The Indian herbs Coccinia indica (ivy gourd) might help with acne. Researchers at the Institute of Population Health and Clinical Research in Bangalore, India, found that ivy gourd reduced blood sugar levels by almost 20%.
Swinging blood sugar levels are the root of many evils - including acne. By helping to control blood sugar levels ivy gourd might also help with acne. Might, I have to stress.
There is also some evidence that ginseng and aloe vera might lower blood sugar levels and therefore help with acne.
Some science speak and more info about the topic, please see:
Still, before you get your hopes up and rush to the health store, I have to say the evidence for these herbs is not conclusive. Mostly short-term studies with small sample size.
Like all quick-fixes there’s no guarantee with these herbs. They may or may not help.
None of these herbs will permanently cure your acne, but combine with clear skin lifestyle, as I teach in Clear for Life, they might help you to get clear faster.
Honest review of Chris Gibson’s Ginale skin care line.
Ginale skin care line looks like Chris Gibson’s attempt to enter the lucrative acne product business. So instead of selling you something once he hopes to get his hands on your wallet every month.
I wouldn’t recommend them because they are expensive, risky and, like all quick-fixes, dubious.
Let me tell you why.
When I started researching Ginale it struck me how little information I could find. I could find only few comments and reviews at popular acne and skin care forums.
Perhaps the product is still new, or perhaps there’s another reason for this.
At least I wasn’t greeted with barrage of paid reviews and comments that’s so common with most acne products.
Points for honesty, in that regard, to Mr. Gibson. Because I don’t think he would have paid for the few comments I found. They were all negative, such as this one.
I stopped using the antibiotics and proactive alltogether and bought the book acne free in 3 days. I did the stuff in the book along with acnezine. My face was cleared up. But I thought hey this new Ginale Skin care treatment that Chris Gibson made looks good, and I bought that. Worse thing I have ever done in my whole life. It broke me out completly worse than I have ever had before. I wish I could post before and after pictures of how good my skin looked when I was using Proactive or the Derm stuff.
The products you see below work at the cellular level by healing, hydrating, and renewing your skin like no other product on the market.
This is probably just harmless buffing, but it gives me an excuse for a reality check.
Please understand that none of these products ‘work at the cellular level and heal your skin’. That’s complete and utter BS.
The only thing that can heal your skin is your body. Healing is a complex function. Skin care products, such as Ginale, are inert and very much dead. How could dead substances suddenly achieve complex tasks (that are encoded into your DNA)?
Of course they can’t.
It’s just marketing buff designed to make you believe these products actually do something useful.
And please don’t think Ginale, or any other creams or lotions, can somehow nourish your skin. The nutrients in these are not in a form your cells can use. Nourishment happens from the inside out. Not the outside in.
They can only clean your skin and scrape dead skin cells off.
Sure that’s useful, but do you need 5 bottles for that? Especially at the cost of $85. When a normal soap and baking soda can do the same thing.
And I’ve seen too many complaints about Chris Gibson and his Acne Free in 3 Days to trust anything he says.
I mean, he claims that Acne Free in 3 Days is “Scientifically Proven Way To Permanently Clear Skin In Just Three Days”. On top of that he wants to put you on auto-ship program and send his Ginale skin care products to you every 60 days.
Something stinks here.
At least this time he’s honest about the money back guarantee. At the time of writing the sales page for Ginale reads (emphasis mine):
Better Than Risk-Free 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
As always, your order will be backed by the following better than risk-free 30 day money back guarantee:
“We promise the item(s) being received will be brand new and unopened. If you are not totally satisfied with the quality of the item(s), simply return the item(s) within 30 days of receiving them for a complete refund of the purchase price (less shipping and handling). The item(s) being returned must be unopened (package seals must not be broken) and unused to receive a full refund. Opened or used item(s) are not eligible for a refund.”
http://www.acnefreein3days.com/catalog/ginale.php
So as long as you are willing to order the products and only admire the beautiful package you are eligible for a refund. But if you try the product and find out they stink - tough luck.
Just makes me wonder how do you judge the quality of the items without using them… If you know, please enlighten me.
Finally I noticed that some items in the Ginale package make you sensitive to sunlight. You should avoid sun at all costs, and on top of that one of the jars contain sunscreen.
A bit of sunlight is essential for permanently clear and healthy skin. As I wrote in this post: 4 Ways sun helps with acne.
