Several acne patients believe they can blame the liver for their skin problems; this is very prevalent among those who are familiar with alternative health.

Your skin may have to help the liver at times, and this can lead to skin problems. The liver and the kidneys are responsible for keeping your body free from toxins. If they can’t manage the load, then the skin and other secondary detoxification organs have to share the burden. In this case toxins are eliminated through the skin.

Toxins passing through the skin cause zits in two ways. First, toxins create an ideal setting for acne causing bacteria to blossom on your skin. Second, as these toxins pass through the skin they cause inflammation and irritate it.

Liver blockage can lead to zits also indirectly. The liver also regulates hormone levels; case in point androgens. The liver also affects insulin levels, though only indirectly. Both of these hormones affect how much oil your skin produces.

Liver flush: the answer to acne?

Natural health experts recommend liver flushing as the solution for congested liver. This is supposed to get rid of the excessive toxins in the liver. During liver flush you fast for a day and then gulp a blend of olive oil and lemon juice.

However there are few problems with the liver flush. While it’s typically not dangerous, <b>if you have gall stones it can put you on the surgeon’s table for gallbladder removal operation</b>.

As you can imagine drinking large quantities of olive oil stresses the liver. And the mixture of olive oil and lemon juice tastes anything but good.

To add insult to the injury the liver flush is often not a very effective acne treatment. To see result most people need to repeat the procedure up to 20 times – and in this case one could argue that the results come from repeated fasting and clean diet than from the liver flush itself.

Luckily you don’t need to flush your liver to get clear. Your body can heal itself without any flushes or cleanses. This doesn’t have to be complicated. Eat a clean diet, exercise, practice healthy lifestyle habits, remain positive and do few detoxes (without any cleanses or flushes). That’s all. Your body then takes care of any toxins and congestion – not to mention your acne.

How you live your life every day is what determines the fate of your acne – not how often you flush your liver.

Researches studied the impact of glycemic index (GI) on cystic acne. Glycemic index shows how quickly the sugars from a food enters the bloodstream. Higher the glycemic index the faster the glucose is soaked up.

The researches compared the severity of acne between people who eat normal (high GI) diet and those eating a higher protein (low GI) diet. This study was published at a famous medical journal. And what did the study find? Folks who ate the low GI eating plan had far fewer pimples than those on the more normal (Western style) diet. Do I have to say it? Sugar provokes acne.

How is it possible for carbohydrates to lead to pimples?

It comes down to how your body regulates blood sugar levels Glucose for your body is like gasoline for your car. Your body needs the right about of blood sugar to function properly. That’s why it’s crucial to maintain constant blood sugar levels, and your body has a robust method for carrying out just this.

After a meal, blood glucose levels start rising. Your system reacts by releasing insulin, which is a hormone that escorts sugar from your blood into the cells and therefore lowers blood glucose levels. Along with insulin the body also releases other hormones.

The problem is that insulin along with the other hormones also have an effect on your skin. The bottom line is they increase sebum production and may lead to blocked skin pores. How this happens is discussed in more detail at blood sugar levels and acne page.

In essence the more your blood sugar levels change the more of these types of acne causing hormones your system produces and the more likely you are to wake up with more acne.

And what causes blood sugar levels to fluctuate? Eating sugars, white carbs and other foodstuff with large glycemic index is perhaps the greatest factor. But the impact isn’t limited to diet. Lack of exercise, carrying excess fat and shortage of sleep can make it harder for your body to keep stable blood glucose levels.

So what this comes down to is, certainly, sugars cause acne breakouts, but merely avoiding sweets may well not by enough to remedy cystic acne. If you are past your teen years and have suffered from acne for many several years, curing acne breakouts probably requires holistic effort to improve your wellness.

I’m about to tell you about a very dishonest tactic internet marketers use. This is not directly related to acne. But I’ve seen this trick played on different markets and I wanted to warn you about it.

For two reasons. First, this scam is very convincing and easy to fall into. Two, falling into this one can get VERY expensive and you end up wasting lots of time getting out of this net. You may even have to cancel your credit cards.

