Chocolate causes acne.
Your pillow case is making your acne worse.
You should use toothpaste on your zit.
Which is fact? Which is fiction?
Today I’m going to give you insight on 4 acne clearing myths and 4 acne clearing truths to help you start to eliminate some confusion that I know can come when you start to try to heal your acne naturally.
4 Acne Myths:
Acne Myth #1: You don’t watch your face enough.
I used to hate this comment. My dad would ask: “Jilly, did you wash your face last night?” (in his crazy Boston accent) and I would legit, almost lose my mind on him.
Here’s the real deal on “washing your face”:
One of the contributing factors to the formation of acne is the bacteria on our face. It’s called Propionibacterium acnes and it’s usually all over da place.
If you take a look at this article, it goes super in depth on all of the different ways that this bacteria can create acne, but the most important sentence I took from it is: P. acnes bacteria are partially responsible for acne, but not completely.
This article also hits on the fact that one of the main causes for the “activation” of the bacteria is systemic inflammation- cause by so many different things as well.
There isn’t much that you can do about it to be honest- there are creepy crawlies all over the face all the time (I know, gross, I’ll stop) but its important to see face washing as a PART of the acne clearing journey, not the whole thing.
What can you do:
If you have oily skin that is breaking out- and you still want to wash your face- here are two key words to look for in a cleanser:
*Oil free– if you’re already having an excess of oil going on, you don’t want to add more to this issue.
*Non-comedogenic– this means that this product won’t “clog” your pores.
*Avoid products with any type of like, “beads” or “exfoliation” properties in them. They will most likely only irritate your skin and make any acne worse.
Also, check out this article on how to wash your face with acne for some extra tips on how to cleanse:)
Acne Myth #2: You “touch your face too much”.
Again, see above.
This CAN make it worse, yes, 100%, but only if you’re “picking” your skin a lot.
If you’re picking at your skin a lot, you’re most likely going to push any bacteria/oil deeper into your skin and it will make it worse- so do not PICK, but just general “touching” (like, if you have an itch, etc.), isn’t going to have some epically large, monumental impact on your acne.
Acne Myth #3: You have “dirt on your pillow”.
This one. I can’t with this one. Terrible.
Ok, ok, ok. I’ll calm down.
Let’s say you haven’t changed your pillow case in like, 2 months – that COULD be causing a slight issue for you in that, there is a ton of bacteria on the actual pillow, but other than that, this is not going to have a huge impact.
Change your pillow case 1X a week, make sure it’s 100% cotton or close to that amount, and rest easy. You do not have acne because your pillow is dirty.
Acne Myth #4: Chocolate causes acne.
It’s not the chocolate. It’s the sugar IN the chocolate that is most likely causing your acne problems.
See below. We shall discuss this further, shortly 🙂
4 Acne Truths:
Acne Truth #1: Those skittles you’re noshing on right now? They could be making you break out.
As you can tell by the name of this site and basically my entire philosophy – I truly believe that what you put in your body becomes 70-90% of what your skin looks like.
In my research, as well as experiencing what happened with my own skin, blood sugar has an extremely powerful affect on your skin because high blood sugar can cause a lot of overall inflammation.
Here’s why:
As the sugar enters your digestive system, its converted into glucose, which at the same time triggers our pancreas to begin releasing insulin in the bloodstream.
Insulin has many different functions but one of the main functions is to regulate this glucose that’s now in your blood and help it stay within a normal range. It also helps store extra fuel as fat; insulin regulates your blood sugar.
Now, as you can tell, this process is normally natural, it’s healthy, and when in balance its the sign of a body doing good work.
However, it’s the abuse of this process that gets us into trouble. The more sugar you add into your blood stream, the more insulin needs to be secreted.
This can lead to chronic elevation of insulin levels, and at a certain point, this can cause cells to stop responding to the insulin. Which then leads to insulin resistance and high blood sugar – and in worse cases, diabetes.
So, how does this alllll affect our skin? (<—– I know you’re asking yourself this question).
When you have higher levels of blood sugar than you should, here are just a few problems you can encounter when it comes to your acne:
- When your insulin levels spike, so when you’ve just eaten a piece of chocolate cake, it causes a “burst of inflammation” throughout your whole body. This inflammation has a deep affect on your skin on the whole – exacerbating any current inflammation you already have, like acne.
