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Acne Vulgaris: A Disease of Western Civilization (2002)

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Re: Acne Vulgaris: A Disease of Western Civilization (2002)

#51

Post by weeksie »

djsumdog wrote: post #39
weeksie wrote: post #28

Why's everybody talking about vitamin D? (Same thing popped up in a Twitter thread I saw about this yesterday.) As far as I can tell the paper only talks about high insulin loads and refined sugars for etiology? Then again I might have missed something? Seriously, I'm in no way competent to read these papers but all I could see were mentions of insulin spikes and such. Could someone ELI5 what I'm missing?

I immediately thought about sugar/carbs. A lot of people on Keto/Adkins report that reduced carb intake seems to help control acne.

Sure, but I'm talking about the actual study linked. Or maybe I'm just being too generous with my assumption people are referring to the linked article.

Re: Acne Vulgaris: A Disease of Western Civilization (2002)

#52

Post by brucephillips »

I grew up with cystic acne that persisted into my early 20s, until two courses of Accutane cleared it up.

Anecdotally, I tried everything before going on accutane. I cut out sugar to the point of avoiding fruits with high glycemic indexes. I cut out dairy. I cut out meat. I tried every supplement you can imagine. If you're thinking about asking "but did you try X", don't bother, I did.

Only accutane worked.

Reading studies such as this, as well as the internet discussion regarding acne is a bit frustrating. Yes, there are anecdotes of this and that diet and lifestyle change reducing acne, but there's very little clinical evidence that non medical treatment improves cases of cystic acne, and yes, many diet studies have been performed.

Even this study grossly overstates their conclusions. Studying two primitive societies is not nearly enough data to support the conclusion in the title of this article.

Re: Acne Vulgaris: A Disease of Western Civilization (2002)

#53

Post by nashequilibrium »

m3kw9 wrote: post #38

I mean you don’t need to be Sherlock to know sugar is bad for you, I’ve heard over and over again from all sorts of different publications and talks on the effects. You talk sugar out, you give yourself a better chance

I grew up in a non-western country and at the age of 19 I sporadically got Acne and I ate meat once a week and hardly any sugar. It lasted a 1 1/2yrs, fast forward 5yrs I got Acne at age 26 again but worst, this time it wasn't going away, finally I decided to just use natural ingredients. I got tea tree oil and jojoba oil mixed them and would put it on my face and 3 months later it went away forever.

I still don't get any pimples even after going back to normal lotion but around Halloween I always get a pimple or two because of all the candy.

Re: Acne Vulgaris: A Disease of Western Civilization (2002)

#55

Post by zaptheimpaler »

cal5k wrote: post #48

I'm always amused/horrified by Hacker News comments on anything health-related. Herein lie a group of incredibly smart individuals sharing anecdotal evidence and folk remedies without a lick of irony.

Its not anecdotes, its a multi year study of 1200 people. Also people often forget that there are many things science doesn't know, many health problems we have no good answers for, and that anecdotes & intuition are the only way we can generate hypotheses to validate scientifically in the first place.

Re: Acne Vulgaris: A Disease of Western Civilization (2002)

#56

Post by patcheudor »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #32

1. When I was a kid, just getting a tan cleared up my acne. 2. Changing my diet helped clean up my acne (not eating junk food) 3. When I was a teenager, I got hurt really bad, and my father found me and had to take me to the hospital. I saw massive acne breakout on his face in less than 15 minutes. 4. When I got older and was less stressed about life, my acne went away. When I got a family/career/house and life stres…

My daughter had severe acne. She changed her diet from vegetarian to full vegan and it cleared right up, in fact most of the past scaring is also now gone. She still consumes sugar (vegan sugar - yeah that's a thing: https://www.peta.org/living/food/is-sugar-vegan/) and doesn't take vitamin E or D supplements because she hasn't found any that are 'vegan certified.' Given some of the research we've looked at, our going theory is that dairy was the primary cause and there is some support for that: https://www.aad.org/media/news-releases/growing-evidence-sug...

Re: Acne Vulgaris: A Disease of Western Civilization (2002)

#58

Post by flatline »

cal5k wrote: post #48

I'm always amused/horrified by Hacker News comments on anything health-related. Herein lie a group of incredibly smart individuals sharing anecdotal evidence and folk remedies without a lick of irony.

This can be partly explained by different subsets of the overall user base.

I have the same reaction to some of the posts on longevity research.

Re: Acne Vulgaris: A Disease of Western Civilization (2002)

#59

Post by JshWright »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #55
cal5k wrote: post #48

I'm always amused/horrified by Hacker News comments on anything health-related. Herein lie a group of incredibly smart individuals sharing anecdotal evidence and folk remedies without a lick of irony.

Its not anecdotes, its a multi year study of 1200 people. Also people often forget that there are many things science doesn't know, many health problems we have no good answers for, and that anecdotes & intuition are the only way we can generate hypotheses to validate scientifically in the first place.

I suspect the parent comment is referring to the comment section (which is indeed full of anecdotes).

Re: Acne Vulgaris: A Disease of Western Civilization (2002)

#60

Post by wolco »

cal5k wrote: post #48

I'm always amused/horrified by Hacker News comments on anything health-related. Herein lie a group of incredibly smart individuals sharing anecdotal evidence and folk remedies without a lick of irony.

I'm actually horrified at the opposite. The lack of knowledge around health issues scares me. When users comment they did not know tumeric is anti inflammatory it makes me wonder.
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