System

This routine is likely to dramatically reduce your acne.  For everyone who has followed it reasonably well, acne has improved.  There is a good chance that you can get away with following only small parts of the routine:  Supplement Vitamin D, Boron, Vitamin B Complex & Zinc, reduce sugar (even fruit) consumption, eliminate gluten, flour, nuts, soy, dairy, caffeine, fixing your sleep cycle, and being outside (in shade, not in the direct sunlight!) several hours/day will help!

Without further ado, our complete system:

Supplements
The following supplements are far more likely to help than they are to hurt.  There is a reasonable chance that doing nothing but taking nothing but the following supplements and sleeping for 8.5 hours/night will completely cure your acne.

• Zinc (25-50 mgs, 3-4 times per day with each meal). Once you are clear, try scaling this back 50 mgs/day. Too much Zinc can cause copper deficiency and kidney problems. If you are able to get all day sunlight and you eat meat, you might not need any Zinc, or any supplements at all, for that matter.
• Boron (3mgs, 2-3 times per day with meals)
• Vitamin B complex 50 (2-3 times/day with each meal)
• Vitamin D (if you aren’t in the sun for at least 20 minutes/day or you live in a northern area and it’s winter. We recommend a blood test to make sure you are not Vitamin D deficient. With all of the new research about the problems associated with Vitamin D deficiency, we recommend making sure you are never below 50 nmol/L.  6000IUs/day of Vitamin D3 (not D2) should do the trick.
• Less important but potentially helpful:
• Fish Oil (1000 mgs/day. This is questionable with regards to acne, but it does seem likely to help with heart disease)
• A multivitamin (once/day, with a meal).  In lieu of multivitamin, you can take:
• Sellenium (200mcg/day — do not exceed this)
• Chromium Picolinate (200 mcg/day)
• Calcium (500 mgs/day) & Magnesium (250mgs/day)
• Alpha-Lipoic Acid (100 mgs)
• ECGC (Green Tea Extract)

Fix your Melatonin Cycle

There are strong indications, both from science and the documented experiences of hundreds of acne sufferers, that there is correlation between your melatonin cycle and acne.

Melatonin is a naturally occurring compound produced by the pineal gland of the brain. Melatonin levels fluctuate based on a daily cycle, regulating the circadian rhythms of several biological functions. During the day, the brain produces less melatonin and at night melatonin surges. Unfortunately, modern lifestyles usually destroy the melatonin cycle.  When you are indoors, the body thinks it’s evening, so it produces more melatonin than it should to prepare for sleep. At night, a combination of too much light, not going to bed at a regular time, sleeping in past sunrise, and too much melatonin wasted during the day prevent the brain from producing a proper melatonin surge. New schools of thought suggest that a damaged melatonin cycle might cause illnesses including insomnia, depression, acne, cancer, and dementia. The biological functions that are triggered by circadian rhythms are thrown off and don’t function the way they should, leading to all types of problems. For example, many sufferers of carb malabsorption and fruit malabsorption are able to eat fruit and other carbs when they have been in bright sunlight for over an hour, but eating the same foods at night cause indigestion and acid reflux. This is an indication that the melatonin controlled biological rhythms allow different lifestyle choices at different times of day.

However, the point of this website isn’t to provide a detailed scientific analysis of something that isn’t fully understood by our scientists.  We just want to provide a healthy, natural system for reducing (for many, eliminating) acne. Along the way, you might find yourself happier and healthier.