In my books avoiding sunlight to have a healthy and glowing skin is idiotic. It takes a dermatologist to recommend something like that.
I know this review has been negative. I hope I presented my case and reasons clearly.
I just don’t see a point in paying $85 to support a person with questionable business ethics. Especially since Ginale skin care line won’t offer anything you could find at less than 1/2 price from your local supermarket or health store.
You might as well just flush the money down the toilet. Long term the effect on your skin is the same. And at least you won’t produce 5 bottles of plastic waste doing so.
Real solution to clear and beautiful skin comes from the inside out. It won’t break your bank, but it does take some self-discipline. Get your act together and decide to do it. It’s not that difficult once you decide to do it.
In earlier post I exposed what seems to be a massive scam by Garrett Devore Labs. Read all about it here: Acnexus - smells like a scam.
I just discovered another addition to the scam.
Acne treatment product called Acnetix.
This scam is so bad, it’s almost hilarious. Look at the error they’ve made in the sales letter.
In the sales letter they talk about Acnetix, how wonderful it is and how it’s going to save the world from certain annihilation. But then at the FAQ-section, they suddenly talk about something called Leptirex.
I had to take a screen capture of this before they change it. So here, take a look.
Leptirex is of course a weightloss pill that gets amazingly good reviews at the same sites that say Acnetix and Acnexus are hot selling acne products.
Besides these glaring errors, their all the sales pages look suspiciously similar. They have the same FAQ-sections and follow the same template.
I bet their business model is something like this.
Quickly cook up a new product
Invent an exotic sounding name (Bruunhause, Acnetix, Acnexus, Lepitrex, Freezox, Dermavisu, Reneuvitol… do I need to go on?)
Copy an existing website and try to remember to change the product name
Add it to your ‘independent’ review sites
Create fake accounts at popular forums and review sites and post positive comments about your products, such as this: http://www.acne.org/messageboard/acnetix-t203032.html (notice that that’s suzy8834’s first and only post)
Start selling on eBay
Cash in on desperate people that are willing to hand over their money for false promises printed on a nice looking bottle
Laugh your way to the bank
Lather, rinse, repeat until the FTC hauls your ass in jail.
Please, please, please don’t fall for these scams.
In many ways acne market is like weightloss market. Both are filled with desperate people looking for quick and easy solutions. And in both cases the solution is really simple, but it takes some work and discipline.
Getting clear is really, really, really simple. No secrets or magic required. Acne cannot survive in a body that’s in good health.
It’s so painfully obvious once you get it. And I mean really get it, not just nodding your head and forgetting it after five minutes. Once you get it, you really kick yourself on the ass for wasting years or decades with quick-fixes, when you could have been permanently clear in few months.
You can do it all by yourself. You don’t need to buy anything to get clear. Not even my book Clear for Life.
But if you are not quite sure on what to eat and how to go about this, Clear for Life can help you. I spent 7 years waddling through all the BS in acne and natural health fields to get to these simple truths. I took the simple and really obvious things that work and built the Clear for Life program around them.
Just look at what Nicole wrote to me.
Hey Mr. Pusso! I am so glad that I bought your book. I love all of your ideas, and I find my self nodding along with everything I am reading. Everything finally makes sense! I have been juicing greens everyday and i see and feel the benefits!
Once you get this everything does make sense. Getting clear can be simple. You just need to kick your butt and do it. If you don’t know how, let me take you by the hand and show how.
i tried acnexus, it made my face worse, i cant figure out how to get my money back or contact them. have people complained to you about them before?
I had never heard of Acnexus before, so I decided to look into it.
What I found smells the like the biggest scam of the millennia to me.
After a little digging I found that Acnexus is marketed by an obscure company in Utah called Garrett Devore Labs or GD Labs.
Little more digging revealed that this is a really ‘diverse’ company. It seems they market
Weightloss pills
Acne products
Wrinkle creams
Anti-aging products
If that product range doesn’t get your alarms going then I don’t know what will.
First Better Business Bureau has an unsatisfactory rating with Garrett Devore Labs with many unanswered and unresolved complaint. The BBB report also has address and phone number (in case you need them).
The whole operation seems a little dodgy. From what I’ve read it seems that Acnexus arrives in a plain package with no:
Invoice
Brochure
Promotional material
You simply get the bottles and nothing else. The labels on the bottles also had obvious spelling errors, which now have been corrected.