This video explains how the scam works. This example is related to the ‘how to make money in the internet’ niche, but the way it works in the other markets is identical.

Not a pretty things to watch – eh?

This video explains how the scam works to promote Acai berry weight loss product.

The first part of the scam is very similar to the internet marketing scam video. But go to about 5 mins and 10 seconds and you’ll see another way this scam works.

I hope you learned something from these videos.

I haven’t seen this scam in the acne market yet, but I’m sure it’s coming soon. For dishonest marketers these offers are just too lucrative to resist. For example, I stumbled on this scam when I research the teeth whitening niche. The offers would pay me $35 to $40 for every person who signs up for the free trial. Get people to sign up for two and you are looking to earn $80 per person!

Getting out can be expensive and frustrating. When I researched the teeth whitening products I found tens of stories where people had lost more than $100 and spend hours and hours on the phone with unhelpful ‘customer service representatives’ in India (they have to earn the $80 they paid to people who referred you to this scam).

Handling the toll free numbers is outsourced to an Indian company. The agents are paid to keep you on the program. If you are willing to spend hours screaming on the phone you might get a partial refund, but please don’t count on it.

Your best choice is to ask your credit card company to revoke the charges and ask them to give you new credit cards (as long as the company has your credit card numbers they can keep charging you).

Please keep your eyes open, and be careful of all the offers that just seem too good to be true.

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Clear for Life – The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

I recently stumbled across two dubious ones: Zyporex and Pronexin. Buyers beware as I have a good reason to believe this is a scam.

The scam looks very similar to Acnetix and Acnexus scams by Garret Devore Labs I reported about last year. However this scam involves a larger number of products, such as Zyporex, Pronexin, Acneticin and Acnepril, and they are sold by a company called Experimental Nutrition Research Llc.

The way this scam works is so similar to Acnexus and Acnetix that I believe the boys from Ohio (GD Labs is registered in Ohio) have been busy again; though I can’t be sure about this.

Here’s how the scam works:

• Create an acne product with impressive looking list of ingredients, fancy bottle and weird name. This is very simple and anyone with little bit of cash can do this. It’s not that hard to find companies that do contract manufacturing. You just tell them what you want in the bottle and the label to print on it. Even I get few emails from companies proposing to create my own line of skin care products and supplements.
• Create “independent” review sites that praise your products. The more of such sites you can create the better it looks.
• Hire Indians for $5/hour to create fake testimonials and posts to acne forums, Yahoo! Answers and other places. This creates the illusion buzz that gets people interested.
• Cook up another product and repeat the process.
• Move into other lucrative markets; such as weigh loss pills, fat burners, wrinkle creams, anti-aging creams and pills, night creams and muscle building supplements.

Sometimes you can just bottle the same stuff under a different name and call it good. For example the ingredient lists for Acnepril and Acneticin are identical.

Paying attention to website design also seems optional. Take a look at the so-called review sites below and tell me if they seem strangely similar. And if you are looking for real fun, check out the posts at their blogs. Some really… hmmm, interesting posts.

Here’s a list of websites involved in the scam (not conclusive):

• http://www.avecix.com/
• http://www.acnepril.com/
• http://www.pronexin.net/
• http://www.blackheadstreatment.net/
• http://www.acnetreatmentsreview.net/
• http://www.topacnetreatment.org/
• http://www.besthairlossproducts.org/
• http://www.sybervision.com
• http://www.pronexinconsumerreviews.net/
• http://acnecuresrevealed.net
• http://acnetreatmentguide.org
• http://www.fastweightloss.net/
• http://www.clinicallix.com/
• http://www.zyporex.com/
• http://muradreviews.net/
• http://skinidconsumerreviews.net/
• http://acneproductratings.org
• http://acneprilconsumerreviews.net/
• http://www.acneticin.com/
• http://topwrinklecream.org/
• http://www.topwrinklecream.org
• http://hamchoslim.com/
• http://assobar.com/
• http://www.nightcreams.org/
• http://12hourmiracleacnetreatment.com/

Why you should think twice before buying these products

I want to make it clear that I haven’t used any of these products and know very little about them. Using topical solutions is a bit like going into a casino. You roll the dice and see if you get lucky. If you are lucky the product works, tough luck if it doesn’t.
Given that their business model is based on lies and deceit (creating fake review website and posing them as independent) raises questions of their commitment to customer satisfaction.

