Acne Magazine : Skin Care, Tips, Treatment Reviews

When it come to supplements, there are a few I can’t live without. Some supplements really help with acne and other common skin problems, while others just contribute one little piece of the puzzle for healthy skin and healthy skin cell turnover, which in turn supports the slowing down of aging of the skin.

Supplements of certain vitamins and other nutrients can also help your skin fend off free radical damage, which is a major contributor to aging and overall skin appearance, as well as to help fend off sun damage (photodamage), which contributes to the aged look of skin as well as an increased likelihood of acne and other nuisances like roasacea and skin rashes, irritations and generally complexion marring presences.

One of the most important supplements I take on a daily basis that I couldn’t live without is a high grade omega 3 fish oil supplement. Fish oil not only is great for your heart, your weight and your overall circulatory health, but it also helps your skin stay supple and helps it to retain moisture better because it is a healthy fat, which helps “fill out” the skin cells and make your skin plumper and more wrinkle free.

I feel that fish oil or some other form of an omega 3 fat should be taken by everyone every day, especially if you are not one to get a lot of nuts, fish or other omega 3 rich foods in your diet on a regular basis.

Vitamin D is important as well. This is the sunshine vitamin, and most of us do not get enough of it. It has been linked to helping protect us against all types of cancers, including skin cancer ironically since we get the most of this vitamin from the sun. Vitamin D3 is the supplement you would be looking for, and you should only buy the most potent and higher grade of these as well to gain maximum benefit.

Vitamin C is extremely important, and I only take this one if I have not gotten enough of this in my day’s diet. I only take it when needed because I tend to eat a lot of vitamin C rich foods naturally such as dark leafy greens and citrus and fruits.

Vitamin C contributes to beautiful, vibrant skin as well, and is excellent both when used topically and internally as an antioxidant to help scrub the body of free radicals and keep the skin young, smooth and toned looking.

Vitamin D is really the new “wonder vitamin”. Every day you read more information about how studies are showing it has powerful implications for everything from cancer prevention to diabetes prevention, and then some.

We always knew that vitamin D was a necessary component for proper calcium absorption, and so it was given a lot of concentration for women for that purpose, but now we are finding out so much more about this vitamin, which is actually deficient in most people according to the new standard blood levels issued.

Calcium absorption is vital for everyone, but especially women, who often suffer from osteoporosis in their older age since estrogen levels drop, and calcium becomes harder to absorb and utilize in the female body.

But now, findings show that vitamin D may also be vital in controlling the hormonal balance within the body, and therefore may have useful implications when it comes to acne and keeping clear, beautiful skin by way of keeping your hormones at an ideal balance. It may be one of the acne fighting supplements you add to your bathroom cabinet.

Not only that, but vitamin D has also been found to be useful for controlling blood sugar (insulin) levels. When your blood sugar is level and controlled, your skin always looks better, and acne may be kept at bay since the hormones are also more balanced (insulin levels are also tied to hormone levels elsewhere).

Because vitamin D control hormone and insulin levels, or at least facilitates an easier way for your body to do this properly on it’s own, this also may affect how your skin ages – in other words, it may age better, so the implications of vitamin D may not only impact whether or not you ever get certain types of cancer, but it also may impact how your skin looks today, as well as how far into older age you get with great skin.

Now, of course, your skin is not the primary reason that you should be worried about getting adequate vitamin D levels via your diet, or supplementation, or the sun’s drenching rays since vitamin D is most effectively received and utilized by the body when it is absorbed from the sunlight – more specifically UVB rays – not UVA.

Getting enough vitamin D is now vital to your health, that much is clear. For more information, I suggest you read up on how much is recommended for your age, weight and size/height. The older recommendations put out by the FDA are archaic and now researchers are thinking WAY too low.

Make sure you also get some natural sunlight as well. Just make sure you do not burn, as this is when cell damage can occur as well as premature aging from photodamage.

If you’ve been trying, successfully or unsuccessfully, to treat your skin for acne and make it clear again, then you know there is almost never just one single cause that goes into this prevalent yet somewhat complicated skin condition.

Often times there are hormonal issues that are behind acne, sometimes it’s hygienic issues and skin care routines, but I’ve found that mostly just can aggravate it or make it a little better but is not usually the root cause, and then of course there are stress and anxiety factors as well. What it really all boils down to though, in it’s essence, is some sort of hormonal imbalance issue.

