If your son or daughter suffers from acne, it is natural for you to want to help him or her get rid of it as quickly as possible. You want to protect your child from the painful ridicule from classmates, the weakening self image, and the physical scarring that acne can cause. You may already feel that you have tried everything, so now you are looking into alternative treatments as a last ditch effort to avoid the doctor’s recommendation to put your child on harmful antibiotics, birth control pills, or Accutaine.

As a parent, you’re looking for an acne treatment that works, and works consistently. You’re looking for an acne treatment that your teen or preteen will actually use, not another fading ‘ritual’ of bottles and tubes of “miracle products” day and night. You’re looking for an acne treatment that is SAFE for your child, and that won’t cause any harmful side effects, discomfort, or down-time. (Not to mention birth defects in your grand kids.)

Blue and Red Light is the acne treatment you are looking for.

Blue and Red light therapy works and works consistently. Blue and Red light has been scientifically and clinically proven to be effective for the treatment of mild-to-severe cases of inflammatory acne. Eighty six percent of people who use blue and red light acne therapy find some degree of success, including total clearing within 12 weeks of consistent treatment with recommended use.

We’ve found that blue and red light works fastest for teenagers and preteens, so you may begin to notice improvement in cases of mild-to-moderate acne in just a few days.

Blue and Red light therapy works best for mild-to-moderate acne, but our research and experience has equipped us to help you handle even severe acne cases with light therapy as part of a holistic approach.

Blue and Red light therapy is quick and easy. Blue light therapy is something your teenager is likely to actually stick to without complaint. Our light, LightWave CS, features 6-10 second treatments per area – they can treat their whole face in 36 seconds once or twice per day.

Blue and Red light therapy is SAFE. Blue and red light is completely safe for your child, inside and out. It is 100% natural, simple light. It is completely non-invasive. It does not cause the skin to dry out, itch, redden or swell. In fact, there are no adverse side effects reported at all.

Click here to learn more about blue light acne treatment.

Learn more about our ‘acne light,’ LightWave CS.

Tackling Severe Cases of Inflammatory and Cystic Acne

If your son or daughter is suffering from a severe case of inflammatory or cystic acne, then they may be suffering from a severe hormonal imbalance and/or Vitamin D deficiency as described above. You may notice symptoms of this showing up in other areas of their health and well being as well, aside from their skin. For example, their mood, concentration, weight and immunity may also be effected.

Blue and Red light therapy with LightWave CS can certainly help treat severe and cystic acne from the outside, often with good success over time with consistent treatment. However, especially in cases of severe acne, it is best to find and treat the cause of the problem. Total clearing may then be achieved safely and naturally by taking an “inside-out,” holistic type of approach as outlined below.

Let’s get rid of your child’s acne all together.

You can.

Consider this: In non-westernized societies, acne as a condition does not exist – not even among the teenage population. So why do our children suffer from this sometimes disfiguring disease?

No doubt you’ve done your research and you’ve learned that the cause of your child’s acne is hormone imbalance. If you can correct the cause of your child’s acne, you can eliminate the problem all together.

Granted, there are many things that bear on our children’s hormone balance today, especially during the teen and preteen years, but let’s consider the two most significant: what they eat, and the amount of sunshine they get.

1. What they eat.

What your child eats and drinks has a dramatic and immediate effect on their hormone balance. Diet has finally been proven to be related to the presence and severity of an acne condition. At least two studies since 2002 have identified the link between what we eat and the cascade of hormones leading directly to the overproduction of oil in the skin and the resulting acne condition. You may find links to these studies from the following articles on our blog:

Yes, Diet IS Related to Acne

There is no Profit in the Acne Cure

2. The amount of sunshine they get.

This is important for at least two reasons related to hormone balance:

i. Natural light is actually a basic human nutrient, just like food or water. Light entering through the eyes travels directly to the hypothalamus in the brain which is ultimately responsible for total hormone balance. Read more about this.

ii. Light striking the skin is the only natural way our bodies produce Vitamin D. Vitamin D3 is actually a pre hormone, not a vitamin. Vitamin D deficiency is now a pandemic. Unless your child gets regular sun exposure without sunscreen, it is likely that they are Vitamin D3 deficient. Most Vitamin D research going on now is focused on the cure and prevention of such things as cancer, diabetes, autism, and other catastrophic diseases, but Vitamin D has been linked to acne in the past, and will no doubt prove to be a visible symptom of Vitamin D deficiency as research continues.