You really don’t know what’s in the bottles. The ingredient lists look impressive, but that’s not the whole story. You could fill the bottle with cheap stuff and add miniscule amounts of impressive looking ingredients. That way your list of ingredients looks impressive without actually having to pay for all that expensive stuff.

Also the promised money back guarantee may be less solid than advertised. Heck in some cases people haven’t even received their products, as these complaints show.

This company ripped me off. I was suspicious they were conn artists and the company was a scam but was dumb enough to order anyway. It has been a month and a half and I still have not recvd my order. I called the company (of course their # is no longer listed) atleast 5 times, left 3 voice mails and also sent 4 emails. Still have heard nothing back. I used Paypal and am trying to get my money back but it doesnt seem to be working. I have spent so much time on this its ridiculous. Dont be a sucker and order anything from this ENR company, they’ll just take your money!!!! Im bitter and I want that company out of business!!!

Zyporex – Finally Reviewed… (scroll down to reader comments)

Zyporex is supposed to be a product that helps clear acne. This company is not real. Both the webiste and the testimonials are fake. I think the person or people behind this also made the other webite comparing the best acne treatments. I ordered the product, unfortunately without doing sufficient research, and never got it in the mail. They took $29.99 for the product and $7.99 for shipping. There is no contact info, except for a defunct email. I tried calling the number on my bank statement and I was immediately tansfered to a voice mail box that was full and not accepting new messages.

Zyporex Complaints – Another Internet Scam

This one is about Lipofuze, one of their weight loss products.

Elinalla,
You are lucky than me. I am staying in Singapore and ordered Lipofuze on July 16, 2009 via LLC. I still received nothing from them but they credit my visa more than US100 already.

LipoFuze by Experimental Nutrition Research LLC Complaints – Quality of product is negative

Better Business Bureau doesn’t think much of Zyporex and rates it as F. BBB Reliability Report for Zyporex Here’s what F means.

Company Rating F
Our opinion of what this rating means:
We strongly question the company’s reliability for reasons such as that they have failed to respond to complaints, their advertising is grossly misleading, they are not in compliance with the law’s licensing or registration requirements, their complaints contain especially serious allegations, or the company’s industry is known for its fraudulent business practices.

In case you run into trouble with Zyporex, Pronexin or any other of their products here are their contact details (as listed in the LA Times Yellow Pages).

Experimental Nutrition Research Llc
(213) 389-9044
3580 Wilshire Blvd Ste 1190
Los Angeles, CA 90010

Stop believing in magic and miracles and save yourself tons of trouble

Here’s easy way to avoid all such scams in the future: stop believing into magic and miracles. The reason these scam wagons keep rolling is because people buy into the idea they can just apply some cream or take a pill and get over their acne. Some may get lucky, but for most people it’s not that easy.

Acne is an internal problem and is a result of bad diet and lifestyle choices and, in many cases, emotional health. Start treating it as such and you can forget all these stinking creams and have clear skin for life.

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Clear for Life – The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

More complications with Accutane. Researchers at Helsinki University in Finland discovered that Accutane causes insulin resistance and worsening of blood sugar controls.

CONCLUSION: Treatment of acne with 13-cis-retinoic acid reduces insulin sensitivity and induces alterations in lipid metabolism resembling those of the insulin resistance syndrome.

Dyslipidemia and a reversible decrease in insulin sensitivity induced by therapy with 13-cis-retinoic acid.

Here’s another study.

13-cis-Retinoic acid therapy induces insulin resistance, regulates inflammatory parameters, and paradoxically increases serum adiponectin concentration.

According to the studies Accutane induced insulin resistance is temporary and disappears after the treatment.

However this is not always the case and some unlucky people go on to develop a full-blown diabetes.

Here are two alarming stories from Accutane and diabetes forum.

