I used to struggle with really bad acne, but nobody told me that how you live your life and the habits you do throughout the day actually play a MASSIVE part in it.
I just thought I was unlucky and that my genetics were bad. So I went to the doctor, tried different prescriptions, tried skincare, etc. and long story short, it didn’t work.
But if someone would have told me how your diet and lifestyle play such a huge role in skin health I could have fixed my skin a lot earlier by breaking these bad habits.
Let’s get into it.
1. Being stagnant all day
Most people spend way too much time sitting down and not moving their body throughout the day. It’s a massive contributor to poor skin health and also just poor overall health.
Let me explain why.
You’re meant to move. All day, every day. When you don’t, you create problems for yourself. Your lymph system isn’t working properly, your gut health suffers and so on. All this is tightly linked to your skin health.
For example, moving your lymph system helps clear a build up of toxins and waste products that needs to be eliminated for proper health. But unlike your heart that functions like a pump, the lymph system relies entirely on movement to function properly.
If your body can’t clear the toxins and waste products properly through your lymph system, because you’re a lazy motherfucker who sits on his ass all day, your body will have to use your skin as a secondary detox pathway. Voila, you have acne.
This is because a poorly functioning lymph system can contribute to inflammation and congestion, slowing down your normal detox rate.
Like I said, when your normal detox methods, like the lymph system and liver, can’t keep up with the things that have to be detoxed, it’s only a matter of time before the glass overflows and you get acne.
It’s the same with your gut health. When you’re stagnant too much, your gut motility worsens which allows certain things to be reabsorbed by the body before they can be excreted.
For example, estrogen. Your liver works hard to get rid of excess estrogen and passes it into your stool for excretion with the help of your bile fluids. But certain gut bacteria produce specific enzymes which can re-activate the estrogen, allowing it to pass through your gut into your bloodstream.
Now you have even more estrogen that your liver has to deal with. This can cause hormone imbalances (a big cause of acne) and overload your liver, which once again goes back to what I mentioned before with the overflowing glass.
So how do you fix this?
Simple, you move more. Walk, walk, walk. Lift weights, swim, play sports, etc. It doesn’t matter what you do. What just matters is that you get your gut and lymph working properly.
The baseline is 10k steps a day. Your ancestors easily covered 20-30k and they were way healthier than you. The more steps you get in throughout the day, the better.
A good target is 12-15k.
Get moving and your acne will improve.
2. Using too many skincare products
We all hear that skincare products are great and that they can help fix your acne but if you aren’t careful they can actually be making your skin worse.
When I started getting acne I thought skincare products were the best answer to the problem so I bought all kinds of products. Azelaic acid, glycolic acid, vitamin c serum, salicylic acid, different cleansers, moisturizers, sunscreens, etc.
I tried so many different products just thinking that more products = better results.
But that couldn’t be further from the truth. You see, skincare products all contain different active ingredients that sometimes aren’t meant to be used together. For example, using a copper peptide containing product together with something like salicylic acid or vitamin C can be a bad idea that can result in irritated skin, redness, a damaged skin barrier and so on.
Ultimately this is not conducive to clearing your acne. And on top of the problem of mixing different active ingredients, a lot of skincare products also contain questionable ingredients that might have negative effects on hormone and endocrine health. Once again, this is something that can contribute to acne through multiple mechanisms.
Watch out for parabens, phthalates, fragrances and so on.
AND ON TOP OF THAT, overcleansing is another problem that you might experience with skincare.
Basically, some cleansers are rough on the skin and strip it of its natural oils and sebum which throws off your skins homeostasis aka balance. This causes your skin to overproduce sebum to try and compensate for the loss of sebum you just caused which can ultimately lead to more clogged pores and acne.
It’s like using shampoo. Harsh shampoos strip your hair and scalp of it’s natural oils which is why it becomes greasy so quickly after — your scalp is trying to overcompensate for the loss of oils and moisturize you just caused.
For most people, cleansing twice a day is way too much. Right now I don’t use a cleanser at all and just wash with water and it works fine for me. But that’s also because I don’t wear that many products daily.
If you’re a girl that wears multiple layers of makeup, sunscreen, etc. you might need to cleanse a little bit more.
My recommendation is to play around with it. Stop using any kind of skincare products for the next 2-4 weeks. Let your skin do it’s job of creating homeostasis and then you can slowly start experimenting with different products from there.
3. Eating seed oils
I know this is a controversial one. Seed oils are a hot topic. Are they good, are they bad, what’s the problem?
Well, let me do my best and try to explain why you should avoid them if you want clear skin.
The first thing I wanna point out is that there is no reason what so ever to eat seed oils. They provide absolutely no nutrition and aren’t essential at all.
Look at the comparison above between butter and sunflower oil. Butter contains so many more nutrients, and even though it’s pretty small amounts, it’s not insignificant in the bigger picture.
