I had a sever acne in my teens years and than I was on SAD diet so it's really hard to tell what was the reason. When I went vegetarian my acne stopped but I developed lots of other skin problems (dry skin fyungi infections, etc.) so it was not very good trade-off. I was eating fat (olive oil, dairy, nuts) while being vegetarian so fat is not responsible for everything. Now on low carb when I experimented with very high fat dietes ( more than 80% of cal) I always deveolped acne. It can be explained two ways: - fat itself caused more oil production (as matesz explained) - high levels of stress hormones/insuline due to deep ketosis. In traditional medicines skin problems are linked to kidney inefficiency so skin takes the role of getting rid of toxins. Maybe So to conclude I think any diet which is not balanced for an individual creates some toxicity in the body and may manifest itself as skin problems. >From: Todd Moody <[log in to unmask]> >Reply-To: Paleolithic Eating Support List <[log in to unmask]> >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Re: [P-F] Acne >Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 14:18:59 -0400 > >On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Amadeus Schmidt wrote: > > > >What is the mechanism by which dietary fats increase oil > > >production in the skin? Is it known? > > > > I'd tend to incriminate the inflammational response of wrong >eicosanoids. > >That would be my guess, too, but is increased oil production >actually a sign of inflammation? For that matter, what is the >relation between skin oils and acne? > >For the record, I also had a very bad time with acne as an >adolescent. In my case, I had large boils all over my back, >which remains heavily scarred to this day. These boils, in fact, >kept me from being drafted during the Vietnam conflict, although >my lottery number was 8. When I had my draft physical I fully >expected to be enlisted; I was pleasantly shocked to learn that, >in the opinion of the army doctor, I could not carry a backpack, >due to the likelihood of bleeding and massive infection. In >fact, the boils were bad enough that sometimes just the friction >from my shirt was sufficient to break them and cause them to >bleed -- an embarrassing predicament for an awkward high school >kid, or anyone else. > >We tried a number of dietary interventions, but they did not >help. What did help, it seemed, was sunlight, and perhaps salt >water. A few days at the beach really seemed to help to heal the >condition. > >I note, however, that if I consume a large quantity of nuts over >a period of days, I will still respond with boils, though not >with anything approaching their former severity. It could be the >omega imbalance in the nut oils, except for the fact that >walnuts, which are not so imbalanced, are no better. > >Todd Moody >[log in to unmask] _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.