Please follow the links on this page to learn more about how blue and red light therapy, a healthy diet, adequate daylight and Vitamin D3 can get rid of your child’s acne and help sustain their vibrant health, inside and out.

Please feel free to email or call me personally if you have any questions about how to implement this information for your son or daughter.

Louanna Wilson (”Mom”)

Director – Light Therapy Options

(800) 673-9407

Louanna@LightTherapyOptions.com

Hey, everyone! Yep, its still us! Nope, you didn’t visit the wrong site. We’ve just been renovating around here.  Hope you all like the changes.

A visual comparison of the home pages, old and new, for http://intelligentacnetreatment.com/

Not only have we released a brand-spanking-new light bulb for ‘clear skin’ (psst… that’s the CS in LightWave CS), but as of midnight on June 27th, we’ve gone and launched a brand new site to go along with it. We’d been working on the new bulb since late last year, and on the site in our free time since last March.  We’re pretty happy with both so far, though you can expect to see changes to the site almost daily for at least the next month, I’ll bet.

Anyway, first, let’s talk about the new light, which we have named the LightWave CS. The light is great. Even thought it weighs in at 9 ounces, the same as our old enLux Hybrids, physically it’s only about half its length, so its more compact and fits into most light fixtures better.  At only 7 watts, the LightWave CS uses less than 1/2 of the power of the Hybrid.  Even with its reduced size and power requirements however, the LightWave CS replaces a 50 watt light bulb, down only 15 watts from the Hybrid’s 65 watt value, and still seems blinding when shined directly in your face.

Comparison of enLux Hybrid to LightWave CS

As for the light source itself, instead of using one large LED chip “light engine” like the enLux Hybrid (which, let’s face it, is actually pretty cool and one of the main reasons we approached enLux to build the Hybrid in the first place) the LightWave CS uses 7 high-power Cree LEDs.  There are Six LEDs in a circle around a 7th LED in the center. The six LEDs around the outside are made up of two 405nm blue LEDs, two 450nm blue LEDs, and two 660nm red LEDs. While the 660nm red lights are a nice bonus, since enLux couldn’t produce that wavelength, it’s the center bulb that really makes us smile. That center LED is an 850nm infrared light.  We tried for over a year to get infrared into the enLux bulbs, but with no success.  Overall, I think we have a winner on our hands.

The price of the LightWave CS is certainly higher than the enLux, but still very competitive with other options on the market.  Still, we understand that a number of you might have been in the middle of doing research and RIGHT on the edge of purchasing. Not to worry, I think we’ve still got your covered. We have a limited number of Hybrid’s still in stock, though we expect they’ll sell out pretty quickly. Or, if you’ve decided that you’d like to try the new bulb instead, we’re running an introductory sale. Starting at $249, the price of the bulb will go up $5 the morning of every business day for the next 4 weeks, until it reaches the $349 full-retail price.  While we won’t be making much (if any) profit off of these initial sales, it will be worth it just to get it into your hands and maybe grab some feedback on the product.

Now, as for the site, we hope its more than a cosmetic lift. We’re using a new ecommerce system that we hope will make things easier not only for us, but for you, too. We’ve still got more information on using light to cure acne and to heal and rejuvenate skin than most anywhere else, but now the information is separated out from the information on our light, so its easier to just sit back and read up on the subject without getting bogged down in how our lamps work.  Just click on the “Science” tab, and read up on blue, red and infrared light. If you’re the type who IS interested in the lamp specifics, well, we’ve got that information too, right under “The Light” tab.  If you think we’re missing any important information or features to the site, drop us a line and let us know.

