What you really need to Build Strong Bones & Have Clear Skin is Vitamin D!

Do you want the expensive, temporary treatments vs. long term health promoting solutions and prevention?

Vitamin D for Acne

Acne is a skin condition characterized by hyperproliferation of skin cells. The cell turnover rate in acne prone skin is just right to encourage plugs that don't have enough momentum to be cleared out before new skin cells are building up. Which leads us to treatments.

Accutane works by actually slowing the rate of skin cell turn over.  Vitamin D also inhibits hyperproliferation, and as such, has implications for the treatment of acne in the same way that accutane does. Fortunately, Vitamin D doesn't have the side effects accutane has, and is in fact rather necessary for health, which cannot be said for accutane.

Retinoids help acne (and signs of aging) by increasing cell turnover allowing the pore to clear itself faster, and not giving the pore enough time to form a plug. However, the problem with this is that it can be irritating and makes you more sensitive to sun.

Many medications that speed skin cell turnover rates are also keratiolytic, meaning they break down keratin which keeps dead skin cells attached to one another rather than exfoliate freely. So they break up the plugs and allow dead skin cells to be released from the skin surface. Sulfur and Salicylic Acid are examples of  topical keratiolytic agents. And you can get sulfur via DIY recipes from foods in our kitchen such as a Turmeric & yogurt mask. A probiotic in yogurt also boosts ceramide production.

Now, if you slow the skin cell turnover rate, it will take longer for existing plugs to clear, but as they do, the cell turnover rate is not prolific enough to form a new plug. This is why accutane takes a long time to see results.. But the results are often not permanent. 

Vitamin D for Bones

If you eat a good diet, it's highly unlikely you are deficient in calcium even if you don't drink milk. There is plenty of calcium in many other foods such as sardines with bones, broccoli, greens & almonds. 1 cup of steamed collards and 1 cup of cow's milk are nearly identical in terms of calcium (with collards providing 266 milligrams and cow's milk providing 276 milligrams). And 100 calories worth of spinach provides you with twice as much calcium as 100 calories worth of yogurt.

In fact, too much calcium builds brittle bones so supplementation is not beneficial.  It's far more likely you are deficient in the other nutrients needed to use calcium and to make strong bones such as Vitamin D, Vitamin K and Magnesium. And those seeds & greens mentioned above are great sources of Magnesium while the greens also supply Vitamin K1. The sardines provide some vitamin D.

Also, your body uses Calcium to maintain the acid/alkaline balance (called pH) in the blood. When blood pH starts getting low, it takes the calcium out of your bones to bring the PH back up.  The Phosphoric acid in Soft Drinks and high salt are two things diet habits that will cause this to happen.

Get Your Vitamin D

Supplement at least 1-3,000 IU per day. But try to get it for free from the sun when you can! So get outside. Your skin manufactures vitamin D in response to ultraviolet (UVB) light.  It only takes about 15 minutes for the body to make vitamin D,  but you need to do it when the sun is high in the sky and you need more than arms & face exposed.  They say you make most vitamin D in your torso, but I've not found an explanation for that. Is it simply because the torso is bigger?  Once you've made some vitamin D, cover up. Cover up with a hat & sleeves.

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=nutrient&dbid=45

My Skin Healthy Lunch & Active agents, the effective skin care - vitamins, oils & more

My Skin Healthy Superfood Lunch 

Sweet Potatoes with Wilted Spinach, Olive Oil & a little Cotija Cheese. And of course, my favorite spice blend for sweet potatoes, cinnamon, Cayenne & salt. I've started adding turmeric to the blend to get more into my diet.  The Beta Carotene in the sweet potatoes & greens is converted to retinoids in your skin. 

			The excerpt below is from a German skin care product manufacturer's website.  At times, the translations are a bit funny, but it seems to be a valuable resource for information on skin function and skin care ingredients.Some of which, you should have in your kitchen to make fresh products with no need for preservatives & emulsifyers that dry skin. Active agents, the effective skin care - vitamins, oils & more From A like allantoin to Z like zinc. There is a multitude of active agents on the market either as substances to be used for cosmetics or substances contained in cosmetics. Effects as well as efficacy depend on various factors which will be described in detail in the following article. Before the active agent can become effective a number of prerequisites have to be met as for instance its concentration in the product should be adequate, its release out of the cream base has to be ensured as well as the transport to its destination to start its activity. All these prerequisites also demand for an appropriate packaging. Thus, vitamins are most effective if they are not free but encapsulated as esters in liposomes or nanoparticles in order to be released by enzymatic hydrolysis after penetrating into the deeper skin layers. Vitamin C for example can be encapsulated in nanoparticles as a fat-soluble palmitic acid ester and in liposomes as a water-soluble phosphate ester. In both cases, after their hydrolysis there will be only substances released which are also natural components of the skin. Continue

