10 Simple Strategies to Eliminate Acne

Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to my weekly house call, your chance to ask me your questions. And this week's question is, Hey Doc, I have all this acne. I'm an adult. What gives? How come I have it? What can I do about it? And do I really need to take all those drugs and put stuff on my face? Or can I fix it using another approach? Well, you can. That's the good news. And it's the approach of functional medicine, which treats the root causes of the problem, not just covering over with drugs or covering the symptoms. So what are the root causes of acne and why is it so prevalent? Well, it's really increasing. In fact, there are more and more people getting acne, more and more adults getting acne, not just pimply faced teenagers. In fact, 8 million people go see the dermatologist every year for their skin and we spend a billion dollars on skin care products through the prescriptions alone and plus many, many hundreds of millions more for the over-the-counter products. And do they work? Well, a little bit, but they're not dealing with the problem. If you have to keep putting stuff on and on and on, that's not fixing it. That's just covering it over. So what are the real causes of acne? How do we think about it differently? And what can you do? Well, it's an inflammatory condition, and it's a condition of what we call oxidative stress. And these are things that come from the inside usually. And what is the biggest cause of acne? Well, it's what we're eating. it's the food we're eating. So when we eat a diet that's highly processed, it's high in sugar and high in dairy, it's likely to promote acne. In fact, the two biggest things that you could eliminate today that would fix your acne most likely are sugar and flour, because anything that turns to sugar in your body is just like sugar and flour actually is worse than sugar in terms of how it raises your blood sugar. And the second is dairy because it's very hormonally active. So let's go through those two and then we'll go through the other reasons you could have acne. First is sugar. Well, we know sugar increases insulin and insulin increases certain hormones like testosterone and estrogen, which actually promote more acne. It also increases all these other things in your body that create inflammation. So we know that insulin resistance and prediabetes and these conditions actually can drive acne. In fact, there's a condition in women that's called PCOS or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. that is associated with acne as well as hair loss. And we know how bad this problem is for women. They get horrible acne and the cure is fixing their diet and insulin, not putting stuff on their skin. The other big reason is dairy. And dairy is a very hormonally active substance and that's why it can cause acne. So getting rid of dairy, getting rid of sugar, processed foods and all the flour products in your diet can have a profound impact on fixing the problem. But there are other reasons. Food allergies are a huge reason because people have a leaky gut and your gut plays such a role in your health and such a role in your skin health. When you fix your gut, you can fix your skin. So when you eliminate processed foods, that's one thing. But if you eliminate food allergens or food sensitivities, you can often recover from acne. And the most common ones are gluten and dairy, but there's also things like soy and eggs and nuts and sometimes even citrus foods or tomato-based foods, all these can potentially be triggers. So doing an elimination diet is a powerful way to see if you can fix your acne. But also fixing your gut is important. So taking prebiotics and probiotics and digestive enzymes also can be very helpful for acne. So we've got bad diet, sugar and dairy, we've got food allergies and leaky gut, what else can cause a problem? Well, hormonal issues, all kinds of imbalances in estrogen and progesterone. why do we have those? Stress, poor diet, alcohol, even our high sugar diet can cause imbalances in hormones. So eating things like flax seeds and non-GMO whole soy foods can help. Using phytonutrients from plant foods can help. All sorts of tricks we know of how to balance your hormones. So balancing your hormones is key. And lastly, there's nutritional deficiencies. Things like zinc and vitamin A, omega-3 fish oils, all these can help your skin get healthy. It's important to remember you can get healthy from the inside out. You don't have to go from the outside in. Now, sometimes you want to go and put stuff on your skin. That's great. There are wonderful skin care products out there, but make sure they're not toxic. Make sure they don't have all kinds of chemicals in them or irritants or things that cause inflammation. I encourage you to go to SkinDeep, which is the database on Environmental Working Group's website. That's EWG.org. They give you a guide on how to select the best, safest, cleanest skin care products. So remember, if you have acne, it's not coming from the outside, it's coming from the inside. So get working on the inside, follow the steps that I outlined, and learn how to fix your body yourself. You can use the 10-day detox diet. It's a great resource for understanding how to do an elimination diet. It gets rid of dairy, and it can really help you fix your acne. I had so many testimonials of people who did the diet for weight loss, but they mentioned their skin got better, or they were glowing, or their acne went away, so you can have that same result. So if you've enjoyed this video, I encourage you to sign up for my weekly newsletter, House Call with Dr. Hyman. I encourage you to share this with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter, and I encourage you to send me your questions@drhyman.com so next week I might answer your question and make a house call to you.