The company claims Acnexus has been a big hit in Europe and is just entering the US market. Funny enough, I live in Europe and haven’t heard anything about them. And Google search reveals absolutely nothing about Acnexus in Europe.
Next the lifetime money-back guarantee might not be as solid as advertised. As this poster at acne.org forum found out.
I got it from the acnexus website. I e-mailed them about getting my money back and they said that because of rock bottom pricing, the lifetime money back guarantee is no longer in effect. So for all of you who ordered this product from their website thinking you were gonna get your money back like I did, think again!!
Here’s another post at the same forum:
My concerns were with the seller’s false claims so there seems to be something wrong with all this. For that reason, I wouldn’t trust what is in the bottle. In fact, only God knows what’s in it! I purchase allot on the net and I have never been more skeptic of a product before. Many other people on this board saw weird things with it: product shipped from Utah (not Europe), stamps on the box (major companies don’t use stamps), no invoice, no “thank you” note, spelling mistakes on bottle, incomplete instructions to use product, no ways to reach seller by phone (you can only live messages and hope to be called back), and so on. There is not even a return policy on acnexus.com “because of bargain price of 50% offered” but the product always sales at 50% (???).
If you are interested there’s a long Acnexus thread at acne.org forums.
As many posters on that thread pointed out it seems the people behind Garrett Devore Labs post fake reviews of their products on different review sites.
I can’t say for sure, but it seems to me that at least these sites are associated with GD Labs:
http://www.pricesexposed.com/
http://www.acnecuresrevealed.net/
http://www.sybervision.com/reviews/reviews.php
The glowing reviews on those sites are so obviously fakes that my computer probably reeks of scam a full week after visiting those sites. So consider yourself warned before entering.
They also peddle their wares at Ebay with many angry customers complaining about them.
Based on my research it seems to be that GD Labs is behind at least these acne products:
Bruunhause
Asso Bar (supposedly contains gold)
Oxycerin
Orovo
Acnetin
Zyporex
On The Spot
Juliets 3 Step Acne Solution
Biodermazen
Lipovox
The websites for all those products are both dubious and alarmingly similar.
My guess is they just formulate (cook up) one product after another, invent exotic sounding name for it and put up a website to market it.
Based on everything I’ve seen I wouldn’t trust GD Labs even with a rusty old penny. If you’ve been scammed and can’t get a refund file a chargeback with your credit card company.
Don’t use acne creams during pregnancy or breast-feeding.
The newspaper Hindu writes:
“Acne is a common problem faced by millions of women especially those who are pregnant. But use of anti-acne creams is completely avoidable as it can lead to abnormal babies even if taken one month prior to conceiving,” says Shivani Sachdev Gaur, a consultant gynaecologist with the Fortis Hospital.
“The cream gets absorbed from the skin, goes into the mother’s bloodstream and passes through placenta into the bloodstream of the foetus,” experts say.
I don’t like alarmism, so let me give you another perspective also.
One review study of the safety of topical acne treatments concludes:
Used appropriately, the above-mentioned drugs deliver, at most, miniscule amounts of active ingredient into the circulation. Clear-cut links to systemic toxicity in humans are practically nonexistent…
Caution is advised in special circumstances, such as during childhood, pregnancy, lactation and concomitant therapy with other drugs, because relevant studies are lacking. Animal data support avoidance of many topical agents, particularly known teratogens such as retinoids and salicylic acid, in pregnant women. Salicylate avoidance is advised during lactation, because aspirin use carries the risk of bleeding disorders in nursing infants.
Most studies on the transdermal (through the skin in medical speak) absorption of topical acne treatments show the absorbed amounts are not clinically relevant. Meaning they are not linked to any visible symptoms.
Take that with a grain of salt.
Just because a drug doesn’t produce visible symptoms doesn’t mean it’s safe.
All of us carry more than 700 synthetic chemicals in our bodies. Nobody knows the combined health effects of these chemicals.
Short-term we are fine, but the cumulative effects over long-term can lead to disaster. Only a complete fool (or a person with a medical degree) would claim these chemicals have nothing to do with skyrocketing cancer rates.
These acne creams are one more drop in the bucket. Someday that bucket will overflow. And that’s when the shit really hits the fan.
If you want permanent freedom from acne, you need to start emptying the bucket instead of filling it.
Luckily that’s simple. I’ll take you by the hand and show you how to do it in Clear for Life.
