Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Why Teens Are More Susceptible to Acne Development ?

There are three major reasons why modern teens have a profound tendency to develop severe cases of acne. I’ve already covered the 

First one in some detail and so I will just mention it here very briefly. This refers to Nature sending all the nutrition required by the testes and the ovaries during the teen years to insure there will be adequate sexual maturation in order to guarantee the perpetuation of the species.

In cases where the diet does not have enough of the important micro nutrients, such as Vitamin A and Vitamin
B-2 to insure the conversion of the basic cholesterol molecule to both sex hormones and healthy oil for the skin,the sex hormones will win and the skin will suffer.


The second major factor is that the typical teenager’s diet consists primarily of processed foods which are woefully deficient in the basic micro nutrients required to create both hormones and healthy skin, thus their diet is setting them up to have skin that is going to be nutritionally deprived and highly prone to develop severe acne.

The third major factor is the modern teenage diet which is terribly out of balance with regard to the macro nutrients of fat, protein and carbohydrate. The diet of the average American, let alone just teens, is drastically in favor of excess simple carbohydrates. 

This factor, more than any other, when taken in combination with the above two factors guarantees that teens will have severe acne. Worse still, it also guarantees that as time goes by, a lot of other even more severe, dreadful and life shortening problems will occur as well.

It is critically important for you to understand just how this third factor of an imbalance between the macro nutrients in favor of carbohydrates is not only the biggest culprit in causing severe acne,but why it also sets the stage for a life time of early onset, life destroying health problems.

 Please read the next few paragraphs carefully, from the standpoint of your health they may be among the most important you will ever read.

Macro Nutrients - Protein, Fat and Carbohydrate 
 Most people now know that in order to be healthy, the human body needs a diet that contains enough vitamins and minerals to perform the various chemical processes that allow us to function. So, today millions of people take vitamin and mineral supplements, just to be sure they are getting enough. That is great as far as it goes. Unfortunately most people still don’t have a clue about how the other and equally critical elements of nutrition work. What I am talking about here is the vitally important macro nutrients of proteins, fats and carbohydrates.

Protein 
The great, vast majority of your physical body is composed of protein. The framework around which the
minerals of your bones are assembled is pure protein. The muscles of your body are 98% protein. The connective tissues, the ligaments, tendons, and cartilage that hold your bones and muscles together are almost pure protein. The skin that covers your body and the membranes that cover your organs are almost pure protein. 

The formed elements of the blood, your platelets, red and white blood cells, as well as the vessels themselves, are almost pure protein.The organs which make up the interior of the body are almost all protein.

The enzymes which do all the work within your body, are almost pure protein. If you take away the water from your body, over 90% of what is left of a normal weight person will be protein.

The proteins of your body can only be constructed from the amino acids derived from the proteins found in your diet. Obviously a diet that supplies adequate protein is critical to maintaining a healthy body. Fortunately due to the highly efficient way in which the body uses its existing proteins, and the effective way it breaks dietary protein down into amino acids and peptides, we actually only need about 8 ounces of high quality protein in our diet each day in order to have a really healthy body. 

But, we do need those 8 ounces of top quality protein and if we don’t get them each day, important enzymes will not be produced,leaving vital work undone. Key immunoglobulins will not be built, leaving us vulnerable to infection. Tissue repair will not be completed, resulting in premature aging. Due to the key role proteins play in our health, there are 8 amino acids which are called “essential”, meaning we must have them in our diet every day or our health will suffer.

Fat
We need fat in our diet to provide fatty acids,sometimes called lipids. When dietary fat is eaten, the acid of the stomach separates fat from the rest of the food, and in the intestines fat is attacked by an enzyme made by the pancreas called lipase, and by the bile salts from the liver.These digestive enzymes break dietary fat down into solitary fatty acids.

These fatty acids are then absorbed into the thoracic duct of the lymphatic system, where they are wrapped in a little protein covering. This makes them a chylomicron, and they are carried along in this part of the lymph system until they are dumped into the blood stream just as it reaches the heart.

Why? Because the heart gets most of its energy by burning these fatty acids in the heart muscle cells. What?
Yes, the heart actually gets most of its energy by burning fat! Yep, and many of the other muscles of the body also gain a large amount of their energy by burning fat which was derived from the diet, or released from fat stores when we starve or go on a diet.