• Go to sleep at the same time every night, preferably around 10pm. This makes it easier for your body to figure out when it’s getting ready for sleep, so it can begin ramping up melatonin production at the right time.
• Sleep >8 hours in a completely and totally dark room.  Any type of light (blinking light on a phone, computer, or smoke detector) can risk disrupting your melatonin cycle.  Sleeping in a walk-in closet, placing aluminum foil on your windows, and installing blackout curtains or blinds are the quickest ways to achieve total darkness.  Remember, though, that any light is too much light. We evolved to sleep in total darkness and wakeup at dawn. If you get up to get to bathroom in the middle of the light, try to do it with the lights off.
• Make sure that you are out and about as much as possible during the day.  Your eyes need to see natural sunlight with no filters (sunglasses, prescription glasses, contact lenses, windows, can all block UVA and other spectrums of light).  When the eyes see natural sunlight, the pineal glands in the brain suppress melatonin.  No one is totally sure if this requires UVA, UVB, or visible light spectrums.  You don’t want to be in the sun most of the time; sitting in the shade and looking into the sky is fine. Ideally, you will spend 10+ hours outside, however the system often works with just an hour in the mornings and an hour at noon. When you sit indoors, the light strength is so weak that your brain thinks that it is evening and begins preparing for sleep by producing melatonin. This all-day mild production of melatonin prevents the brain from producing the necessary spike when you sleep.
• If you can’t get outside enough during the day, buy lightbulbs that produce natural light (as opposed to the white light that typical bulbs produce) and set them up in your workspace. We have seen some indications that this might help the melatonin cycle, although we are still in the progress of fully testing this method.
• Avoid caffeine and other stimulants within 10-12 hours of when you go to bed.  Basically, this means that you can drink caffeine first thing in the morning, but any time after that is likely to disrupt your sleep and melatonin cycle.  If you can eliminate caffeine altogether, you will most likely notice an improvement in the quality of your skin.
• Depending on the time of year and latitude/longitude, get enough direct sunlight on your body to produce Vitamin D.   I cover my face to avoid aging the skin there.  Vitamin D deficiency is highly correlated with various cancers, and there are some indications that it is associated with acne although the mechanism is not fully understood.  Does Vitamin D allow the body to better absorb zinc, produce melatonin, Vitamin B, or simply help on its own? We don’t know.  If you can’t get in the sun, it’s an absolute must that you take a Vitamin D supplement.
• Don’t drink alcohol. Alcohol might help you fall asleep, but it disrupts the second half of your sleep cycle.
• At night, try to keep all the lights off in your house. Spend the last hour or two you are awake in the dimmest light you can function in. We are trying to emulate nature here. If you use a computer, turn the brightness all the way down. Consider wearing sunglasses around the house at night.

Diet

This is far and away the most complex and difficult-to-fix topic. Your best bet is to start with extremes and slowly work various food groups back into your diet. Figuring out what foods cause acne can be extremely difficult because often it is one or more foods in conjunction that either help or hurt acne.  Other factors such as time of day, how well you sleep, how and when you exercise will create additional variables that make it difficult to determine which dietary factors are of greatest importance.  If you have a question about your diet or a particular food, email it to us or post it in the forums section, and we’ll analyze it and report back to you.

These guidelines are in order of importance, in our experience and opinion:

• Eliminate gluten from your diet.  This includes virtually all flour, bread, etc.
• Eliminate as much sugar as possible from your diet. Especially consider eliminating all processed and refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and the like. In general, try to cut back on fruits and other carbs. If you do eat carbs, try to eat them in the bright light, before 2 pm. In the past several years, several studies have linked high sugar diets to acne. Another theory is that eating fruit at night, when your melatonin levels are elevated, can cause carb malabsorption, preventing your body from properly absorbing zinc and other nutrients it needs to sleep properly.
• Eliminate nuts from your diet, including peanuts, which are a legume.
• Eliminate soy from your diet.
• The only oils that should enter your body are extra virgin olive oil and extra virgin coconut oil.  Do not eat anything cooked in vegetable oil, soy oil, or any other kind of oil.  When eating at restaurants, be particularly careful to research the type of oil they cook with.
• Eliminate dairy. Eggs are fine. Studies link milk to acne. It is unknown if this is because of the sugar in dairy, or another factor. If you do eat dairy, try to do it in the daylight, before 2 pm.
• Eat cooked tomatoes in olive oil. This boosts lycopene levels, which reduces your skins sebum (oil) production. Eating tomatoes is good but won’t give you as much lycopene. Drinking tomato juice works as well.
• Eat lots of carrots. This gives you carotenoids, which the body uses to produce as much Vitamin A as it wants/needs.
• Eat broccoli and as many other green vegetables as possible. These nutrient rich foods are anti-inflammatory and very helpful to your body’s fight against acne.
• Eat a low glycemic load diet. Glycemic load is different (although related) to glycemic index. Visit nutritiondata.com to get the glycemic load facts on foods you eat. Studies link high glycemic load diets to acne
• Eat pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds in the evening. This will give your brain the fuel (tryptophan) it needs to produce a proper melatonin surge.
• Experiment with a Paleo diet.
• Lots of water is good, but cut it off in the early evening. You don’t want to have to wake up to go to the bathroom and disrupt your sleep cycle
• Meat is good for acne, especially in the evening. Meat provides your body with zinc and tryptophan.  Meats such as Boar’s Head that have less hormones and preservatives are probably better.
• Try to eat salmon or other deepwater fish 3+ times/week.
• Read about the foods you regularly eat. Nutritiondata.com has helpful information on everything under the sun. The more you learn, the better equipped you will be to make decisions on any given day
• Don’t eat kelp, and watch your iodine consumption.  Be careful with your salt intake. Sea salt is fine, but avoid iodized salt in large doses.