Hormones can be thrown into imbalance by many, many things. And not only that, these causes can vary from person to person and from tolerance level to tolerance level. Everyone has their own “trigger” for acne, so it really must be treated as individiually as it is diagnosed in the treatment program that is chosen. That being said, there has been some buzz that taking vitamin D supplements has helped some people’s skin clear up.

Vitamin D is actually a vitamin that can be found in a lot of dairy products such as eggs and fortified milk, but it can also be found in cod liver oil and certain types of fish. You can take a Vitamin D supplement, however, numerous studies point to the fact that sunlight is the best source of this vitamin.

This is because your body best synthesizes the vitamin from the sun, and uses it most efficiently when it is garnered this way, rather than taken in oral form. This is not to say that Vitamin D supplements are useless, but you do process this nutrient much more effectively when you get it from sunlight. There has been evidence that Vitamin D plays an important role in your immunity as well as in protection against cancer because it helps prevent cells from turning into cancerous cells.

Some tips you may want to adhere to in order to maximize your natural sun-gotten vitamin D are as follows. Wear sleeveless shirts and shorts, this way you get as much sun exposure on as much of your body as possible. Try to limit your time in the intense sun to no more than fifteen minutes fully exposed and NEVER get burnt. After being exposed to the sun’s ray’s, try not to shower for several hours afterward.

The reason for this is that your skin continues to process and absorb and actually “make” vitamin D on it’s surface after interacting with UV light several hours after you bathe in the sun. For this reason, not bathing or showering for several hours afterward helps your body to maintain more of the good stuff that’s left on the surface of your skin and process and absorb it.

It’s no secret by now that foods that are rich in omega 3 fatty acids, which are found most richly in these commonly eaten foods, almonds, fish, avocados and flax seeds, and of course more, but these are the most well known especially giving credit to the glut of good press these foods have gotten, help us in numerous ways when it comes to our general health.

Not only are omega 3′s protective for the heart because of their ability to help reduce harmful cholesterols and other fats from clogging the blood stream and reaching the veins and other parts of the circulatory system and causing havoc, but they also are known to help promote concentration, brain function – and yes, to help maintain a youthful, supple appearance in the skin.

Why? Well, because fish oils are protective of skin cells as well. Let me clarify, omega 3′s are helpful in protecting the skin, they don’t just have to consumed via fish products, but there are also various nuts, seeds, grains and veggies and even fruits that can help supply your diet with these much needed healthy fats.

I think you’ll find that consuming these fats in abundance will help your skin stay fresh looking, and amazingly moisturized and glowing if you make sure you also get lots of other good stuff in your diet. It’s not something you can take and then eat anything you want, but when you take this supplement with a balanced diet, I think you’ll find that it helps your overall health in many ways.

Not only do I feel that taking one fish oil a day helps my skin look better, but I also feel that it helps me to focus and have a better grip on my mental functions – as they say, fish is brain food, and it very well may be because of the omega 3′s, which help stabilize the blood sugar, and therefore help you not get that airheaded hungry feeling that so many of us do when our blood sugar dips – and guess what, an even keel blood sugar is also great for the skin. I think you can see what I’m getting at here – omega 3′s are a smart addition to your diet

I have read a lot in the past about using various B vitamins to help treat acne vulgaris. The only problem is that everywhere I look, they are telling me that it’s a different B vitamin you should use to treat acne. Most commonly, I found it was vitamin B5, but I also found other places saying that it’s B12 and even B1 that you should use, not B5.

So, I wondered, has anyone out there had true success, and not had any negative side effective by dosing up on B vitamins to help treat their acne? Of course, there would be a lot of concern if B vitamins were not water soluble, since they could quickly build up to toxic levels in the body, however, most B vitamins, including B5, are water soluble, which means you pass them out of your body when you urinate on a daily basis, so there is no danger of toxicity, unless you are taking such high levels that the body cannot get rid of it quickly enough.

Vitamin B 5 also goes by the name pantothenic acid. You see this ingredient in a lot of hair skin and nails vitamins, and in a lot of natural acne treatments since it is therapeutic for the skin, however, there is some concern over using primarily just higher doses of the vitamin to help treat acne since there are some side effects reported anecdotally such as lethargy.

I have a problem with extremely high dosing of any vitamin, and that is what some of these B5 acne treatments want you to do. Any high dosage of any vitamin or mineral should be treated with EXTREME caution, as any vitamin or mineral, or any other one pronged treatment for that matter, can become toxic to a person. Even the most healthy of vitamins, like vitamin C, can be taken too much. You can get mouth sores and overly acidic from taking that, and that is one of the most harmless vitamins out there.

