Acne Diet
Previously, acne patients were as a rule advised to avoid eating oily and fried foods. In some persons ingestion of chocolates and some other similar food items was believed to lead to aggravation of acne.
Recently, however, it has been realised that the sebaceous gland is a secretory gland and not an excretory gland, which means that it can manufacture all its ingredients for secretion from the basic components available in the blood. It does not require the preformed components to be present in the blood for excretion to the surface of the skin.
Some people try to clean their skin with household products, such as besan (gram flour), aata (wheat flour) or other similar agents. These particulate substances have the capacity to absorb the oil from the skin in the same manner as talcum powder is used for drying the skin. The use of besan, aataor other similar products was prevalent before the soaps had been invented. In the present circumstances however, it seems a social crime to waste edible products for cleaning the skin when there is such a severe shortage of foodstuffs all over the world.
Most such people who use eatable materials take refuge in the thought that they are using only a few grams of the agent, but fail to realise that even 10gm of the flour per day by a thousand such persons amounts to a loss of 10kg of the product per day and 3,650 kg per year. One can easily calculate the number of people who would go hungry because of this loss. In any case, the powdery materials are far inferior in their cleaning efficacy compated to the simple soap and water.
Therefore, it does not matter whether the oils and fats are low or high in the blood; the sebaceous gland can manufacture its own fats and release them to the surface of the skin. Thus, food has no role to play in the causation or aggravation of acne.