No one wants to deal with a breakout of acne. Whether you’re looking for support on helping to reduce your breakouts, or you’re on the hunt to figure out what is causing these seemingly mysterious breakouts, you could just be looking at a food sensitivity.
Food sensitivity and its role to acne
Firstly let’s take a moment to understand just how food sensitivity can impact your acne in and of itself. Food sensitivities cannot actually create acne itself, but they can create a flare-up of the inflammation that does cause acne.
Acne itself is simply inflamed skin that pops up seemingly out of the blue and creates bumps within the oily skin. Proper cleansing is important to keeping acne breakouts to a minimum, but acne itself is actually pretty common in the general adult population. The more prone you are to skin inflammation, the more prone you are to acne.
Where a food sensitivity comes in, is that having a reaction to a disagreeing food in your system can boost inflammation. This, in turn, may end up boosting the amount of acne that you have. It’s thought, then, that food sensitivity can indirectly cause acne breakouts in someone who is predisposed to it.
Signs that food sensitivity is impacting acne breakouts
When you are hunting for the cause of your recent acne breakout, here are some signs that it could just be what you’re putting into your body.
- Breakouts in clusters on your face: When you are dealing with breakouts in clusters, especially on your face, this is a sign that something you are eating is causing a problem. Since the face is where you are more prone to have oily skin and inflammation, keep an eye on all of your problem spots.
- Prone to breakouts after certain foods are ingested: In keeping an eye on your breakouts themselves (and even recording them along with your food journaling), you may find that you have worse ones when you are eating certain foods and meals. This may help you to see that you are dealing with bad foods as far as your body (and acne) are concerned.
- Normally clear skin has breakouts in the evenings or mornings: Another thing to focus on is that skin that is normally clear other than a few dots here, may have a breakout in the late evening or overnight. This sudden onset of acne breakouts with a clear reason (such as heavy cosmetics use the day before) is another indicator that your acne isn’t just being caused by oily skin and regular inflammation.
While it is understandably frustrating to have to do with breakouts, it’s important to understand the role that food sensitivity may play in their severity within your life. If you figure out what you are sensitive to — possible with a food sensitivity test — then you’ll be able to treat yourself better and hopefully take care of your breakout as much as possible. Plus, there’s the added benefit that you won’t be eating something your body is incapable of digesting, so there’s also that perk to think about.