We’re sure you’ll love these lights as much as we do, but if you don’t, we’ll give you your purchase price plus 10% back.

Chris Wilson
Devoted Assistant to the President

I am going to take this directly off the Vitamin D Council’s website, and I’m sure they’ll let me know if that’s not okay.

* If you totally avoid the sun, recent research indicates you need about 4,000 units of vitamin D a day. Which means you can’t get enough vitamin D from milk (unless you drink 40 glasses a day) or from a multivitamin (unless you take about 10 tablets a day), neither of which is recommended.

* Most of us make about 20,000 units of vitamin D after about 20 minutes of summer sun. This is about 100 times more vitamin D than the government says you need every day.

* The only way to be sure you have adequate levels of vitamin D in your blood is to regularly go into the sun, use a sun bed (avoiding sunburn), or have your physician administer a 25‑hydroxyvitamin D test. Optimal levels are around 50 ng/mL (125 nM/L).

* If you don’t get vitamin D the way Mother Nature intended, from sunshine, you need to take supplemental vitamin D3 cholecalciferol. Since most of us get a lot more vitamin D from sunshine than we realize, most of us need about 2,000 units a day extra.

Please visit the VitaminDCouncil.org to learn more.

Here are three easy ways to get your Vitamin D level tested.

If I had a MRSA infection, this is what I’d do:

1. I would see my doctor immediately and follow his advice.

2. Until the infection was gone, I’d quit eating/drinking all sugar and refined carbohydrates. MRSA bacteria, like most bad bacteria, fungus, etc., eat (live on) sugar.  I would not feed the infection.

If you Google MRSA and sugar, I’m sure you’ll find all the science.

3. I would sunbathe daily in order to get the full natural dose of Vitamin D3 every day, along with all the other healing benefits of the sun (antibacterial and immune boosting), which modern science is only scratching the surface of understanding. If I could not sunbathe, (impossible today here in New England), I would visit a tanning salon 3x weekly.

(I would never let myself burn. The full natural dose of Vitamin D is produced by UVB exposure in a fraction of the time that it takes your skin to even turn slightly pink.)

Visit: vitamindcouncil.org
Read: the UV Advantage pages 153-159.  and/or Vitamin D3 and Solar Power for Optimal Health pages 31, 32 and 195-198.

4. I would shine blue light on the spots as much of the rest of the time as practical. Blue light has been proven to kill MRSA bacteria in vitro, and that’s good enough for me.

See: Blue Light Kills MRSA Superbug

I am not a doctor, and this is not medical advice.  If you think you have a MRSA infection, you should see your doctor immediately.

In doing research for the new website, I ended up at the American Academy of Dermatology’s Acne website. Right on their home page, this article caught my eye:

“Food Does NOT Cause Acne”

(They did the “NOT” just like that.)

So I read it.

It baffles my mind that a group of dermatologists can take a negative stance on positive research.
If they must say that more research needs to be done to prove anything, they could at least highlight the positive aspects of the research, (because there were no negative aspects of the research) and encourage a healthy diet, since it was found to reduce acne by 50%. If there is a chance of reducing your or your child’s acne by 50% without drugs of any kind, shouldn’t they be happy to say so?
Shouldn’t they?

Probably.

“Over three out of every four Americans now have vitamin D levels below what we believe is necessary for optimal health. African-Americans and Hispanics are at particularly high risk — nearly all have suboptimal levels.”

Dr. Adit Ginde, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine. Read article.