Exercise:
Work out for 35 minutes per day, every day, around 4 hours before you go to bed.  Any form of exercise is likely sufficient although cardio is our choice as it comes closest to emulating the exercise of our ancestors.  Make sure you work out strenuously enough to get your heart beating.  Try to eat meat about an hour before the workout.  The purpose of this exercise is to push tryptophan into the brain, which is fuel for the pineal glands to produce melatonin, and you need tryptophan (from meat or other sources) floating around in the blood stream for this to work.  Don’t exercise within 3 hours of bedtime – you risk setting off the fight or flight instinct in your body and producing anti-sleep hormones that it thinks are necessary to survive.  Why else would you be exercising at night other than to run for survival?  Humans can’t really hunt or do much of value at night; we don’t have night vision.  Night is when we sleep and prepare for sleep. Feel free to exercise more than 30 minutes/day, just make sure any additional exercise comes more than 4 hours before bedtime.  Outdoor exercise is recommended.  Indoor exercise tells the body that it’s evening, when it should really be preparing for sleep, not working out.  The bottom line: If you exercise 4 hours before bed, you’ll sleep better and produce more melatonin.  If you don’t exercise, you won’t absorb all nutrients that are required for proper sleep.

FAQ:

How does exercise prevent acne?

In addition to the benefit of improving your sleep and nightly melatonin production by pushing tryptophan into the brain, exercise likely helps in a number of ways:

• Exercise improves blood circulation, reduces stress, balances your hormones, and probably stimulates hundreds of systems in your body.
• When you exercise, stress hormones are flushed from the body and you become more relaxed and less anxious.
• Exercise helps your body absorb other nutrients in food that it uses to function properly.
• Exercise is good for your overall health, short term and long term.
• Exercise gets the blood flowing and improves blood circulation, reduces stress, balances your hormones, and probably stimulates hundreds of systems in your body.
• Acne is heavily linked with depression (studies show those with acne have 2-3 times the rate of acne in the general population), and exercise is a proven treatment for depression.  Logical thought leads to the possibility that the same thing that causes depression causes acne.  If exercise treats the root cause of depression, it might treat the root cause of acne.
• Exercise is good for your overall health, short term and long term.

Because the mechanisms that cause acne are not fully understood, we strive to create maximum health along with tweaking every acne trigger we can identify in the right direction.

Does sweat cause acne?

Possibly, but probably not.  We don’t really know what causes acne.  Sweat might cause acne if you have clogged pores from topical medicines that dry skin, which clogs pores.  Realistically, no one knows.  It’s the experience of those on this system that sweat is not a problem with acne.

• You are not using topical medications.
• You are following the other steps to the system.

Since the evening exercise is close to bedtime it’s easy to shower and wash your face after you workout without increasing the total number of times per day you wash your face.  Just be sure not to wash again before you go to bed.  Not exercising to avoid sweat seems more likely to produce acne than some sweat coming through your pores.  If you don’t exercise, it is likely that your overall sleep quality will suffer and your acne will be worse.

Misc

• Don’t use topical medications, creams, or take acne medications. These just kill good and bad bacteria alike, damage your skin, and make your body more sensitive to the sun. None of them treat the root cause and you don’t want to stay on them forever. I’m sure you are terrified of the idea of quitting your topical medications, so feel free to continue using them until you develop faith in the acneresearch.org system. With many acne medications, you are likely to break out after you quit using them.
• Wash twice/daily with the most gentle face wash you can find. Acne.org recommends Clean & Clear Foaming Facial Cleanser. Wash and shower with lukewarm or only slightly warm water. You don’t want to irritate and dry out your skin with hot water.
• If your skin is dry, moisturize using jojoba oil or another moisturizer you are comfortable with. Try to use as little as possible.
• If you use sunscreen, attempt to find one that uses Zinc Oxide as the primary ingredient. This blocks UVB and UVA. Avobenzone as an active ingredient works to block UVA, but it breaks down in sunlight (lasts as little as 1 hour) and many users find that it causes them to break out.
• Excellent oral hygiene should help.  Poor oral hygiene causes all sorts of inflammatory conditions and leads your mouth to harbor extra bacteria which can easily make their way to the skin.   Brush after every meal, floss at least twice/day, and I highly recommend a Waterpic. Dentists don’t necessary agree that a Waterpic is better for oral health, but when I floss and then use a Waterpic, I generally find extra gunk (tiny pieces of meat, vegetables, etc) coming out of my mouth and into the sink.
• Men: shave every day
• Make sure your home air ducts are clean. You don’t want to spray dust all over your face all day long, which is what happens when air filters don’t get changed every month. If your air ducts haven’t been regularly changed, you should hire a professional to clean out the entire system.