- When you have high levels of blood sugar — or too much glucose in your bloodstream — your body tries to remove the excess by excreting it in your urine. It takes water to make urine, which leads to a loss of moisture in your body. With this loss of fluid comes a loss of moisture in your skin, leaving it dry and easily prone to cracking. Cracks in your skin invite infection because they make it easier for germs to get in.
- Digested sugar also permanently attaches to the collagen in your skin through a process known as glycation. This process, glycation, can also exacerbate skin conditions like acne and rosacea.
So… overall, eating a lot of sugar can have a dramatic inflammatory affect on your body.
You are what you eat, love:)
Acne Truth #2: Your pooper has a MAJOR effect on your skin.
If you’re not going the bathroom enough, we’ve got a major problemo.
I wrote a post on the vitamins you should be taking to help support the clearest skin possible, and one of the vitamins that I absolutely INSIST on you taking when you’re dealing with troubled skin are probiotics.
When your digestion is off; when you have food allergies, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, diarrhea, etc. there is probably a whole host of things that are contributing to your breakouts.
You’re probably not absorbing the essential vitamins you need for acne clearing (zinc, being very important), you liver may not be processing out toxins efficiently enough and you may be storing really bad stuffs in your colon (that your body needs to process out somehow- so it often uses your skin).
Take a probiotic for digestive support. If you need more info on this, check out two of my fav posts on Vitamins for Acne Part 1 and Vitamins for Acne Part 2 here.
Acne Truth #3: Using creams/moisturizers etc. is what is causing your acne.
OK, this one is kinda tricky. While I don’t think one cream can like, make you breakout for years, if you’re using the wrong products for your skin, they actually could be making it worse.
Let’s say you have a combination of oily/dry/sensitive skin with a lot of breakouts.
Because you’re breaking out, you apply some salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide to the breakout over night. (This dries it out and sends a signal to your body that your skin is dry).
Then, in the AM, you use a pretty harsh scrub that also dries your skin out.
By mid morning, you’ll have very dry skin.
It’ll be irritated and grumpy and it will also start telling your bod that it needs moisture, which will naturally cause your body to create more sebum (oil) for your skin.
That sebum will start to clog your pores (because there is too much) which will create more acne for you.
Honestly, by the end of my acne clearing journey, I didn’t wash my face- I would just splash water on it in the AM and PM, and I would use this oil free moisturizer.
It was a regime that was light enough to keep my skin healthy (in spite of my acne) but wasn’t CAUSING more acne.
(Also, like I mentioned above, check this article out on how to wash your face with acne for more tips.)
Acne Truth #4: Stress can cause acne.
100 million bajillion percent this is true.
Stress can have a really profound effect on your skin in a pretty large way – and it isn’t always obvious.
Stress increases glucocorticoid production, which can lead to abnormalities in skin structure and function, exacerbating conditions like acne.
So that you have an idea of what it means on a more micro level- here is a quick explanation:
When you’re stressed out – chemical messengers are sent to your adrenal glands.
The adrenals are super important in this reaction because, once they get wind that there is a problem, they start to pump out powerful steroids like cortisol and adrenaline.
The release of the stress hormone cortisol is especially important to our acne issues, because this release functions mainly to raise glucose levels to “energize your bod.” (Ding ding ding! This ultimately raises your blood sugar levels, which as we already know, we don’t want!)
This combo of adrenaline, high blood sugar and cortisol are kinda a lethal combination for your acne problems.
So what can you do?
Try this exercise/meditation combo:
Do some type of physical workout that feels really good to you. It can be walking, yoga, running, kickboxing, anything that floats your boat, really. Then, after your exercise, you’re going to mediate for 10 minutes. Here is an easy meditation practice that I used when I first started meditating to get in the groove:
Grab your ipod/listening device and put your headphones in – with a really calming song. Pick two words that you want to feel today; for example peace and freedom.
I want you to spend the next 10 minutes deeply breathing for 10 minutes…. As you breathe in, inhale the first word. As you breathe out, exhale the second. They’re both words you’re aspiring to feel.
I’ve found this meditation exercise to be really powerful because it’s simple, it doesn’t have a lot of complicated directions and overall is just super calming. (If you want more info on meditation, my FAVORITE book is right here. It totally transformed my meditation practice.)
What is the biggest acne myth that you’ve ever heard? Leave me a comment and let me know below!!!
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