorse all her ideas and suggestions and I have not followed up all her many references, so I can't speak to that part of it - but some of the fundamental principles seem sound and consistent with current science. For instance, I think it's pretty well established that one of the adaptations the body makes to prolonged famine and/or overexercise is to down-regulate general metabolism (thyroid function) and reproductive hormones. It's not just Olwyn who says this. G. Olwyn says that it takes systematically eating to a minimum of normal calories (eg 3500 for a young man not yet finished growing) over a prolonged period before the body gets through the preceding phases of recovery and then gets round to upregulating/normalising these endocrine functions again. If you have scientific and empirical evidence that there are other more reliable ways to accomplish this, and that it can be done while eating a lot less than normal, then that would interesting.

The reason all this may be relevant to acne issues is that there seem to be reasons to believe that systemic hormone balance can be one of the factors contributing to acne. It often arises during puberty, when some hormones are increasing, and until they find a good balance. Olwyn's point is that a similar situation tends to occur during energy restoration after starvation. That does not prove it is the reason for your acne, but it seems possible that it is a contributor.

My reading of this is that when acne arises in part due to energy levels increasing during recovery from undereating, then there seems to be two ways to end this contribution to the acne. One way is to return to starvation. This has may stop the acne quickly, but will also stop recovery, risk further catabolism and metabolic suppression, and if prolonged, will likely shorten life-expectancy. This seems to be consistent with your experience of acne remission while eating littel on holiday. Could be there are other contributors too, like the alcohol or the environment or activity.

The other way is to get through the phases of energy restoration as quickly as possible with as few interruptions as possible, to restore organs and give the endocrine system a chance to come up to speed. The way that I am aware of to do that is to eat a reasonable amount of food every day for a long time, ie at least what it takes for normal people to grow and run a healthish metabolism - for young growing men ~3500 cals - and more when hunger calls for more energy.
I think you may have rejected this approach.

The option of eating a bit more - enough to get weight and metabolism up out of the really hazardous low range, but not enough to allow hormones to come up to normal ranges - seems like a possible way to prolong the acne indefinitely.

My speculations are based on what you have posted. I'm no clairvoyant. If you have more recent information that means that it is no longer relevant, you can choose whether you want to post it.
Did you ever take a significant chunk of time to recover from the effects of restrictive/under-eating on your endocrine system, beyond just minimal weight restoration?
Did you ever get your calories up to ~ normal for a growing young man (~3500) for an extended period of time?
Did you take a break from extreme exercise?
Did you find some other method to recover that has any evidence to support it being able to restore metabolism?
Did your general metabolism ever come up to speed? I would guess not if you are still running on that low calorie intake (2500) - that in itself suggests lowish metabolism.

Take care.

 

[tara]

You read about relatively lightly worked monks and nuns in middle ages western europe eating 5,500 calories a day and more.

Do we have evidence of them being lightly worked? In some cases they would have worked long days in horticulture and agriculture with no tractors, right? Possibly also carrying a fair bit of water? Some parts of Western Europe had freezing winters and little residential insulation, too, which I imagine would increase calorie needs?

 

[Sheila]

Zinc sources that are digestible, pro-metabolic within reason: grass fed red meat; prawns and other shellfish like oysters, liver and liver pate, chocolate, mushrooms. Presuming current data can be trusted and for the meat and mushrooms that there is some zinc in the soil, and available to the plants/substrates on which they are grown. Cadmium can replace zinc easily in foods if grown on contaminated, or high superphosphate 'encouraged' soils. Cadmium is not helpful.
Sheila

 

[bobbybobbob]

I analyzed the foods and noticed that in that time I was eating more beef, like 3 times per week.
...
Zinc deficiency is my hope at the moment.

You are not zinc deficient. It's probably nothing to do with your diet. You probably don't socialize enough, don't like the people you're around, or don't like the work you're doing.

There's this hugely destructive internet enabled culture of enabling people to pretend their problems are diet, not more obvious and immediate stressors they probably realize full well on some level.

