How Eliminating Sugar From My Diet Eased My Acne Long-Term

My experiment with seeing how diet—especially sugar—affected my acne started back in 2012. At 36, I was undergoing laser treatment for scarring while simultaneously trying to deal with painful, new cystic acne, something I never thought I'd still be struggling with at this point.

I'd been dealing with acne since I was 14, and it was only getting worse as I got older. I went to a dermatologist, but her course of treatment for me was a prescription for harsh ointment that dried out the acne and then rich emollient creams to combat the dryness. My skin went crazy.

Then tried to put me on Accutane, but I'd once heard a dermatologist refer to the drug as a nuclear bomb for acne: It destroyed the acne-causing bacteria, but everything else went with it. I wanted clear skin, but I decided it it was not the right choice for me.

I was desperate for clear skin and losing patience (and confidence) that I'd ever get it, but I was tired of all the treatments, and using products that showed no signs of working. It took a year, but I finally decided to make a change. I started doing some research of my own.

I started to notice that on days when I was more mindful of what I was eating (less sugar, etc.), my skin was calmer and looked much better than normal. Despite the fact that I generally eat healthy, I do love desserts. So I decided to stop eating all sugar except for fruit and a tiny bit in my tea every day. I also kept a diary of everything I ate and how my skin looked. From looking at my logs, I noticed a pattern emerge: high sugar foods were my trigger. This was the last piece of the puzzle.

There's research that explains this, too. Foods that rank high on the glycemic index, or anything that spikes your blood sugar after eating, have been shown to trigger acne in individuals predisposed to the skin condition1. This happens because when your blood sugar spikes, it triggers an inflammatory response in the body, and that can show up in your skin. This is especially true if you are already genetically prone to inflammatory skin conditions—acne being one of them.