Chinese Medicine

A lot of people believe that there is a link between acne breakouts and fried, greasy and oily foods. Does eating fried, greasy and oily foods really cause oily skin and acne breakouts?

However, it is not true, at least it is not so true to some people, who as far as I know eat large amount of chocolate, coffee, popcorn and wine on daily basis. But their faces are smooth and no acne breakouts at all. I have paid attention to this phenomenon for a while and I come to know that rather than to say there is a link between acne breakouts and fried, greasy and oily foods, a link between acne breakouts and digestion problems would make more sense although it is not true to all of us.

Acne breakouts and dampness

Based on the above-mentioned fact, we have reason to believe that fried, greasy and oily foods just play part of role for acne breakouts at most. Or it just acts as a predisposing factor, instead of the root cause. For part of acne sufferers, acne is essentially the toxins, waste and by-products of body metabolism. From the perspective of Chinese medicine, this type of acne and eczema are caused by the same source – dampness. Therefore, to some extent the treatment for eczema is suitable to acne as well.

How dampness affects acne

As we know that the blocked sebum can lead to acne, actually this oily substance is called dampness from the point of view of Chinese medicine. Essentially there are two main direct causes for acne breakouts.

• The generation of the body waste;
• The poor excretion of body waste.

Because of the characteristic of dampness being sticky and stagnant, dampness would block the exit channels of the waste, which finally contribute to the breakouts of acne. If the exit channels for waste remain unobstructed, acne breakouts will not happen.

Dampness and digestion problems

Most people may know that dampness comes from eating oily food or sleeping on the floor in hot weather. However, for one who lives in modern times, they are not the main reason any more.

Anyway it does not necessarily to produce dampness for those who consume a lot of heavy-flavored food. Why? It always depends on a person’s digestion. If a person has the digestion of an ostrich, his stomach is strong enough to digest and absorb all those nutrients. Therefore, dampness can not stay in our body.

As long as a person has a weak digestion, his stomach is unable to digest and absorb the excessive nutrients, which will stay in our body to form dampness and acne breakouts finally. Therefore, for a person has a weak digestion, dampness still would be produced and lead to acne breakouts even if he does not eat oily food at all.

Causes for poor digestion

So what are the causes for poor digestion? Chinese medicine believe that it is closely related with the modern life style. Nowadays too many people like cold drinks, anti-biotics and air-conditioning and so on. The first victim of this kind of modern life style is our stomach. The stomach Yang is impaired by cold and can not function properly any more, which directly result in the forming of dampness in our body.

As we know that the most important way for discharging the waste is through the bowels. However, due to the improper digestion, the waste, which should originally be discharged from bowels, would be forced to drain away from the skin. While dampness stay in our body and in the way of the exit channels for the waste, acne thus breaks out.

For most people, acne breakouts do link to the digestion problems, which might be one of the most important causes for acne breakouts. When something wrong, which includes soft, sticky, loose stools or once in a few days, happens to the bowels, the toxic and waste would follow the channels upwards along with the heat to form acne in the end. For this type of acne sufferers, it needs to resolve the problem of bowels first, which from the perspective of Chinese medicine actually is the digestion problem, namely deficiency-cold of the spleen and stomach.