 

[tara]

You are not zinc deficient. It's probably nothing to do with your diet. You probably don't socialize enough, don't like the people you're around, or don't like the work you're doing.

There's this hugely destructive internet enabled culture of enabling people to pretend their problems are diet, not more obvious and immediate stressors they probably realize full well on some level.

I'm not discounting the importance of social stresses etc - I think these are very important. But some people really do have nutritional deficiencies that they'd benefit from addressing too. I don't know if Ulla is zinc-deficient, but I'm pretty sure you can't know that she isn't, either.

Some of us got here after trying to live our full and satisfying lives, and finding we couldn't because the energy ran out.

 

[bobbybobbob]

some people really do have nutritional deficiencies

Nobody reading this forum. And certainly nobody keeping food logs and noticing how much beef they ate. Everybody reading this forum is probably high on neuroticism.

 

[tara]

Nobody reading this forum. And certainly nobody keeping food logs and noticing how much beef they ate. Everybody reading this forum is probably high on neuroticism.

Speak for yourself. :)

I'm not saying neuroticism doesn't exist, but I don't think it applies to everyone here all the time, and even when it does, it doesn't preclude malnutrition.
Neuroticism + some widely-believed health advice can result in quite severe deficiencies. Not everyone drops all their previous habits and beliefs the moment they start reading or posting here, and not everyone takes the same messages from reading here or reading Peat. There are an awful lot of different parameters people can choose to try to apply - not everyone takes them all in or gets them all figured out for themselves instantly.

It looks to me as though a number of people on this forum have reported at various times eating significantly less of various nutrients than is needed to run a healthy metabolism. Eg carbs, protein, calcium, magnesium, calories. Some people are trying to run on very restricted diets, and are likely not getting all they need. Some have compromised digestive systems that likely don't absorb optimal amounts of everything they need. Some people log their diets and don't even break 2000 cals regularly. I imagine some of us would do better with more zinc. I don't know whether that applies in the case above.

 

[Ulla]

You are not zinc deficient. It's probably nothing to do with your diet. You probably don't socialize enough, don't like the people you're around, or don't like the work you're doing.

There's this hugely destructive internet enabled culture of enabling people to pretend their problems are diet, not more obvious and immediate stressors they probably realize full well on some level.

Yes, that culture exists. But not everyone is part of it.
You don't know me and it is nonsense to analyze someone based on a few posts that are made here.
Tara said it nice.

Back to acne...

 

[EIRE24]

Yes we appear crazy to healthy people because they for some reason have resiliency that many people on this site don't have. I am happy for you that you can eat whatever and suffer no ill effects, but the people here cannot. You have to realize that just because eating "normal" or whatever works for you doesn't mean it works for everyone. I am one of those people in their twenties you talk about having health issues, and I can assure you I am eating enough I average 4k calories.

What foods do you not tolerate or find difficulties with?

 

[thebigpeatowski]

we drank a lot and barely ate a thing

Perhaps the alcohol reduced gut microbes and not eating as much did the same?

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Nobody reading this forum. And certainly nobody keeping food logs and noticing how much beef they ate. Everybody reading this forum is probably high on neuroticism.

People with longstanding gut issues are NOT absorbing or entirely benefitting from the nutrients they eat, no matter how perfect the diet...so your statement is false.

 

[jyb]

Perhaps the alcohol reduced gut microbes and not eating as much did the same?

I don't think microbes are the root cause here. Healthy gut function should be completely resilient to that, you could give farty beans to a normal person for weeks and they would have zero acne. It is true that doxy is useful, but that seems unrelated to it's anti-bacterial properties: it acts on the skin similarly to retinol as a molecule to reduce skin inflammation (which is why retinol works so well, at least for me).

 

[thebigpeatowski]

retinol as a molecule to reduce skin inflammation (which is why retinol works so well, at least for me).

Yeah retinol is great, but I think he has tried that already and didn't see any improvement.

 

[EIRE24]

I don't think microbes are the root cause here. Healthy gut function should be completely resilient to that, you could give farty beans to a normal person for weeks and they would have zero acne. It is true that doxy is useful, but that seems unrelated to it's anti-bacterial properties: it acts on the skin similarly to retinol as a molecule to reduce skin inflammation (which is why retinol works so well, at least for me).

