A vegan diet may or may not be good for acne. It depends on what kind of vegan diet you’re taking. Of course, it couldn’t be any worse than a meat-laden diet.
That’s because meat alone carries loads of toxins that can bring down your liver health.
Meat also rots easily in your intestines. If you don’t get rid of the toxic waste in time, the rot will produce even more toxins. These toxins will then get absorbed back into your body.
What happens next? The extra toxins will overburden your liver.
When your liver health gets compromised, it won’t be able to help regulate your sebum production effectively. When that occurs, your skin will become excessively oily.
An oily skin is always more acne-prone than a dry skin.
On top of that, dairy causes hormonal fluctuations. This can cause your sebaceous glands to go haywire. Sebaceous glands are glands in your skin that secrete sebum. So, their malfunction will eventually lead to an oily skin too.
So, in a way, a vegan diet does help and is good for acne since meat and dairy, the two most acne-triggering items are gone.
However, if you consume a vegan diet that includes lots of refined carbohydrates, you could suffer an acne flare too.
Of course, your acne condition would be much lighter than those taking both refined carbohydrates and animal products. That’s for sure.
Having said that, try to include in your vegan diet more whole food to help fight acne. Whole food contains a good amount of fiber that can help to stabilize your blood glucose levels.
Vacillating blood glucose levels, similar to dairy food, can trigger an excessive oil production making your skin acne-prone.
Therefore, a vegan diet is good for acne only if you take fiber-rich whole food.
Whole food, especially the dark leafy greens are particularly good for acne. That’s because they pack rich alkalizing properties, fiber and skin-nourishing nutrients.
How to Add More Greens to Your Vegan Diet for the Good of Acne
Do you have problems adding more vegetables to your plate?
If yes, then try to build up the portion of vegetables gradually. An easier way for you to take in a mountain of nutrients from vegetables is to make them into smoothie.
Shove greens like baby spinach, collard greens and/or kale into a blender. Then throw in some of your favorite fruits like orange, banana, watermelon or honeydew etc and blend them together into a smoothie.
Oh, please add also a tablespoon of coconut oil into the mix. This will make your smoothie even more powerful in fighting acne.
That’s because coconut oil can help boost your liver health, making it even more efficient in regulating sebum production.
No wonder more people are starting to use coconut oil for acne.
But as far as I know, many of them treat their acne with coconut oil alone.
What I mean is, they don’t feel the need to “edit” their diet to make it more nourishing. They probably think that their acne trigger has nothing to do with their bad diet. Well, a bad diet does cause acne in fact.
That also explains why some acne sufferers failed in their quest to get rid of acne with just coconut oil.
You’re different. Your vegan diet includes more whole food and coconut oil. So now, you have a vegan diet that is truly good for acne. Not only that, this diet will help you prevent future acne flare, provided you stick to it for good.
I was thinking while reading your article, how also stress levels can cause acne, I've never been an acne person but my skin plays up big time when I have a worry or 2 or 3.
55 years old but have never as a child had acne issues.
Now when I have a few things occupying my mind in not a good way (stress) my skin itches terribly, no pimples, no bumps, just crazy itchy, especially my face, it's unbearable, and this only happens when something big is on my mind, I wonder do you know what the physical explanation is when something like this happens?
That's odd that your skin would itch when you're stressed, but it could be due to higher cortisol levels affecting the way your skin feels. I've never heard of that, so I can't really say!