The Clear Skin Diet

When I gave birth to my daughter I suffered from extremely severe and painful cystic and nodule acne, it was so painful I went to urgent care one night because I was unable to sleep and was prescribed narcotic pain medications. After being treated by a dermatologist for over a year my skin finally cleared up and stayed clear until I developed an allergic reaction to my topical skin cream.

I decided to just stick with the birth control since I was told it was mainly hormonal acne. The problem with birth control is, however, you have to go to the pharmacy every month to pick it up.

One month I got a notification that my prescription was ready for pick up and I never went to go pick it up, it was a long-forgotten task of my forgetful mind.

I was without my prescription and I did not feel like going to the doctor to get it refilled so I started to do some research on natural ways to clear my skin.

Interestingly enough I was watching a YouTube video on weight loss and the video mentioned these two girls named Nina and Randa Nelson.

Nina and Randa are Youtubers who have shared their journey to clear skin by changing their diet and sharing their success on their YouTube channel. When I first discovered their channel, they were just vegan Youtubers, but they soon became published authors of their book “The Clear Skin Diet”, forwarded by Dr. John McDougall.

What is the clear skin diet?

Nina and Randa shared their story of their experience developing sever cystic acne as a result of their increased fat and oil consumption in their vegan diet. They decided to get rid of the high fat foods and oil in their diet and stick to a strict regimen that completely cleared their skin.

They ran a pilot study with 15 in house participants and a second study online with 120 participants.

I was intrigued by their results and so I decided to purchase and read their book to get the full details on this diet and read the testimonials that the girls mention in all of their clear skin YouTube videos.

With this discovery I wanted to see if this could be backed by science other than their own pilot study, I unfortunately did not find any peer reviewed studies that have been conducted with the same guidelines and hypothesis. Does this mean they have found something groundbreaking or should we not trust it?

I did find some articles that studied the effects of diet intervention for acne treatment.

My Research

I began searching on google scholar and was not having much luck, so I switched to the ASU online library database and was much more successful.

The clear skin diet is supported by a well-known plat-based physician, Dr. John McDougall, he has a supported the theory that acne can be cured with a low-fat diet. Nina and Randa quickly gravitated to this idea and decided to test it on themselves, and it worked!

Dr. McDougall mentions that he studied people in different parts of the world that do not suffer from acne and found that their diet was absent of high fat foods like nuts, seeds, butters, soy, avocado, and coconut. This was interesting because I found similar observations in an article published in Dermato Endocrinology.

This article was titled Dietary intervention in acne, this article made a similar point to Dr. McDougall in stating that post puberty acne was closely linked to diet, specifically the western diet that is high in fat, meat, sugars and dairy.

One of the acne free civilizations that was studied were the Kitava islanders, their diet is absent of sugars, grains, and dairy proteins.

The food groups that this article mentions have a similar nutritional profile to the foods Dr. McDougall mentioned with regards to acne and the endocrine system.

What else did I find?

My search for more evidence to back up these claims were still scarce, but I did find a slightly promising article that discussed the effects of a high fat, high sugar diet in rodents. The title states that a High-fat high-sugar diet induces polycystic ovary syndrome in a rodent model.

You may be asking how does this discovery relate to acne and diet? Well polycystic ovary syndrome produces many symptoms, acne being a very common symptom, due to a hormone imbalance which is linked to the endocrine system.

The endocrine system is the system responsible for acne flair ups, so that is why this article could have some promising information; although, the text subject was a rat and not a human. Studies conducted on animals cannot be equally converted to humans, but you can get a general idea that results could be similar.

I also found one of Dr. McDougall’s articles outlining his 7-day program he runs to introduce people to a plant-based weight loss diet and health study.

As I ready through the article, I did not find information specifically related to acne, but it did mention western diseases, which could include acne.

Conclusion

I wanted to do some research and get into the claims that were made in the Clear Skin Diet by Nina and Randa Nelson because their diet started a bit of controversy because of how low fat it was according to some critics.

I personally did not know what to think but I do know that the results they go were real and the participants from their study had some great results as well, which you cannot argue with.

There is a section of their book that is entitled the elimination diet, which basically talks about introducing single food groups back into your diet to see what is specifically causing the breakouts.

I think this is important to mention because there is no one-size-fits-all diet approach for everyone.

That being said I want to keep researching and fact checking every claim, but it is clear that these twins and the Doctors advising them are on to something groundbreaking.