So you would give doxy a shot if you were me? Have you experienced doxy?

 

[EIRE24]

Yeah retinol is great, but I think he has tried that already and didn't see any improvement.

I'm currently trying haiduts estroban. I've never done high doses of vitamin A. I did see the acne increase with liver intake though but maybe it is unrelated?

 

[jyb]

So you would give doxy a shot if you were me? Have you experienced doxy?

I took doxy for years in my early 20's. I definitely would not recommend it. As soon as you stop, acne comes back and probably worse than before. And over time, doxy may or may not continue to work. I don't think it's a good thing to be taking antibiotics long term. I doubt Ray Peat would recommend doing that, he's extremely cautious about taking most supplements long term. So then what do you do, take it short term? But as I said, as soon as you stop the acne will come back. For me, a safer and equally powerful short term fix that will never fade in intensity is retinol. If I take 50K IU of retinol daily for a few days, I expect to see complete recovery of all existing acne even the large cystic one. Strangely eating beef liver is not effective, I still eat it because I think it has lots of stuff, but not really for acne. Is it caused by a vitamin deficiency? No, maybe not. When I use it like that, I use it like a drug, the molecule reduces skin inflammation. Or maybe I am deficient, and my health or diet is not efficient at storing it and thus it is lost very quickly. I don't know, maybe even the red light I am using are burning the retinol a bit too fast. But what is certain is that diet makes a major difference. When I was doing low fat milk and orange juice (mostly, but also some stuff like liver), I would still get acne often. I didn't want to change because I saw no alternative: when I introduced a new food, I seemingly got more acne, so I thought I had no choice. But in retrospect even that diet sucked, after revamping what and the way I ate (now eating high sat fat and a bit of starch no fruit), the acne got in control. I don't know the specific reason, if it's due to what I read (sat fat being good for liver and gut endotoxin protection) or just the better health I regained. I still occasionally get a bit of it but not every month. But that's without supplementing retinol or doing anything special.

 

[EIRE24]

I took doxy for years in my early 20's. I definitely would not recommend it. As soon as you stop, acne comes back and probably worse than before. And over time, doxy may or may not continue to work. I don't think it's a good thing to be taking antibiotics long term. I doubt Ray Peat would recommend doing that, he's extremely cautious about taking most supplements long term. So then what do you do, take it short term? But as I said, as soon as you stop the acne will come back. For me, a safer and equally powerful short term fix that will never fade in intensity is retinol. If I take 50K IU of retinol daily for a few days, I expect to see complete recovery of all existing acne even the large cystic one. Strangely eating beef liver is not effective, I still eat it because I think it has lots of stuff, but not really for acne. Is it caused by a vitamin deficiency? No, maybe not. When I use it like that, I use it like a drug, the molecule reduces skin inflammation. Or maybe I am deficient, and my health or diet is not efficient at storing it and thus it is lost very quickly. I don't know, maybe even the red light I am using are burning the retinol a bit too fast. But what is certain is that diet makes a major difference. When I was doing low fat milk and orange juice (mostly, but also some stuff like liver), I would still get acne often. I didn't want to change because I saw no alternative: when I introduced a new food, I seemingly got more acne, so I thought I had no choice. But in retrospect even that diet sucked, after revamping what and the way I ate (now eating high sat fat and a bit of starch no fruit), the acne got in control. I don't know the specific reason, if it's due to what I read (sat fat being good for liver and gut endotoxin protection) or just the better health I regained. I still occasionally get a bit of it but not every month. But that's without supplementing retinol or doing anything special.

Interesting about the diet change. So you eat mostly saturated fat and not much carbs anymore or is your diet just more mixed now? What does a day of eating look like for you? I don't drink milk or OJ even though I am going to try getting OJ back in my diet. My skin isn't that oily, in fact it's actually quite dry. I think maybe this could be the cause of the acne by my skin over compensating with more oil production but who knows? Wouldn't more retinol just dry out my face even worse?