Acne Zinc Link

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Overview

My husband and I both have had oily skin and we had break outs not only as teenagers, but also as adults well into our thirties. We used to wonder if we were going to have pimples when we were in our seventies. It was starting to look that way. For many years we never made the connection between our facial blemishes and our diets.

Then when I was in my thirties, after having two children, my health started to really decline. I was besieged by pain problems such as fibromyalgia, TMJ and many of the other health issues reviewed else where in this web site. I started reading a great number of books on health, and specifically diet, and we changed our diets dramatically as a result of my research. The focus of my research was to end my pain problems, but my husband and I noticed that as a result of our diet changes, our faces both cleared up as well.

After changing our diets, we were finally able to pack away the facial masks and skin colored Clearasil we used to have to use daily for our pimples du jour. For most of my life I used to wash my face three times a day to try to keep the blemishes under control. I was always trying different soaps, make up and complexion creams to try to clear up my face, when interestingly in the end the change that worked the best didn't involve doing anything directly to my face at all - it came internally from having a healthier diet.

Now my face only breaks out occasionally when I don't eat as healthy as I should, and I can usually get it to clear up when I go back to healthy foods. After experimenting for a number of years, now I have a pretty good idea of what brings back the pimples and what causes them to go away.

In general, my husband and I both saw our faces clear up when we switched from a high fiber, high grain, low fat diet, semi-vegetarian diet to a higher fat, higher red meat diet. I realized from reading the book Super Nutrition for Women* that my husband, my kids and I all had signs of a zinc deficiencies. Deficiencies of zinc have been linked in a number of studies to acne and other skin abnormalities, and I would say that the experience of myself and my husband would certainly support the findings of these studies. (*If you are interested in diet information specifically for men, the same author also has a book called Super Nutrition for Men .)

One of the treatments for acne is long term prescriptions of antibiotics. However I do wonder, since zinc has a reputation as an infection fighter, if getting adequate levels of zinc in the diet would not be a more natural acne treatment than antibiotics. Antibiotics taken over long periods can destroy beneficial bacteria in the GI tract, which can in turn lead to other health problems. I've been prescribed long term antibiotics in the past for various health problems and developed many bleeding problems from vitamin K deficiencies brought on by the antibiotics.

Besides acne, some of the other conditions that have in some way been linked to zinc deficiencies include: