Long-Term Diet and Acne: Does Higher Test from Clean Eating Actually Worsen Acne?

[dancooper]

With my knowledge on acne I have been thinking recently and something doesn't make sense.

With a diet full of refined sugars, carbs with high GI and seed oils. Insulin is bound to be high, in response your SHBG (sex hormone binding globulin) drops, increasing the amount of free testosterone in the blood for a short while after eating foods from one of the aforementioned groups. With the increase in test, the 5α-reductase enzyme has more test to convert to DHT, hence causing a spike in DHT along with free testosterone as you would expect. Now this is bad in the short term, causing more oil production and then eventually acne. But my question is, wouldnt this tank test in the long run if you eat like shit for months, hence lowering the amount of DHT in the blood along with all of your other sex hormones, hence actually reducing acne? (TLDR: Wouldn’t a sustained garbage-tier diet eventually tank your baseline testosterone? It would right? So wouldnt it make acne better rather than worse.)

Which brings me to one of the most praised methods for curing acne you see on this forum(other than accutane)...

On pretty much any thread about acne on this forum you have a guy mentioning diet telling you to eat as healthy as you can. But wouldnt this actually raise baseline test eventually, hence more DHT -> more acne?

My only guess is that maybe with the best diet you can reduce inflammation and maybe reduce androgen sensitivity. But I am not sure and can't find anything talking about this online. If anyone can help me out here it would be great.

Also I'll probably be dropping a really big thread in a month or so; I have been experimenting over the summer with many methods to reduce acne and have documented everything and will try to publish it best I can.

If I fucked up on trivial or informational details lmk and I'll fix it

 

[dancooper]

I was right. After a bit more thinking and research it seems that eating a healthier diet makes your body very sensitive to any sort of insulin surge and therefore surge in androgens.

If you are constantly eating a shit tier diet your body will be kind of dull when it comes to androgen sensitivity so constantly indulging wouldn't actually affect you nearly as much as if you were eating incredible for a couple weeks then indulged.

So my conclusion is, is that if you are going to eat an extremely clean diet to try clear acne. You cant as so much even think of anything sweet. Because on a healthier diet your inflammation is lower and androgen sensitivity is generally higher so due to the androgen spike in for example 100g of chocolate.

If we take this 100g of chocolate example. Someone, lets call him alex, who has been eating a sustained garbage tier diet as I mentioned beforehand for lets say a few weeks. Their spike in insulin and androgens would probably be the same as if they ate a healthier diet. But its the androgen sensitivity that actually plays the role in how much acne you get. SO back to Alex. His androgen sensitivity would be lower than our other subject, lets call them Joe. If Joe ate a god-tier diet for a few weeks, perfect diet no indulging in bad foods at all his androgen sensitivity would actually be higher.

So if we compared our Joe and Alex, there spike in androgens and insulin would probably be near the same. But because Joe has a higher androgen sensitivity than Alex because of his better diet. The affect of the 100g of chocolate would have a greater affect not just on his acne but the actual androgenic affect on his entire body in general. This is quite interesting. Perhaps another way to maximise the affect testosterone has on your body during puberty would be to follow a cycle of eating well for a certain amount of time and then indulge for a few days, to get a very big spike of androgens on a very androgen sensitive body.

If only I knew this a few short years ago when I was 13 / 14 ...smh

 

[dancooper]

Now obviously there is WAY more variables to take in, sebum composition, tissue texture, gut microbiome etc etc

And I more than likely am wrong but I guess its fun to think / talk about

 

[genetically fucked]

holy essay

 

[dancooper]

holy essay

I was kinda just writing down my thoughts into the void lmao