My Acne Story - 30 Years Before I Discovered Diet Would Clear My Skin

It just occurred to me that I should tell you about myself.   So, here goes.  I began getting acne at age 10. Fifth Grade. Just when kids are starting to enter their mean phase. It began on my forehead as teen acne often does. To the best of my recollection and a few photos, it was pretty inflamed probably because I picked at it.  I wasn't taken to a dermatologist until my later teens when I began the antibiotics and harsh topicals that never helped.   Prior to that my mother thought I just needed to wash my face. My skin was grotesquely oily.  I'd feel like my skin was melting before the end of the school day.  I began getting it all over my face, chest, back, upper arms, neck.  So for about 10 years, I saw various dermatologists who gave me various antibiotics and topicals none of which ever helped. Finally I tried accutane, but two courses also did nothing except give me chapped lips.  So I mostly gave up for many years after that.

When I was about 25, I had a coworker who had perfect skin except for occasional nodules on her chin. One day she pointed them out saying she 'had two big glasses of orange juice at breakfasts his weekend and look at my skin!!'  I had been having oranges everyday as an afternoon snack and my skin had gotten worse.   So I avoided oranges and most other citrus and the vast majority of my giant inflamed nodules went away.  It would be many more years before I would figure out that while I could have lemons and Persian limes, I was intolerant to key limes which I randomly bought and so I had nodules off and on.  And I still had grotesquely oily skin and other forms of acne on my face, chest and back.  Oh, and then I developed rosacea in my late 20s.

Note: Nodules, along with cysts, are considered the two most severe, disfiguring forms of acne. Big, red and slow to heal.  I usually refer to them both as cysts as people are more familiar with that term, but technically I got nodules which unlike cysts, don't contain pus.

Also Note:  I am not suggesting that oranges cause acne in everyone and that everyone should avoid them.  But it is fairly common to be allergic to citrus and it's something you might test for yourself. I have encountered quite a few others that also break out in cysts or nodules from citrus. And in fact, I have a suspicion that this type of acne is a reaction to some kind of food or perhaps environmental intolerance and not true acne at all. Especially if they appear in the same part of your face or body over and over.  Remind me to explain to you about delayed type allergic response and the various antibodies involved in your immune response besides those that cause the immediate reactions most people are familiar with and all most allergists are concerned about. 

Also, Just so you know, the citrus caused nodules primarily all along my hairline, jawline and neck, but I also got them elsewhere and have the scars to prove it. I think different citrus cause my acne in different places. When I tried having a tangerine a couple of years ago, I got one on my scar covered temples and I hadn't had a pimple there in many years.  (Your temples scar easily)

Then, nearing my 40th birthday, and shortly after my now ex-husband was diagnosed with diabetes, I started learning about diet and the post prandial affects of a high glycemic meal and the importance of various nutrients.  And I just 'got' that we can not be eating this way.  If we hadn't invented added sugar and refined carbs, we would almost never elevate our insulin the way the typical American does today.  The Standard American Diet aka SAD diet has become incredibly bad and is the root cause of most of the degenerative diseases that have become some of the fasted spreading diseases in history.  And they are self inflicted.

So, despite being a Coke-aholic, I quit drinking it and any other sugary drink cold turkey and began improving my diet, removing empty calories in favor of the most nutrient dense foods.  My skin cleared completely in less than two months!!  It was only after this that I could make the key lime connection. Still, the nodules I got from the key limes were much smaller, much less inflamed and much faster to heal due to my anti-inflammatory and nutrient rich diet habits.  And as a bonus, this diet also keeps my rosacea under control.

I now don't follow a perfect diet. Just a mostly very, very good diet.  I cheat pretty often, daily in fact. But most of my meals are very nutrient rich and low glycemic.  The only thing I'm strict about is never drinking sugar.  And I keep my skin clear most of the time and my skin is now just on the slightly oily side and glowing.