I started taking Accutane at age 13. The blood tests were going good. You are supposed to get a blood test after every month. And You are on it for 8 months. And you get a last bllod test after you are off it after four weeks to make sure it is out of your system. So there are 9 blood tests total. On my 6th blood test my blood sugar was 132. It was a little high. Then on my 7th blood test it was 287. They wanted me to see a doctor right away so my mom pulled me out of school and brought me to a doctor, where I got another blood test. And my blood sugar was 430. So my doctor told me I had type 1 diabetes. No one in my family had diabetes that I know of except for my great uncle, who was diagnosed with diabetes at age 77. So im pretty sure the drug triggered it.

- Jason

My daughter started Accutane 34 days ago with perfect sugar levels. After her first month on Accutane, we went to the Dtr and were told everything was fine but that she had higher than expected cholestrol, everything else was normal per the lab. Not to worry about the cholestrol. My daughter noted to the dtr that she was thirsty, but since the labs normals, dtr told us everything ok, increased the Accutane, gave her a cholestrol medication. Understand that this was one of the top dermatologist in our state who assured us all was fine.

She started the increased dose three days later. Two days from start of new dosage she is weak and is very thirsty. Visit to the ER, she had a sugar level of over 600 and diagnosed her with Type 1 diabetes.. they are telling us there is no connection and that it is genetic. In less than a week she went from normal to life threatening with no other changes in her life but the drug… she is not overweight and is 15.

- Susan

Coincidence? Possibly and we can’t establish a firm link between Accutane and diabetes. However Google search of ‘Accutane diabetes’ reveals an alarming number of such coincidences. Diabetes is also mentioned as a risk factor for Accutane in drug manuals.

Though these incidences are rare type 1 diabetes (the one that most people got) is a permanent complication. Type 1 diabetes is diagnosed when the pancreas stops producing insulin. After that you have to inject insulin after every meal. Type 1 diabetes is a permanent condition with no known cure.

Just one more reason to avoid Accutane and stick to natural methods – especially since they are cheaper and often even work faster than Accutane.

My book Clear for Life explains how simple diet and lifestyle changes help your body to clear acne permanently.

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Clear for Life – The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

Of course you can’t. What you are looking for isn’t on the map.

Do you believe you can get clear and live a happy life if your map says you are a miserable loser and nobody likes you because of your acne?

Confusing?

Then join me for this fascinating journey into your head, and on the way you just might discover why all these years you’ve struggled in vain to get clear.

You have what I like to call an internal map of reality in your mind. Similar a real map your internal map of reality described the way you see the world. It’s the sum total of all your experienced to date. Your map tells you what’s real and what’s not real, what you can and cannot do, how to do things and how to react in different situations. Some people call these maps ‘subconscious programming’.

You probably know that you have a mental image of yourself. This self-image explains what you think of yourself; the way you see yourself. Your self-image is a part of your internal map of reality.

Stephen Covey in his bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People explains the mental maps like this.

Each of us has many, many maps in our head, which can be divided into two main categories: maps of the way things are, or realities, and maps of the way things should be, or values. We interpret everything we experience through these mental maps. We seldom question their accuracy; we’re usually even unaware that we have them. We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be.

And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of those assumptions. The way we see things is the source of the way we think and the way we act.

Stephen R. Covey
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, p. 24

As Stephen wrote we often aren’t aware of these maps. We simply assume that’s the way life is.

These maps are a bit like lenses. Say you wear glasses with green lenses. As you look at the world through those lenses everything you see is tinted green.

Let’s say you believe you are a miserable loser and nobody likes you because of acne. Because of that belief everything in your life is ‘tinted’ with that ‘miserable loser’ color. Say you are out and some stranger looks at you a bit longer than is normal. You just know they are looking at your acne and thinking how horrible it is. Next you feel like a miserable loser and the rest of the day is ruined.

Bet that has happened to you more than few times.

Let’s step back and see what really happened there. Do you really know that the stranger was looking at your acne and thinking you look horrible? Did you go and ask them? Or did you just assume it?

Why did you assume that? It’s possible they looked at you a bit longer because they thought you looked attractive. I’m sure that would have made you feel better. So why did you assume the worst case?

