What Really Causes Acne?

If you were to ask most doctors what causes acne, the answer would probably be hormones, especially in the teenage years.

There are three problems with that simple answer; one is that acne is not just limited to teenagers, two more and more adults are complaining about acne and Three teenagers everywhere don’t have this issue. According to a study published in the Archives of Dermatology acne is completely limited to westernized societies.

The study looked at two non-westernized populations.

One was a group of Kitavan Islanders in Papua New Guinea. The other was a group of Aché hunter-gatherers in Paraguay. What they found out was eye opening.

There were 1,300 people studied including 315 teenagers. They found zero cases of acne. And get this…. They studied the groups for over two years. And in that entire time, they could not find one person with acne! How does this compare to westernized countries?
In westernized societies acne is a nearly universal problem. It happens to 79% to 95% of the entire teenage population. In men and women older than 25 years, 40-54% have some degree of this skin problem.

Although most scientists would like to put the blame on genetics, that can’t account for the huge disparity that is found in the numbers. Environmental factors have to be part of the answer.

Researchers studied 32 patients with moderate acne. Half were put on a diet with less than 45% carbohydrates and the carbs they ate were all low on the glycemic index. The other group was allowed to eat all the carbohydrates they wanted with no restrictions.

The study went on for 10 weeks.

According to the authors of the study, “Subjects within the low-glycemic group demonstrated significant clinical improvement in the number of both non-inflammatory and inflammatory acne lesions.” When they looked at biopsies of the skin of both groups, they found that the lower glycemic group had smaller sebaceous glands, decreased inflammation, and a reduced effect of hormones.

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