Take vitamin A for example. Something that is super important for clear skin and proper skin health. It’s shown in multiple studies that consuming more vitamin A or taking a supplement will lead to improvements in acne.1
However, I wouldn’t personally recommend supplementing vitamin A as it’s a fat soluble vitamin with a potential for toxicity if you take too much. And that’s pretty easy with supplements.
Getting it through your diet is much better in my opinion and there aren’t actually a lot of normal foods high in vitamin A.
The highest by far is liver but very few people consume it regularly. Other good sources include butter, eggs and milk.
That’s a bit of a side track but what I am trynna get at is that there is no reason at all to eat seed oils. They provide no meaningful nutrition and a lot of potential downsides.
First up, most are stored in plastics. More consumption of microplastics = not good for acne and overall health.
Two, polyunsaturated fats (pufa) are highly unstable and prone to oxidation which can cause inflammation and oxidative stress. This can lead to poor skin health and acne.
So just stop eating seed oils (and other foods high in pufa’s for that matter). There is literally no good reason to. This also goes for junk food which I’ll get to later. Things like french fries, salad dressings, store bought cookies, cakes and so on are also high in seed oils. Get your shit together and just stop eating that bullshit.
Instead, consume fats that actually provide nutrition like butter, coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil.
These are much more stable and won’t have any of the negatives of seed oils.
4. Looking in the mirror all day
This one sounds kinda weird because how can looking in the mirror have anything to do with your acne?
And you’re right. It’s weird and I can’t prove it, but please just trust me.
Constantly looking in the mirror stressing over your skin is making your acne worse.
Just think about it like this: back in the day, like thousands of years ago we never had mirrors. We would almost never see yourselves. Only really when we came across a still body of water that reflected our face.
Fast forward to today. We see our face all the time. When we go on our phone, every time we go to the bathroom, when we walk past mirrors, cars, etc.
It’s all the time and trust me, it’s not good for us.
If you’re struggling with acne you’ll walk past mirrors all the time and notice your pimple, stressing over the new one you got this morning, or how bad this one looks, and so on.
Your thoughts shape your reality, so when you constantly got acne on your mind it is gonna manifest in your life. I know that sounds super woo woo but just trust me.
And also, there is a more modern, scientific explanation. Stress.
We know that stress is a contributor to acne. Not only that, it’s also just horrible for your general health to be stressed out 24/7, and looking in the mirror 24/7 absolutely does that.
So try to make it a habit to avoid getting irritated or stressed about your appearance in the mirror. Just ignore it and say to yourself that you got beautiful skin.
When you avoid the rest of these habits you’ll get there in no time anyways. But manifestation is real, so don’t get sucked into this negative thought spiral of hating your skin, getting stressed, constantly looking in the mirror, getting worse skin, getting more stressed, etc.
5. Consuming way too much gluten
Gluten, like seed oils, is another heated topic. Some people say it’s the worst thing to eat and others say it doesn’t cause any problems at all for people without celiacs disease.
But the fact of the matter is that gluten has some effects that might not be your best friend if you’re struggling with acne.
When you eat gluten you trigger the release of zonulin in your gut, a protein that regulates the permeability of your gut lining. Basically, how tight your gut junctions are, the protein structures that seal the space between your gut lining cells.
The job of these junctions is to keep the gut lining tight and sealed so stuff that’s supposed to be in the gut, bacteria, food particles, viruses, hormones and so on, doesn’t escape into the bloodstream.
When your gut lining is loose it can contribute to and cause leaky gut, an inflammatory disease caused by the things I just mentioned (bacteria, food particles, etc.) getting into the bloodstream.
Obviously these things aren’t supposed to be in your blood, so it triggers and inflammatory response from your body because you need to eliminate them and get them out of your blood.
We know that both inflammation and leaky gut are contributors to acne2, so I think it’s reasonable to say that avoiding zonulin might have a beneficial impact on your acne.
That’s not to say that you can never eat bread, pasta or anything like that ever again, but I think it’s valuable for everyone to eliminate gluten completely from their diet and see how their feel.
I personally notice that my skin improves when I cut out gluten but I like sourdough bread too much to eliminate it from my diet for the rest of my life.
And you don’t have to either. Just cutting down on the amount of gluten containing foods you eat can make a positive difference. Even switching from normal bread to sourdough (lower in gluten = lower amounts of zonulin) can be beneficial.
When it’s really becomes a problem is when you eat gluten all the time. Cereal for breakfast, bread for lunch, pasta for dinner and so on.
So try cutting it out and your skin and gut health will improve.
6. Sitting inside all day
First up, this goes back to the whole lymph system thing I wrote about in the beginning, but it also goes way beyond that.
Because when you sit inside all day you deprive yourself of sunlight that is so vital for pretty much every aspect of your health, including your skin health.