In addition to serving as a vital, major and key source of fuel and energy for the body, fatty acids are
important structural components of the brain and joints,the foundation of many hormones, as well as a large number of nerve impulse transmitters in the brain and nervous system. So important is fat to our health, that there are two fatty acids which are classified as “essential”, meaning we must have them in our diet or our health will suffer.

In today’s world there is an unfounded fear of fat in the diet. One of those is that fat in the diet causes acne. False! It just is not so. I’ve got a surprise for you, it is not the fat on the French Fry that causes your acne, as much as the starch in the potato, but I am getting way ahead of the story.

Our ancestors whose health was far superior to our own,ate a large amount of fat each day and much of it was of the variety labeled by the so-called experts as the wrong type of fat, saturated fat. The truth is, saturated fat is actually the safest form of fat there is.

This is because it is not going to oxidize on you and develop harmful free radicals like the unsaturated fats do. In fact, University of California Medical School research has shown that if you want to age rapidly and look old soon, just consume lots of polyunsaturated,or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

Proteins and Fats in Rapid Review
We have just seen that dietary proteins are primarily for the purpose of providing us with the raw material for enzymes, red and white blood cells, immune factors, and the structural elements of most of our body and there are “essential”amino acids we must have in our diet in order to meet all those protein needs.

Fats are mostly for energy and to provide a small amount of fatty acids for hormones and nerve transmitters
as well as some structural components that make up the brain and the joints, and there are “essential” fatty acids which we must have in the diet in order to meet all those fat needs. Now we are going to take a look at carbohydrates,the most overused and abused member of the nutrition family.

Carbohydrate - The Sweet Foods
Although many people were fed breast milk by their mother when they were a baby, none remember what it tasted like, and only a few brave souls will admit to having tasted it as an adult. As the father of six breast fed children,I’ll admit that I know. It tastes sweet, very, very sweet! This very sweet tasting first food has programmed us from birth to love the taste of sweet food and drink.

If you have ever sat across from an infant in a high chair you know the difference between their reaction to eating mashed bananas or peaches versus green beans.They ate the peaches and bananas with joy but you probably ended up wearing the green beans on your face and clothes.Nature has a clever way of using that preference for sweet tasting food to get us to eat nutritionally rich food.Here is how it works. 

Did you ever notice that fresh sweet corn just off the stalk is sweet, and that which you buy in the produce department, even though it looks the same, is just not sweet?

You’ve probably noticed the same is true for most fruits and vegetables as well. This is because Nature only puts the sweet into these items after she has put in all the other nutrition. Produce harvested for market is picked early before all the nutrition has gone in, and thus Nature has not yet added the sweet. Because of our preference for the sweet taste this little trick worked well when we got our food direct from Nature. We waited until it was sweet on the tree, vine, or bush before harvesting it and thus we obtained maximum nutrition.

Today, at least 95% of all people get their food from fast food outlets or the supermarkets. These food outlets get their foods from the giant food processing plants, who in turn get them from huge growing operations. These food merchants know we love sweet foods, but due to the complex growing, processing, packaging and merchandising chain that brings us today’s food, it just isn’t possible to bring it to us “naturally sweet”. 

So they sweeten it up with the addition of sugar and starch. We the public just love it, not realizing we are being short changed on nutrition as we consume our sweet tasting foods.

The problem is, the real nutrition of the food is largely lost during this food production chain, and what is left in most cases is largely simple carbohydrates. Today our consumption of simple carbohydrate foods is more than 100 times greater than 

it was just 200 years ago. Unfortunately, our body has NOT increased its ability to handle this huge increase in simple carbohydrate foods, as a result, massive and life threatening health problems are occurring at an ever faster rate and at an ever younger age.


In talking to patients and teaching nutrition seminars, I have been shocked to find that most people have no real idea what I am talking about when I say “simple carbohydrates”. Nor, do they have any idea why eating large amounts of these simple carbohydrate foods is very dangerous to their health.
For example, this Report is on the cause and correction of Acne, and yet at this point, my guess would be that most of my readers don’t see any great connection between a large amount of simple carbohydrate in their diet and developing Acne.

Yet this is actually the number one cause of severe acne.Worse still is the fact that serious acne in the teen years brought on by a high amount of simple carbohydrates in the diet is a sure fire indicator of the diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes and obesity to follow. So let me see if I can help you gain this vital understanding of the role of carbohydrate in the diet.

No comments:

Post a Comment