Bfg comments: I have had acne both as an adult and as a teenager. As a teenager I would get deep cysts in my chin that hurt and a few pimples on my forehead and nose, mostly. As an adult, I can tell you that the acne is food related. I get what I would call "sugar zits". After a heavy dose of sweets, I break out. My children have acne/ adult acne. Worse than I ever had it. Why? My ex-husband had acne but it stopped for him. As an adult he rarely broke out. So why do my adult children have acne?  It is not an inherited condition. If you look at pictures of relatives from the past, adult acne was not really common in our ancestors. But just look around now! It is so common; it is just "accepted" as a current malady.

I don't think you can really get rid of acne by using topical creams or cleansers. I don't think it is caused by lack of washing. I think acne has an internal cause. It could be parasites in the skin that certain foods or lack of certain food, cause one to break out.

Check out my "history timeline" and look at everything that has changed just since WWII. The "autoimmune" illnesses have increased dramatically.

What do I think causes acne?  I think there are parasites in the skin that go berserk because of our bad diets. Not just what we do eat, but also what we don't eat. So to clear up acne, we need to

1. Clean up our diets and eliminate that "modern" chemically altered food.

2. Add back the traditional foods that people in the area you live ate regularly. This is really difficult. Do the best you can.

3. Clean out the toxins in the body. And clean up your environment to eliminate the source of new toxins.

4. Possibly take steps to kill the parasites living in the body. I like to electrocute them if possible!

You really can get rid of acne, naturally. How? By learning about the causes of acne and how to rebalance the body. By understanding that applying harsh chemicals to the skin can actually exacerbate the skin's natural oil production and make acne worse. Why is it that people who don't eat a Western diet don't have acne?

What Causes Acne? Behind The Science

Behind The Science:
What most people are yet to discover (scientists included) is that acne is the result of unhealthy toxins building up in the body. People generally put all kinds of unhealthy food and drinks with little or no nutritional value into their body and while the body can process a certain amount of toxins, this overloads the its digestive process and causes the toxins to be disposed of throughout the body.

It is important to know that a healthy body is extremely immune to infections, bacteria and even viruses of all kinds. This is why some people are more prone to illness than others. This has been known by many to be one of the core reasons for cancer, of which, in noted cases, only a change in diet was required to eliminate the cancer.

And it is also the root cause of acne.

It’s all based on pH balance.

“What is pH balance?” I hear you ask. The human body relies on a delicate balance of acid and alkali. Some of you will remember these terms from Chemistry class in high school. The pH (potential of Hydrogen) of any substance is measured in a range from 0 to 14; 0 being the most acidic, 14 being the most alkaline and 7 being neutral. Water is a neutral substance having a pH of exactly 7. And since the human body is about 75% water, the human body also needs to be as neutral as possible.

Everything we put into our body has a pH level. These days, the absolute majority of food available is over acidic. From your everyday processed foods in supermarkets like pies and pasta, to the take away and fried foods available on every major street in the world. All of these foods have an acidic effect on the body and cause excess toxins to build up.

http://www.myacnereview.com/2006/10/29/what-causes-acne-behind-the-science/

The First Step to Curing Acne

So now that we have established the root cause of acne, how do we deal with it? The first step is to cleanse your body of the excess acid and toxins. There are a number of ways to do this and yes, you can use enemas and products you can buy at a pharmacy but if it’s not natural then it will probably do more harm than good. I find that the simplest way to cleanse the excess toxins from your body is to go on a 3-Day Raw Vegetable Fast. This, quite simply, involves eating nothing but fresh raw vegetables for a period of 3 days. It does not make a huge difference which vegetables you use but the basic rule is the greener a vegetable is the better it is for your pH level.

I personally use cucumbers as my largest source of vegetables. They taste great, are extremely alkalizing, and they are easy to carry with you wherever you go. In my regular diet I will eat 5-6 cucumbers a day for snacks. During a cleansing period, I will eat more than 10 on any given day. Some of you may not like cucumbers and that is fine. Celery and tomatoes are good alternatives, but I find them slightly more difficult to eat in large numbers.

The key is to find a raw vegetable that you can eat on a large scale or to find a salad that is easy for you to make. Remember that you will need a lot of these types of foods from now on so make sure you find something that is easy to find and prepare. For those of you with particularly fast metabolisms, you may find it difficult at first to eat only raw vegetables. I strongly recommend using vitamin supplements and/or ‘green’ drinks to assist with your daily nutritional requirements, especially during the cleansing period.

Acne
"The more severe cases of acne cover parts of the body as well as face and can pit the face so badly there is hardly any clear skin left.

"In ten days you can reverse this, so most of the skin is beautifully clear. ... I inevitably find Trichinebba, one of the four common roundworms that infect humans...."

(From: "The Cure for All Diseases", p. 188-195; copyright notice)

[There is too much information to put here. 

I recommend buying her book and visiting her website. The book is available free on line - bfg]

http://www.drclark.net/info/skin.htm

http://www.mercola.com/2003/aug/23/acne.htm

"Acne affects about 85 percent of the population at some time in their life and is the most common skin disease treated by dermatologists. Most teens get the type of acne called acne vulgaris, which can appear on the face, neck, shoulders, back and chest.

"Most doctors and dermatologists say that acne is not related to diet, but I can confidently tell you that there is indeed a link--and a strong one at that. In my own practice, most patients’ acne clears up when they follow the no-grain diet described in my nutrition plan and further explained in my new book. As I struggled with acne for the first 40 years of my life, I wish I would have known this information when I was younger. However, since I have come to understand the influence of grains on health, acne has been a non-issue for me.

"Why is a no-grain diet beneficial for acne? [white flour is also highly acidic... so you are reducing the acid load that your body has to deal with - bfg]

"Eating refined carbohydrates and sugar leads to a surge of insulin and an insulin-like growth factor called IGF-1 in your body. This can lead to an excess of male hormones, which cause pores in the skin to secrete sebum, a greasy substance that attracts acne-promoting bacteria. Additionally, IGF-1 causes skin cells known as keratinocytes to multiply, a process that is associated with acne.

"Some say acne is a disease of Western civilization because studies have found that the condition is virtually nonexistent in non-westernized societies, where refined carbohydrates and sugar are rarely eaten. For instance, in one study that looked at acne cases in islanders of Papua New Guinea and hunter-gatherers of Paraguay, no acne cases were found in either group. The findings, which are in-line with many other studies, make a strong case for the significant role of environmental factors, such as diet, in acne.

"Limiting grains is an integral step toward optimizing your health. The more we study the influence of grains, and their secondary consequences on insulin, the more we will find that their pervasive influences touch nearly every aspect of our health.

"A Healthy Diet Can’t be "Sold"

"So you may be wondering why doctors typically say diet does not influence acne. Well, doctors cannot sell you a healthy diet, and they are under strong influence by the drug companies to prescribe expensive and sometimes harmful topical acne creams and antibiotics. No one is going to get rich from recommending a healthy diet to heal acne, except maybe you when you start saving money that you were spending on acne medications.

"Further, many dermatologists prescribe long-term antibiotic treatments for acne. This can be especially problematic since every time you take an antibiotic, you kill beneficial bacteria along with the problematic bacteria. This can lead to many secondary conditions, such as yeast overgrowth. "

http://www.mercola.com/2002/dec/25/bread_acne.htm