I don’t think I have to tell you this but without sunlight there wouldn’t be life on earth. It cannot be understated how important sunlight is for health, yet most people will boil it down to just vitamin D.
“You don’t need sunlight bro, just take a supplement”
Retards.
Sunlight is responsible for so much more than vitamin D. It’s also a regulator of your gut microbiome, your circadian rhythm which influences your sleep quality, your mood, your eye and vision health, your skin health and so much more.
BUT, sunlight is also a double edged sword. If you don’t know what you’re doing you’ll get sunburned, increase your risk of skin cancer and look like a wrinkly ballsack when you’re 50.
General rule of thumb: the more time you spend outside the healthier you’ll be and the more your acne will improve. This is in part because of the things I just mentioned - improved sleep, improved gut microbiome, etc. - but also because of the actual light.
Most of the light coming from the sun is infrared light. It’s often overlooked because we can’t actually see it, but trust me, it’s super important.
Infrared light actually makes up more than half of the light that reaches the earth, and it just so happens to be responsible for optimal mitochondrial function, producing antioxidants in the skin and even protecting the brain, along with so much more.
These longer wavelengths of light like red and infrared might be the reason why UV light in isolation seems to be detrimental to health but sunlight as a whole is so healthy and makes you live longer.
Red and infrared light have anti inflammatory properties and help stimulate the production of melatonin in the skin, a powerful antioxidant that helps prevent the oxidative and damaging effects of UV light in isolation.
So one of the main reasons why it’s so detrimental to sit inside all day is that you’re depriving yourself of these vital wavelengths, as they get filtered out by most windows.
What you’re left with is short wavelength light like UVA and blue light which cause skin aging and DNA damage. This is obviously not going to help you fix your acne since we know that inflammation and the oxidative stress causing it, plays a major role in the pathogenesis of acne.
So my advice might be kind of backwards: Get as much sunlight as you can and start wearing sunscreen when you’re INDOORS. This helps you block the UV and blue light coming through the windows that’s damaging your skin. I know it sounds weird but trust me, it’s good to do. And obviously don’t get so much sunlight that you get sunburned. Like I said, it’s a double edged sword. Get enough to get the beneficial effects and then consider staying in the shade, wearing a hat, etc. That will still get you the red and infrared light but without the excessive uv light which might cause sunburns and aging of the skin.
Get a high quality sunscreen btw. Either a mineral sunscreen or a chemical sunscreen with clean ingredients. I personally use the haruharu wonder airyfit SPF 50 moisturizer. Good uv filters + niacinamide and other beneficial ingredients.
7. Drinking out of plastic
Those who consume most of their water from plastic bottles ingest about 90,000 EXTRA microplastic particles every year.
That is on top of all the microplastics we already consume on a yearly basis. Which is also in the tens of thousands…
These micro and nano plastic particles cause a wide range of health problems that can worsen your acne.
We know that microplastics have toxic effects on multiple bodily systems like the cardiovascular system, endocrine system, reproductive system, digestive system and so on.
So you might be asking, what do these have to do with acne?
Well, if there is one thing I preach often it is that acne should be viewed holistically. As part of a bigger system (your overall health), instead of just a problem with your skin.
Everything is interconnected in your body and we already know that. Poor oral health increases your risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease. It also correlates with poor gut health and vice versa. Poor gut health correlated with poor skin health through the gut skin axis and vice versa.
Everything is connected so when you’re exposed to something like micro and nano plastics that cause a bunch of problems to your health, I think it’s crazy to believe that it doesn’t also worsen your acne.
Because we know that hormonal imbalances can cause acne. We know that inflammation is a contributor/cause of acne. We know that poor gut health is a cause of acne and so on.
Reducing your exposure to these plastic particles will improve all of these.
So action steps:
Stop drinking out of plastic
Don’t buy plastic water bottles. They’re filled with these plastic particles. Instead, drink out of glass or metal. And if you drink tap water, depending on where you live, I would recommend getting a filter to remove microplastics and other toxins. Cans aren’t actually that great either since they’re lined with plastic as well. The same goes for drinking coffee or tea out of paper cups. Microplastic bombs. No bueno.
Don’t heat food in plastic
Eating food that’s stored in plastic is bad enough by itself. But heating something in plastic, like pre made food, meal plan foods, etc. is taking it to a next level. Heat makes the plastic leach microplastics and other toxic chemicals that mess up your health.
These are the two biggest things you can do to minimize your microplastic exposure along with things like not wearing polyester clothing, getting a air purifier, etc. but that’s a topic for another post.
But that’s basically it. You probably do most of these things every day and TRUST ME, if you stop your acne will improve.
Don’t believe the influencers telling you it’s all about skincare. It’s not. Skincare is the cherry on top, but it’s so much more important to fix the root cause first.
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Thanks for reading and godspeed.
— Kasper Veritas
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35674761/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3780801/