B vitamins assist in the metabolization and processing of fats and carbohydrates in the body. As you know, B12 is one of the B vitamins that is used to infuse energy into the body by giving you excellent bursts of energy. The interesting part of the B vitamin theory is that it somehow traces acne back to the storage of fat in cells or something of that nature.

To be honest, I didn’t research it much because I happen to disagree with mega dosing like this. I think vitamin B is an excellent acne supplement, but only as a small dose, nothing huge or megadosing like some people suggest. I think there are better ways to treat acne, but that is just my personal opinion. Anyone who disagrees or has a different side to the story, please feel free to comment here – that’s what this site is all about.

Alpha lipoic acid is a popular supplement for the skin, and for good reason.  This powerful antioxidant not only has no reported side effects, but it also is removed from the body on a daily basis, meaning higher dosages can be taken without toxic effects, much like vitamin C is, so you get  the benefit of a powerful antioxidant and you can also take it several times daily if needed without worrying about overdosing on it, supposedly.  Keep in mind that any supplement should be researched before you use it, in case it has any interactions of known side effects, I found personally that this supplement did not have any interactions or negative effects for me though.

Why did I start taking alpha lipoic acid in the first place?  Well, I started off dosing myself at 100 mg of this supplement per day, because I read about it in a book by Dr. Perricone, who has written several books on aging skin and keeping healthy skin, as well as helping to keep acne at bay.  He also has several high end pharmaceutical grade skin care products that are very expensive in my opinion, but they are very high quality and they do work from what I’ve used thus far from his line, but I’ve only used the Vitamin C ester cream and the liquid, and I also used the DMAE product.

He advocates taking alpha lipoic acid orally every day.  This supplement plays several roles in the body, but one of the most important ones is to help convert sugar into energy (glucose into energy).  This is the reason I increased my dosage and now take it with every meal actually, I found that it is an excellent blood sugar regulator, and allows me to stave off my appetite, function normally without getting all light headed from low blood sugar, and helps me to avoid skyrocketing blood sugar after a high carb meal.  Guess what, regulating your blood sugar is GREAT for your skin.

It helps stabilize your hormones, and reduce inflammation, it’s all related, so you’re not only regulating your blood sugar and converting it into energy more easily, you’re also getting a great skin benefit, and I’ve already noticed a difference in my skin since increasing my dosage and controlling my blood sugar.  It also may help with removing toxic free radicals from the body since it’s an antioxidant, and may have some protective properties against degenerative diseases like stroke, heart disease, and cancers.  Look into it, it’s a pretty cheap supplement and so far I’ve had a great experience with it.

I just read a really interesting warning against using too many Vitamin A based products on your skin, such as Glycolic acid (which happens to be used a lot in acne treatment peels) and Retin-A, which is another topical acne treatment product, before you have some more traumatizing types of treatments such as microdermabrasion, waxing the hair, or another chemical peel.  The problem is that these vitamin A products can temporarily leave your skin in a weaker state, and leave it more open to trauma.

Another warning was not to use those dubious blackhead removal strips like the Biore strips, and rip out blackheads, after you’ve been using Vitamin A based products since things get absorbed more easily for up to a week after treatment, and the skin layer may come completely off after using Vitamin A products instead of coming off where it should, which is just the filled pores.

Just because something it topically used, it doesn’t mean it does not get into our blood streams and into our systems.  Remember the high school track student who kept applying lidocaine based products such as Ben Gay and Icy Hot to her legs because they were sore?  She ended up dying from an overdose of lidocaine.  She put so much product on that she ended up going into cardiac arrest.  The findings were that she most likely also died because of a reaction between the lidocaine and some sort of aspirin based products she may have been taking.

Salicylic acid, which is one of my favorite topical acne treatment products, thankfully is not on a list of common products that may be overused.  Of course, this doesn’t mean to lather it on several times a day either, it’s not good to do that with any product, but it seems like it is mild enough that it probably would not cause any sort of internal reaction if it was overused.  Again, don’t put too much on just because of that though, because you just never know.  Also you will irritate and dry out your skin anyways if you over apply any type of topical acne treatment. 

The season is coming upon us where our skin will start to tend more to the dry side – yes, even those of us with severe acne can get extremely dry skin, to the point of cracking, it’s one of the conondrums of having acne, you have both dry and oil skin sometimes, especially those of us like me who has a very combination complexion.  My oily spots are on my forehead and believe it or not on the sides of my chin and the chin itself, but mostly extending out from my chin in my lower cheek area is where I get the most oil if I’m blotting at work in between breaks. 

