Quote from euro18:

To all you diet experts out there,

My girlfriend has mild acne around her chin and also really painful periods - like she is on it for two weeks and it takes ages for it to happen. Could a low-glycemic diet help with the acne AND the painful periods? She likes to eat whatever she wants so I would want to be really confident that it would help her.

Thanks

LOL, yup. I've suffered from VERY painful periods since I was 11 and through the years, I discovered that Gingko Biloba (2 - 3 caps/day)worked for my painful periods & is safer to use than Motrin, but that won't improve her skin. I noticed that taking probiotics helped with my pain and that may help her skin. I noticed that when I went on Avandia (insulin sensitizer), that it helped reduce my pain some, so that I didn't need as much Gingko. Of course, when I changed my diet, reducing those carbs from High to actually a Moderate Carbohydrate diet (some others may need Low-Carb) and avoiding very specific carbs, it eliminated my pain!

I looked around but wasn't able to fully understand the connection until someone mentioned that a rise in insulin production will cause the body to convert fatty acids more so into arachiodonic acid, which is a PGE2, Inflammatory Prostaglandin! So another thing she can do is take Omega 3 Fish Oils or Neptune Krill Oil and/or alter her diet so that she's eating less carbohydrates or less gluten and less - no trans fats and I bet her problems will be solved. Oh and it was instantaneous (it won't take several months to notice the difference), if she has adjusted her diet enough for her body, she will notice the next period she has.

HTH & let me know how it works out ;-)

P.S. I would like to add that if she has endometriosis, which can cause painful periods too, that I'm not certain if this will work. I know that they've found increased levels of IGF-1 in this area, which high insulin levels can further increase. Yet decreased levels of glutathione can also lead to an increase in IGF-1. Hmm, haven't we heard of these very things before regarding acne...

P.P.S. Insulin Resistance or Hyperinsulinemia, is probably attributed to certain types of cancers because levels of Glutathione are decreased in these individuals...so it's all still connected.