Food Allergies and Acne

What you put into your mouth can have a big impact on your skin. Especially so if you are allergic to what you eat.

Food allergies can trigger new pimples or aggravate existing acne. Here's how it happens.

Note: though I'm talking about food allergies this also applies to food intolerances and sensitivities. In reality, they are just less 'severe' allergies. Many people have food sensitivities they are not aware of because they don't produce noticeable symptoms. Still these sensitivities can affect their acne.

Food allergies happen because the immune system responds to the food. When the food you eat is not completely digested larger food molecules can enter the bloodstream. The body doesn't recognize these as food (since they are not broken down to individual nutrients) and the immune system attacks them. This causes the allergic reaction.

As I explained in what causes acne hub, acne is a result of insulin resistance and chronic inflammation.

As food allergies involve the immune system they add to the inflammation.

If this would happen only once in a while it wouldn't be so bad. But most people eat foods they are sensitive to (not necessarily yet allergic) at almost every meal. So they have incompletely digested food particles floating in their blood all the time. This means the immune system is activated all the time and the levels of proinflammatory hormones shoot to the sky.

This can have a major impact on acne.

Food allergies/intolerances explain why many people notice their acne improving after removing wheat and dairy from their diet.

Avoiding foods you are allergic or sensitive to is a big step towards clear skin. Unfortunately many sensitivities go unnoticed because they don't cause noticeable symptoms. One good method is to avoid common food allergens. The following foods account for 90% of the food allergies (but not necessarily sensitivities) in the US.

• Milk and dairy products
• Eggs
• Peanuts
• Tree nuts
• Seafood
• Shellfish
• Soy
• Wheat

Whether you have been diagnosed with allergy or not it's likely you are sensitive to many foods on the list - and possibly others. Let's look at wheat and dairy as examples. Humans do not have the enzymes required to completely digest these foods. So they cause a reaction in any human eating them. This is simple a physiological fact.

In food allergies and acne page at natural-acne-solution.com I describe a simple and free test you can do at home for identifying food allergies and sensitivities. You can use the test to identify the foods you are allergic to and cut them off from your diet.

This can be a big step towards clear skin.

This video shows another good way to test for food allergies using muscle testing. This is also very quick, but you need a partner for this.