Because of you wear those ‘miserable loser’ glasses (or whatever you happen to believe of yourself). They tint everything so it looks like you are a miserable loser.

The only fact in the situation was that some stranger looked at you a bit longer than is normal. Everything else is fiction. In a fraction of a second your mind heaped all that mental garbage on it. And that mental garbage influences how you experienced the situation.

This is an example of how these maps create the way you experience life. But their effect goes far beyond this simple example. These affect the thoughts you have, emotions you feel and the actions you take. These maps create your life. Some people say your external life is only a reflection of what goes on in your head.

Change your maps; change your life

Because most people are not aware of these maps they struggle in life. They struggle to make the changes they want to make and feel stuck.

They try all kinds of tricks and techniques to change their life without ever considering the maps that create their life. That’s like trying to change your reflection by pounding the mirror.

Let’s go back to Chicago. You are standing on the street and looking at a map. Unfortunately there’s a misprint on the map and it actually a map of Detroit instead of Chicago.

Will you ever find the place you are looking for just by looking at that map? Do you think becoming more skilled at map reading helps? Do you think trying harder helps? Do you believe you can get there if you just think positively?

Of course not. No matter how good you are at reading maps, you are still reading a wrong map.

To try to change outward attitudes and behaviors does very little good in the long run if we fail to examine the basic paradigms from which those attitudes and behaviors flow.

Stephen R. Covey
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, p. 28

Change your maps; change your skin

Your maps, or subconscious programs, also affect your health and your skin.

At this point I invite you to watch this snippet of an interview with Dr. Bruce Lipton.

As Dr. Lipton explains 90 to 95% of your thoughts flow from your subconscious programs. That’s why positive thinking rarely works. You are pitting 5% against 95%. That’s why positive thinking often leads to frustration and ends up reinforcing your subconscious programs.

Your maps affect your skin and health through your thoughts and actions.

At some point you probably believed diet has nothing to do with acne. At that point you would have said I’m a crackpot for suggesting that the McDonald’s burger your just ate has anything to do with your skin.

It doesn’t matter if I’m right or wrong, you still wouldn’t listen to me because my message goes against your established beliefs. As long as you believe diet has nothing to do with acne you only take action on solutions that have nothing to do with diet and dismiss everything else as wrong and irrelevant.

Similarly if your map says you are a miserable loser you only take action that allows you to experience yourself as a miserable loser. Anything else is dismissed as wrong and irrelevant – and that probably includes this blog post.

For an example of how your expectations influence what you see take this quick and revealing test. Demo: Perception: Two Women. You only see what you expect and your expectations are shaped by your mental maps.

What happened when you started accepting that diet may have something to do with your skin? Did you start paying attention to what you ate? Did you start avoiding certain foods and eating more healthy foods? Did you feel like you opened your eyes?

Hmmm… what else in your life could change if you’d change your maps?

Don’t think yourself into another breakout

In the interview Dr. Lipton talked about the ‘nocebo’ effect. Placebo effect refers due to spontaneous healing because the patient believes into the treatment.

Nocebo effect is just the opposite. Person gets worse because they expect to get worse.

Ten years ago, researchers stumbled onto a striking finding: Women who believed that they were prone to heart disease were nearly four times as likely to die as women with similar risk factors who didn’t hold such fatalistic views.

The higher risk of death, in other words, had nothing to with the usual heart disease culprits — age, blood pressure, cholesterol, weight. Instead, it tracked closely with belief. Think sick, be sick.

Brian Reid
The Washington Post, Tuesday, April 30, 2002
The Nocebo Effect: Placebo’s Evil Twin

Research shows stress can make acne worse. The same can probably be said also of other negative emotions.

What do you believe about getting clear? Do you believe there’s no way you can get over acne?

Nocebo is one reason I ask you not to worry about Candida and other ‘health problems’.

I’m not saying Candida isn’t real, but it has become sort of a boogie man in the natural health field. It has become the ‘catch all’ disease that’s said to be behind each and every symptom.

I believe that Candida infection is illusion for most people. They never get it diagnosed. Instead they read symptom lists (that are so vague and general they could describe many diseases) on obscure websites. Are they feeling tired and lethargic because their bodies are fighting the effect of chronic sleep deprivation and years of eating junk; or is it because of Candida? Most people assume it’s Candida.

What do you think happens when you believe you have Candida infection and it takes years of hard work and expensive supplements to get over it? What do you think happens when you believe this hard-to-get-rid-of Candida infection causes your acne?

If the mind can make you 4 times more likely to die from a heart attack, can you be sure that your belief into incurable acne and Candida infection doesn’t prevent you from getting clear?

What about more global beliefs? Can you be so sure that poor self-image has nothing to do with your skin?

From working with acne victims I know acne often ‘justifies’ certain beliefs. For example, if you believe you don’t deserve love, it’s easy to point your finger at your skin and say how anyone could love a person with my skin.

Keep in mind that your self-image was formed before you even knew about acne. What you think of yourself is mostly based on the first 6 to 7 years of your life. If you want to learn more about this please read They F*** You Up: How to Survive Family Life by clinical psychologist Oliver James.

This may be hard to believe, but acne is not the real problem. What you really need to look at is your mental maps and subconscious programming. Once you get clear inside of your mind it’s much easier to get clear on the outside also.

How to get rid of negative subconscious programs

Hopefully by now you understand how much your mental maps shape your life. So let’s look at how to get rid of wrong maps that may prevent you from getting clear.

By far the most difficult part is to become aware of your maps. Most of the time people aren’t really aware of what they think; much less that they can do something about the garbage that flows through their minds.

As Dr. Lipton mentioned in the interview if you just stop and listen to your thoughts you’d be shocked at what you ‘hear’. Those thoughts reveal what you really think of yourself.

Unfortunately most people aren’t conscious enough to pay attention to their thoughts. Instead thoughts just flood over them and they find themselves getting angry, depressed or feeling bad.

Meditation is a good way to become more conscious of your thoughts, that’s why Clear for Life now comes with easy to use meditation tracks. Meditation is not the only way and in Clear for Life I describe a systematic way to identify mental ghosts and other dysfunctional subconscious programs.

When you become aware of your thoughts you can stop and decide that such thoughts don’t serve you. Then you can use various techniques to clear the negative beliefs and emotions. This is actually very simple and quick, but the trick is in identifying the real issues.

Two techniques I frequently use are Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, and Sedona Method.

I recommend you start playing with EFT; simply because it’s so easy to use, effective and free to learn. Simply go to the EFT website and download the Free EFT Manual: Introduction to EFT.

The free manual teaches you more about EFT and how to use it. You’ll get everything you need to know about EFT from the free manual. Also please read the free tutorials on the EFT website, especially the ones that talk about finding the core issues and importance of being specific. Your success with EFT (and other similar methods) comes down to nailing the core issues and beliefs.

What happens when you get rid of negative subconscious programs? Remember that your external life reflects your mental maps and subconscious programs. When you change them you change what’s reflected back in the mirror of your life.

How exactly that happens depends how your maps create your life. You may find old issues that used to bother you have no effect anymore; so you become happier and more peaceful. Perhaps your eyes open up to new information that can help you to get clear. When you change your subconscious program you also change your thoughts and actions. And with new thoughts and actions come new results.

No matter what happens it’s an interesting and rewarding journey and one that I invite you to start on.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to post them as comments below.

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Clear for Life – The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

One of my customers took a quiz at acne.org and one of the questions was about sunlight. The answer he got back shocked him.

“While the sun is important for the production of vitamin D, especially if you do not eat dairy products, excess sun exposure is actually skin damage. While the sun feels good, it may bite back with acne in the weeks following exposure.”

I agree with this completely. Unfortunately many people miss the point of this message. The operative word is excess sun exposure.

Sunlight is absolutely essential for good health. But that doesn’t mean more is better. It’s the same with exercise. You need enough sunlight – not too much, not too little.

Exposure to sunlight benefits your health in many ways. You get vitamin D from sunlight. It helps you to sleep better. It makes you energetic and happier. It can kill bacteria from your blood. Just to give you few examples.

Sunlight is the only viable source of vitamin D

Since the acne.org quizz mentioned vitamin D let’s talk about it briefly. Sunlight is the only practical source of vitamin D.