(Remind me to also tell you about sebum quality that makes the difference between sebum that protects skin and makes it glow versus sebum that looks greasy and clogs pores.)

Be sure to see my prior posts about anti-inflammatory diets, the damage caused by excess sugar, and my basic How to eat for clear skin.

Resolve to Take Charge of your Health and Your Skin. Eat right. Sleep right. And move right.

All these things are so important for your health. And for your skin.  We've discussed how to eat right at length and touched moving right, but for a reminder move around a lot every day. Now. About sleep.

Yes, sleep affects acne and aging of skin.

So much is timed by a proper wake sleep cycle, including the production and release of hormones. All kinds of hormones.  And hormones are what control how your body functions.They are your metabolism.

Sleep affects insulin sensitivity

Lack of sleep plays just as important a role in developing diabetes as diet and obesity. The connection has been known for several years, but this past fall researchers discovered that lack of sleep reduces insulin sensitivity in fat cells by 30%.1   And remember, elevated blood sugar and insulin stimulates the excess hormones, over production of skin cells and chronic silent inflammation that lead to acne formation and loss of elasticity in skin.2

And speaking of obesity, sleep also negatively affects leptin and ghrelen which stimulate appetite and let your brain know you are full. People who sleep less, often weigh more. Besides the leptin/ghrelin thing, when you are less tired, you are less likely to crave those quick energy sugary refined carbs.

And speaking of chronic inflammation, people with poor quality sleep or sleep deprivation exhibit increased levels of interleukin-6 (IL6), the chemical that causes inflammation throughout the body.3 Start browsing through studies on acne and you'll find talk about IL6 everywhere!

And of course, lack of sleep affects your mood and ability to cope with stress, brain function and more.4  But we'll have to explore those things in another post.

So, You need to sleep well. And doing so requires regular exposure to bright light and to darkness.

Get outside during the day!

Bright light stimulates the pituitary and hypothalamus and thus influences the levels of nearly every hormone in your body.  And by bright light, I mean going outdoors.  Even the bright fluorescent office lights aren't enough.  Ever notice how hard it is to read your laptop or tablet display outdoors, even in the shade?  That's because it's brighter out there.  This bright light stimulates seratonin production.

Seratonin is a neurotransmitter responsible for the regulation of mood, appetite, and sleep and has some influence on cognitive functions involving  memory and learning.  This bright light exposure is step one to getting a good night sleep.

Bright light exposure even affects your digestion 5  We are meant to be outdoors. Try to get outdoors before or during lunchtime. Walk to lunch and eat outside if possible.

While you are at it, try to spend some of your outdoor time exposed to the sun to produce vitamin D, a vitamin that's really a hormone and incredibly important to the immune system, bone formation and more. And one of the many things it affects is how skin cells are formed and shed, which means it affects acne.

Avoid artificial light at night!

Reduce exposure to artificial light at night.  Darkness signals that it's time to start converting that seratonin to melatonin, the neurotransmitter that puts you to sleep and keeps you asleep.  Dim the lights in the evening. Avoid blue tone lights in particular, such as that coming from your computer screen.  If you need to work into the evening, there are filters and software that can change the light hitting your eyes to a reddish tint that won't interfere with melatonin conversion.  F.lux is free downloadable software that automatically changes the tone of the light on your monitor to red each evening near sunset.

Sleep in complete darkness and do not turn on lights if you get up during the night. You'll stop the melatonin!

The Circadian Cycle

This daily cycle of exposure to bright light in the daytime and darkness at night is called your circadian cycle or rhythm.  And it regulates so many processes in your body.  You want to mimic as natural a cycle as you possibly can.  Spending all day indoors in dim light and nights in artificial light muddy up the whole seratonin/melatonin cycle making you feel fatigued during the day and impairing your ability to sleep at night. If you find it difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep at night no matter how tired you are, look to your circadian cycle.

1 http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/251504.php
2 http://dietforclearskin.blogspot.com/2012/12/chronic-silent-inflammation-is-aging.html
3 http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/85/10/3597.full
4 Scientists Finding Out What Losing Sleep Does to a Body
5  Effects of dim or bright-light exposure during the daytime on human gastrointestinal activity.

