How to Prevent Acne from Eating Sugar

There are many reasons why acne may form, hormonal fluctuations being a good example. It’s essential to seek professional advice from your doctor regarding possible causes for your acne, as everyone is different. A holistic approach to treating acne is advisable, with a healthy diet and lifestyle also playing an important role in promoting healthy skin.
For more information on ways to promote healthy skin, you can visit CFAH, but here is a brief overview of how sugar can negatively affect the health of your skin:

How Exactly Does Sugar Affect Your Skin?

A food’s glycemic index measures how quickly it affects your blood sugar levels once ingested. Sugary foods and those with high glycemic indexes increase your blood sugar and cause a spike in your insulin levels. This leads to a burst of inflammation throughout your entire body. Foods high in sugar, like white bread, sweets, fried foods, fizzy drinks, and chocolate cause dramatic increases in insulin and inflammation.
Increases in insulin stimulate oil production in the skin, which causes excess skin cells that can block and clog pores. As a result, your skin complexion worsens. Especially if you’re already susceptible to poor skin, that’s why many dermatologists recommend a combination of low glycemic index foods and medication to treat acne.

What Steps Can You Take to Reduce Sugar in your Diet?

Understanding how sugar affects your skin health, it’s important to take steps to lower your sugar consumption. Whether you do it for your skin, weight, energy or general health, there are a few key ways that will help reduce sugar in your diet.
First and foremost, you must ditch fizzy drinks, sweets, and artificial sweeteners. You could try and eliminate these things all at once or in gradual steps. Either way, there is no place for these in promoting healthy skin.

Another easy place to start is focusing on times where you physically add sugar into your diet. For example, coffee, tea, and breakfast cereals. Work towards eliminating added sugars. You could also think about foods that come already sweetened, like flavored yogurts. 

Become vigilant about food labels. Take time to read the ingredients to see how much sugar is in it. You’ll be surprised at how much sugar is added to the foods you buy often. Pasta sauces, bread and salad dressings are good examples of savory foods with excessive levels of added sugar. Rather than relying on processed foods or ready-made foods, make more time to cook your meals from scratch, which will help eliminate sugar in your diet.

What About the Sugar Found in Fruit?

Fruit often causes contention when we’re speaking about sugar. Yes, fruit is often high in sugar, but it also offers plenty of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that can benefit your skin and overall health. Natural sugars are far better than artificial or refined sugars found in other foods. You’d have to eat about 10 oranges to get the amount of sugar that’s in one 12-ounce soda!

Concluding Comments

Healthy skin results from many ways to treat your body, not just lowering your sugar intake – hydration, sleep, stress management, and exercise, among other things, are good examples. You don’t have to give up all sugar to promote better skin health but reducing sugar levels in your diet will benefit you.