In Clear for Life I quoted a study where the researchers measured blood vitamin D levels from people after they’ve been on a tanning bed. They were exposed to amount of UV radiation that leads to very minor sunburn (your skin gets a bit red and is back to normal the next day). The researchers found that those people had blood vitamin D levels of equivalent of taking 25’000 IU of vitamin D.

To put that into a perspective a multivitamin supplement usually has 400 IU of vitamini D and vitamin D supplement has about 1000 IU. A glass of whole milk has less than 100 IU.

As you can see no other source of vitamin D even comes close to what you’ll get from sunlight.

This is a bit of a problem for people living in the Northern latitudes. During the winter months sun rays hit the northern part of the globe in such an angle that most of the UV rays bounce back to space. So in such latitudes your skin won’t make vitamin D from sunlight. You have to either use tanning beds or take vitamin D supplements.

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Clear for Life – The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

Several courses of Accutane, all OTC treatments you can name, master cleanse many times. He eats healthy. Still his skin looks horrible.

Then he goes to Puerto Rico for 2 months, smokes like a chimney and eats greasy food. Yet his skin never looked better.

What’s going on here? Doesn’t this prove diet has no effect on his skin?

In case you are wondering. Michael is a member at Clear Skin Space, where we had this discussion.

Michael’s case is interesting because it shows that getting clear doesn’t always make sense… or does it? So what can we learn from this? If you are in a similar situation should you throw salad to the wind and eat whatever you want?

No. Not if you want permanently clear skin, anyway.

Food affects your skin in two ways. Some foods trigger a breakout soon after you eat them; often within a day or two. I call these ‘trigger foods’. This is often because you are sensitive to that particular food, or the food is otherwise inflammatory.

These foods are easy to spot, and their relationship to your skin is easy to understand.

However food also affects acne indirectly. This is where people get confused.

Foods can either contribute to your or they can take away from your health. If your health suffers from your diet and lifestyle choices it always means more inflammation in your body. And more inflammation means more acne – to those who are prone to it.

Let’s get back to Michael.

We can conclude that the foods he ate in Puerto Rico didn’t trigger acne. But it would be quite foolish to say foods have no effect on his health. And because foods he eat affect his health, they also affect the health of his skin – even if the effect is indirect and shows only after a long time.

But this doesn’t make any sense. Why did his skin get better in Puerto Rico?

Who knows. We can rarely reduce these things to one or two factors. Perhaps his body needed sunlight and fresh air more than anything. Or perhaps in that tropical paradise he was happier and less stressed. Perhaps the foods he ate back home contained some ingredient he was sensitive to, and this ingredient was not present in the foods he ate in Puerto Rico.

This brings us to the next concept many acne victims struggle with.

Your health is only as strong as its weakest link.

Unfortunately 90% of all the questions I get have something to do with diet. Is this food good? Will this make me breakout? Is this food safe to eat?

Diet is the only thing many acne victims can wrap their heads around. They have overblown the importance of diet in getting clear.

Sure it’s important to watch what you eat, but diet is just one of the elements of health. You have to make sure you exercise, sleep well, get some sunlight and fresh air, and remain positive.

Diet is no more important than the other elements.

Let me finish this by telling you the BIG SECRET to clear skin.

I get a certain amount of hate mail. For whatever reason some people feel compelled to tell me I’m a greedy and evil bastard for withholding the secret to clear skin. I should go and yell it off the mountaintop, they say.

Since there are no mountaintops nearby, and it can get a bit cold in those altitudes, I’m just going to yell it off here.

So here it is. The ‘secret’ three-step formula for clear skin.

1. Put all the elements of health in place. This means finding a diet that works for YOU, and making sure all the elements of health are balanced.
2. Avoid trigger foods and substances you are sensitive to or that in some other way trigger a breakout.
3. Sit tight and allow the healing process to unfold.

There you have it. That is, honest to God, the big NON-secret to clear skin. There is nothing more to it.

Now just go do it.

And while you are at it, go grab a copy of Clear for Life to make me happy

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Clear for Life – The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin

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