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Comment by RobertRoberts | Hacker News Reader

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 stress was severe, acne would come back.

I think there a huge health and stress connection to acne.

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When I was a teenager, I saw a dermatologist for my Psoriasis. I somehow wound up with a prescription for tetracycline for my acne. Not only did it not work, but I was constantly sick for a full year after I stopped the medication.

There is no moral to this story.

Perhaps the moral of your story could be: a second opinion can be invaluable.

The moral of the story is that if a medicine makes your kid sick, you get another opinion. This is on the parents.

I was prescribed tetracycline for my acne when I was in my late teens as well. It gave me a terrible sore throat (sharp stabbing kind of pain) so I stopped taking it. I've always told doctors since then that I'm allergic to it, because I'd really rather not repeat that.

> Changing my diet helped clean up my acne (not eating junk food)

This. Actually, for me, it wasn't really the diet in general, but making a switch to drinking water instead of pretty much any other drink (*especially soft drinks!). I went on a hike for a couple of weeks as a teenager, and I think that not having access to anything but water to drink was enough to change my habits.

For me chocolate causes acne (usually on my back). It happens to my father too. When I eliminate that one item from my diet I am fine. Every few years I eat chocolate in hopes that my body's reaction will change. But 30 years later it still causes a reaction.

My high school health teacher insisted that chocolate does not cause acne, according to the research. Her definitive statement made me ignore what my father had been telling me for years. That's the problem with health science, you never know if you are an outlier to which the research does not apply.

My mother breaks out in acne when she eats chocolate. It's incredibly predictable and she ascribes it to being "allergic".

It happens quite often, I donno why there is no supportive research on it.

I had facial acne bad as a kid, and completely went away sometime when I was 18. I stress a lot (just my personality) but it hasn't come back. Anyway, just throwing out another data point.

PS: Acne as an already awkward and hormone supersaturated kid totally sucked.

Everytime I take a plane somewhere I would have huge acnes in the two , three hour duration of the flight. I always suspected it’s the stress of having to be on time and everthing that flying involves.

I've experienced the same, although I don't think I stress out about flights anymore.

My theory is that it's caused by air being dryer in the plane, as my lips are usually chapped on/after flight.

i think there is a connection in there, but not quite sure where.

I myself pretty much only ate junk food, although my diet was very low cal. i avoided the sun because i burned very easy, but I was outside a lot. i was always under a high amount of stress, but i never got acne or anything like that

edit: by junkfood, i mostly ate cereal and lots of cookies/candy bars

I burn easy too, but it still helped. I know people that can eat what ever they want, and it won't affect their skin. And some people that avoid certain foods because it makes them break out.

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...

A lot of people report a huge improvement in their acne after cutting out dairy. Drinking cow’s milk in large quantities is something humans have only been doing for a few thousand years and there’s quite a bit of evidence we probably shouldn’t.

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-acne-promoting-effects-...

What evidence? There's a reason the mutation that kept lactase production "on" spread so well. Today many of the healthiest cultures on Earth consume lots of dairy. France with the most butter, Greek with the most cheese, etc.

The healthiest populations in the world consume virtually no dairy. Okinawans, vegans, 7-day adventists etc.

The Mediterrean diet is largely vegetarian:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2017-02-16/10-commandments...

75% of the world's population loses their ability to digest lactose after infancy:

http://www.pcrm.org/health/diets/vegdiets/what-is-lactose-in...

Milk is for babies. Cow's milk is for cow babies.

Vegetarian ≠ Vegan. Lots of dairy in the standard Vegetarian diet. The link you provided to the Mediterranean diet included lots of dairy (cheese, yogurt, etc.). Also, a lifetime of personal experience says that Seventh-day Adventists eat quite a lot of dairy.

I'm vegan so I know the difference. The Adventists are often cited in nutrition studies and the vegan subgroup of Adventists is the healthiest.

Quoting directly from the link I provided:

If you think the Mediterranean diet looks a little low on dairy foods, you're right. It's certainly lower in dairy than is currently advised in the National Dietary Guidelines

...But traditional Greek Mediterranean populations got calcium from other sources: sardines and other small fish which were eaten with their bones, and from leafy greens (which contain only a little calcium but the large volume of the greens eaten meant the amount added up).

Every country on the Mediterranean consumes an enormous amount of dairy. Greece consumes more cheese per capita than any nation, and Malta, the island in the middle of the med, comes in third.

http://www.dummies.com/food-drink/special-diets/annual-chees...

Goat milk is healthier than cow milk:

https://www.livestrong.com/article/402645-what-are-the-healt...

At least some Greeks appear to have a genetic mutation that shields them from the worst effects of cholesterol and saturated fat in cheese:

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/809612/greeks-un...

Even the recent cheerleading studies for cheese caution that eating it in large quantities is dangerous:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2017/12/06/is-chee...

And health issues aside, dairy is cruel: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/30/dairy-...

My daughter got severe acne after becoming a full vegan. When she introduced eggs, dairy, and fish back into her diet, her acne got much better.

Vitamin D2 is always vegan. Vegan D3 extracted from lichens ( https://www.gardenoflife.com/content/hot-ingredient-first-ve... ) is available now on Amazon ( https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Formulated-Vitamin-Supplement-... )

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