One thing I absolutely love, which also usually happens to be in acne friendly formulas for a moisturizer, is any product with pure, natural vitamin C ester.  This is one of the best skin brighteners in my opinion.  If I ever stop using it for a few days, I notice that my complexion does get duller, so I try to use my vitamin C serum every night, and sometimes I even put a little on in the morning underneath my normal cream moisturizer, I just make sure i let the serum dry completely before I put on the moisturizer. 

Vitamin C serums are  my favorite.  For some reason I just have better luck with this vitamin in a serum.  It may be that a serum formula allows the product to absorb better into the skin, or perhaps my favorite formula just happens to have other great ingredients in it and also happens to be of a very high quality. 

Some people may be sensitive to vitamin C topically, but that’s usually rare, and it’s usually only with people who are extremely sensitive to all sorts of products.  Vitamin C is calming for most skin types.  It helps topically reduce inflammation, and it also helps to naturally slough off the dead skin cells on the top of the skin that make for a duller complexion, which is, I believe, the reason that it works so ideally as a skin clarifier and brightener. 

I have recently had some great experiences with Vitamin C, and thought I’d share what I think is a very important vitamin for you to take daily to help improve and/or maintain the texture and elasticity of your skin.  Vitamin C is a cheap vitamin that is often underestimated because of it’s simplicity and over exposure, including the fact that many think it helps prevent colds and flus, and the medical establishment has “debunked” this theory, although I still feel it has merit.

Vitamin C is a great antioxidant, and it is one that needs to be replenished on a daily basis.  We all would like to say we eat our daily fruits and veggies that would give us more than enough vitamin C every day, but many times this isn’t true, so a supplement that is well absorbed into the body is a good alternative, although of course, no pill is ever as good as the whole food istelf, but in this world today we need supplements because we can’t always ensure we get adequate amounts of each nutrient daily.

Vitamin C is one that we can take every day, and it will not result in a toxic buildup in the fat cells, like the ones that do not get flushed from the system every day.  I take a supplement called Ester-C because I personally believe that after all the reading I’ve done on Vitamin C and it’s health benefits, that this form of vitamin C is the most well absorbed and utilized form of the vitamin available. 

Another form is ascorbic acid, and it’s been hotly debated whether this form or the ester form of vitamin C has the same antioxidant capabilities as the other, so that’s really a matter of choice and judgement to the person taking the supplement – of course after doing all their own homework and drawing their most logical and comfortable conclusion. 

We all know that antioxidants are great for a variety of reasons for the health of our bodies, and that it’s also great for our skin as it is used in some of the top anti acne supplements like Acnezine, which is essentially an antioxidant based acne formula, but adding vitamin C every day to your regimen is something that not only can help ensure a long, healthy and glowing life for your skin, but can also help prevent cancer, illness and other diseases in conjunction with an otherwise healthy lifestyle.

If you’ve ever read one of Dr. Perricone’s books about skin care, he delves into a lot of healthy alternatives to cosmetic surgery and expensive procedures, and really concentrates on supplementing the body inside out to achieve good skin, whether your goal is to maintain a great complexion at any age, to hold off the aging factors of the skin such as sagging and wrinkles and sunspots, or even to help with other skin problems like eczema, rosacea, and acne.

One of the common denominators in most of his literature is how you should take a good vitamin C ester supplement for good skin, pretty much no matter what your skin care goals are, ie aging prevention, acne treatment, rosacea or acne rosacea treatment and other skin care problems.  I have also read in many other places that vitamin C is a vital component to maintaining healthy skin, and have even seen a visible improvement in the tone and texture of my skin since I began taking my vitamin C supplement.

Not only that though, because I believe that good nutrition and vitamins cannot all be obtained through a supplement or pill, I’ve made sure to include high vitamin C and high antioxidant foods in my daily diet.  Examples of this are lemon juice in my water every day, oranges and other citrus fruits a couple days a week, and then other foods naturally high in antioxidants besides vitamin C, so that I can be sure I’m getting a well rounded diet of high power foods that will help fix my complexion problems and make my skin more luminous. 

Vitamin C is shown to be a very powerful antioxidant, and has incredible restorative powers to the health of the cells, including skin cells, which can benefit anyone, no matter what their skin type.  Apparently, there are some vitamin C supplements that are made so that they will not upset the stomach, so those of you who avoid this vitamin supplement because of that should be able to take that type of version without any stomach issues because of the acidity.