Seth’s blog

The Chinese government sets limits to the number of acceptable student suicides per year at every college. If the number is exceeded, the college is punished — perhaps by a reduction in administrator salaries. Although colleges conceal suicides from their own students, they dare not conceal them from the government. At Tsinghua (with about 12,000 students) the annual limit is six. (So far this year, there have apparently been none.) In the electrical engineering department recently, more than six students were thought to be considering suicide. Because of this, a psychology professor gave the EE majors a talk about looking at the bright side of things.

A newly-formed Tsinghua student club has a Chinese name that means Sing Your Heart. It is for students who want to volunteer to teach in poor rural areas.  The club has a special song that they sing at every meeting. They are remarkably ambitious: They want to set up a training program to train students to teach in these areas.

The School of Humanities and Social Sciences has a debate competition every year. This year’s topic is: Should the Fuwa (the Beijing Olympic mascots) have genders?

Cure Together has acne treatment statistics: Comparisons of the effectiveness of about a dozen treatments. Only two treatments rate high for effectiveness and both have only a few raters. Neither of the high-rated treatments (Roaccutane and Dr. Hauschka Skin Care) was part of Stone-Age life. Because of the absence of acne in at least a few groups of people living more Stone-Age-like (stoneagesque?) lives, it is likely that something about modern life causes acne. When whatever that is is figured out, it should be possible to eliminate acne cheaply and safely.

Regardless of the future, this table is a big step forward in dealing with the problem. It is the first unbiassed look at the effectiveness of different treatments I have seen and it tests a lot of everyday treatments (e.g., face-washing). Academic papers on the subject usually study prescription drugs and the authors usually favor one of the treatments being studied.

Acne.com, a website paid for by the drug company behind Proactiv, a common acne medicine, has the following:

Acne Myths & Claims: Certain foods cause acne. No, those french fries you had yesterday didn’t give you new zits today. In fact, scientists have been unable to find ANY substantial connection between diet and acne. So all the foods you’ve been afraid of — pizza, french fries, chocolate — are fine. Of course, that doesn’t mean you should binge on your favorites whenever you want — a healthy diet will help your body have the strength to help you in your fight against acne. So use your common sense, but don’t be afraid to indulge now and then.

“All the foods you’ve been afraid of are fine”? This is much too certain-sounding. The studies that failed to find a diet/acne connection were poor. Other research suggests that acne may well have a dietary cause. The false certainty is self-serving. Because foods don’t cause acne don’t bother trying to figure out which ones; just take our medicine! It resembles my surgeon claiming there was evidence that the surgery she recommended and would profit from was a good idea when there wasn’t any such evidence.

In contrast, acne.org has this:

Myth: Diet and acne are related. Reality: The bottom line is we need more research. We do know that people in some indigenous societies do not experience [any] acne whatsoever across the entire population. This is in stark contrast to the widespread presence of acne throughout all modern society. It leaves us to ponder the question of whether the indigenous people’s diet contributes to their acne-free skin. Discovering a dietary way of preventing acne may be a future reality, however, we may live so differently from our hunter/gatherer ancestors that it has become close to impossible to replicate our ancestral diet. But let’s see if we can work together to come to some consensus from our own experiences. If you feel that you have cleared your acne using a particular diet, or if you are planning on attempting a diet of some kind, please post your method on the Nutrition & Holistic health message board.

That’s reasonable and helpful. The website that couldn’t hire expensive experts had better information.

Reviews of Proactiv on acne.org.

Previous posts have implicated Western Civilization and face-washing with soap in the etiology of acne. What else might be involved? A reader writes:

My girlfriend suffered from acne for years. She went to a dermatologist, tried every fancy soap and skin cleansing system, but nothing worked. She was also a Diet Coke fanatic. Every morning while she was getting ready for work, like a coffee drinker, she’d have one. It was her daily jolt of caffeine.

When I read about your diet modification, part of which included giving up soda, and your subsequent acne disappearance [I found that Diet Pepsi caused acne], I of course told her about it. “No, it has nothing to do with my diet, it’s hormones and bacteria.” She was not about to give up her beloved Diet Coke! How else could she function in the morning? In the meantime, she would periodically get upset at what she called the “open sores” on her face.

About 9 months ago, she decided to go on a detox diet — not with the aim of treating her acne, but just to lose a couple pounds. It required her to eliminate as many artificial chemicals and preservatives from her diet as possible. Out went the Diet Coke. Within days, her skin cleared up. She hasn’t had a major breakout since.

Yet more evidence that acne is due to lifestyle factors and can be completely cured by lifestyle changes, often dietary. There should be a list somewhere, ordered from most to least likely, of lifestyle causes of acne. If you have acne you just go down the list eliminating each one in turn until you find the culprit.

This article reports that there was no acne whatsoever among the Kitava Islanders in Papua New Guinea and the Ache hunter-gatherers in Paraguay. Here is the abstract:

BACKGROUND: In westernized societies, acne vulgaris is a nearly universal skin disease afflicting 79% to 95% of the adolescent population. In men and women older than 25 years, 40% to 54% have some degree of facial acne, and clinical facial acne persists into middle age in 12% of women and 3% of men. Epidemiological evidence suggests that acne incidence rates are considerably lower in nonwesternized societies. Herein we report the prevalence of acne in 2 nonwesternized populations: the Kitavan Islanders of Papua New Guinea and the Aché hunter-gatherers of Paraguay. Additionally, we analyze how elements in nonwesternized environments may influence the development of acne. OBSERVATIONS: Of 1200 Kitavan subjects examined (including 300 aged 15-25 years), no case of acne (grade 1 with multiple comedones or grades 2-4) was observed. Of 115 Aché subjects examined (including 15 aged 15-25 years) over 843 days, no case of active acne (grades 1-4) was observed. CONCLUSIONS: The astonishing difference in acne incidence rates between nonwesternized and fully modernized societies cannot be solely attributed to genetic differences among populations but likely results from differing environmental factors. Identification of these factors may be useful in the treatment of acne in Western populations.

This implies that acne isn’t inevitable. It’s almost surely caused by something environmental — perhaps diet, perhaps something else (such as washing your face with soap). That’s why self-experimentation about acne is promising: By changing your environment in various ways, you may be able to figure out what’s causing your acne.