Good Things for Sleep

-Keep a regular sleep schedule with an early bedtime. Mimic the natural pre-electricity age as much as possible.
-Get plenty of bright light, preferably sunlight, during the day. Get outside. Do it in the morning, before lunch and before you get that afternoon slump. 
-Slow down and relax in evenings. No exercise within 3-4 hours of bedtime.
-Darkness at night. Dim lighting in evening. Sleep in complete darkness. Again, mimic nature as much as possible. Avoid the blue light from electronics. Don't turn on lights if you get up during the night. Get dim night lights for bathroom if you must.
-Exercise during the day to very early evening. Not within a few hours of bedtime. But do stretch and try some deep breathing before bed.
-Wear socks to bed. warm feet and hands cause blood vessels to enlarge, allowing more heat to escape your body, which in turn lowers your core temperature faster. 
-Shower or bathe before bed. Also about body temp, but also just plain makes you feel better. 
-Eat dinner early and have only a very small snack of some sleep enhancing food near bedtime. 
-Consume nutrients that boost seratonin production:
---methionine, folate, B12, B6, TMG (betaine), zinc, C, calcium, magnesium and potassium. And of course, the amino acid tryptophan. Foods containing tryptophan or melatonin include banana, dairy products, oats, rice, pumpkin/sunflower seeds and any complete protein. Consume some early in the day to produce seratonin.

Magnesium also relaxes muscles and affects the  function of the pineal gland that detects light and dark. A great way to get it is via an epsom salt bath. Epsom salts are magnesium sulfide.The magnesium is absorbed through the skin and the sulfur is healing for skin problems, including acne.

Also try chamomile tea to help you relax in the evenings. And green tea in the daytime.  Green tea is one of the richest sources of L-Theanine which supports the production of GABA which helps you deal with stress.   But because of the caffeine, avoid it in the afternoon and evening.

Diet and Habits for Clear Skin: The Basics

Follow a Good, Anti-inflammatory Diet

In general, what you want is a nutrient dense, blood sugar stabilizing, anti-inflammatory diet that doesn't include anything you have an intolerance for. And you need to sleep well, keep as natural as possible circadian rhythm, manage stress and be physically active.  This is not just for acne.  It is anti-aging and good for everything that ails you. It can prevent conditions you didn't even know you were developing.

Keep all meals, drinks and snacks low to moderate glycemic load.

It's the impact of the meal that matters, not each and every food. Never drink or snack on sugar without plenty of fiber and fat to lower the glycemic impact. 

Eat real, whole nutrient dense food. 

Limit/avoid sugar, grains-especially gluten grains and refined grain products, hydrogenated/trans fats (margarine, crisco, most fried foods, corn & veggie oil). This means avoiding most commercially prepared foods.

Also limit dairy, especially unfermented and especially from cows. Milk contains hormones meant to make tons of things happen in a rapidly growing infant's body. This causes bad things in our no longer rapidly growing post-adolescent bodies.

The most anti-inflammatory foods are plant foods that are not grains and fish. 

Have lots of veggies, fruit, herbs, teas, and spices. Try to have only products from pastured animals as much as possible. High omega 3 fish like wild salmon, sardines, herring. Farmed trout is also ok depending on where it's from, but avoid farmed salmon.

The most inflammatory foods/meals are anything that spikes your blood sugar/insulin, anything you have an intolerance for, trans fats and high omega 6 sources like grains, grain oils, and products from grain fed animals.

Follow an elimination diet to determine any intolerances you may have.

 Either follow a very hypoallergenic diet for a couple months, then methodically add foods back in, or methodically eliminate foods starting with the most commonly problematic ones such as grains, nuts, peanuts, soy, eggs, citrus, shellfish, dairy, etc. Perfectly healthy foods could be causing your breakouts.

Try completely avoiding gluten grains and dairy for at least a month. And even if you notice no improvement, they should not be a big part of your diet. Dairy always affects acne for a number of reasons and gluten isn't good for anyone, causing serious harm for some people, and is usually part of some high glycemic food anyway.  Grain products are empty or nearly empty calories. Don't fill up on them.

Consider Special Health Issues you may have.

And then maybe you need to pay extra attention with supplements, foods and habits to address any issue you might have like gut permeability and other digestion issues, poor liver or adrenal function. Diet and lifestyle habits such as proper sleep,stress management and fitness level affect everyone's acne and can help everyone's acne. Some people just have to work harder to figure out what they need do.

For details on all of the above, visit my thread on this discussion forum where I've been participating for years: http://www.acne.org/messageboard/index.php/topic/230714-good-things-for-the-many-factors-that-lead-to-acne/