You could be vitamin D deficient if you:

1. Rarely go out in the sun
2. Always wear makeup and/or sunscreen on all exposed areas when outdoors
3. Do not take a multivitamin
4. Do not take a vitamin D supplement
5. Do not eat a vitamin d-rich diet (oily fish, fish, liver, egg yolks, and so forth)
6. Have dark skin and do not live near the equator
7. Are older than 60 and live in a high latitude or deliberately avoid the sun

Risk Factors for Vitamin D Deficiency

1. Age. The older you are, the harder it is for your body to make vitamin D from sunlight.
2. Lifestyle. the more time you spend indoors during the daylight hours, the less opportunity you have to make vitamin D.
3. Geographical location. If you live in a place with relatively long wingers, you get less sun over the course of the year because the sunlight isn’t strong enough to make vitamin D in the winter.
4. Race. People with very dark skin, especially those of African descent, find it difficult to make vitamin D from limited sunlight (their ancestors evolved in a part of the world where sunshine was available year round).
5. Culture. Certain cultures require that their women cover themselves entirely in heavy clothing that blocks out the sun.

Taken from: The UV Advantage: The Medical Breakthrough that Shows How to Harness the Power of the Sun for Your Health

Here’s three easy ways to get yourself and your family tested for vitamin d deficiency >

In doing more research on acne and diet, I came across another article last night on WebMD. It’s title: “Is Acne Fed by the Western Diet?”

The article focused on the research done by Dr. Loren Cordain, PhD, at Colorado State University. Her study, “Acne Vulgaris -A Disease of Western Civilization”, publsied in the December 2002 Archives of Dermatology, nailed the diet > insulin > androgen > oil production > acne link that I was talking about in previous posts. (Yes, Acne IS related to Diet and Acne Cause, Acne Cure.)

Here’s what blew me away: The date on the article was 2002. To me, these people have isolated the cause of acne, and the cure. They published it for the world to know. Seven years ago. And doctors and dermatologists today are still telling their clients the cause is really unclear and there is no cure for acne? I was astonished. I kept asking myself things like, “Why were more studies not done immediately?” “Why does not every dermatologist know this and tell their patients?” “Why is this not common knowledge and common practice 7 years later??”

Then it dawned on me, and I hate to sound cynical, but I quit asking myself questions when I realized this:

There is no profit in selling someone a healthy diet and daylight. You can’t sell it and make a killing. You can’t sell a monthly subscription to it. You can’t charge an insurance company for it. You can’t keep them coming back. There is no money in it.

Certainly no one who profits from selling an acne treatment of any kind is going to tell you the cure. I will. Here it is: change what you eat and drink and spend more time outside.   If its your child who is suffering from the condition, change what the whole family eats and drinks. You can start right now.

How?  Here are some links to get you started:

The Teenage Anti-Acne Diet Booklet. The doctors who did the most recent study created this booklet to help parents implement a high protein, low GL diet for their teenagers.   It is an excellent publication, and it’s free.

The Schwarzbein Principle: The Truth About Losing Weight, Being Healthy, and Feeling Younger

by Diana Schwarzbein, M.D and Nancy Deville.  This book explains food in relation to your hormone balance and provides practical ways to make the simple changes in diet and lifestyle.

The Easy GL Diet Handbook: Lose Weight with the Revolutionary Glycemic Load Program – A great little ‘quick-start’ guide to eating well.

There has been no formal research into the link between Vitamin D3 deficiency and acne vulgaris, but when they find it, I doubt it will be widely publicized, because Vitamin D3 is dirt cheap, too.  Please get your family’s Vitamin D3 levels tested, and start supplementing with 2000 IU Vitamin D3 daily unless you get regular sun exposure without sunscreen.

I am not a doctor or dermatologist or anything like that. I sell blue light therapy products to dermatologists, estheticians, and, more importantly, normal people like you. I’ve heard story after story of people who have had acne for years, “tried everything,” and blue light was their last hope. The most painful of these stories to me were those of parents trying anything to help their teenager or preteen. Gratefully, blue light was successful for most of them. But there were those with severe cases for whom it did not work. I wondered why blue light did not work in every case, and I wondered what else could be done to help these people.

Here’s the questions I asked myself, and the answers I found. (These are generally accepted answers. Again, I am not a doctor.)

What causes acne vulgaris?

Clogged pores lead to infection and inflammation (inflammatory acne, or acne vulgaris.).

What causes clogged pores?

Too frequent and/or over production of oil in the oil glands of the skin.

What causes over production of oil?

Increased activity of the androgen hormone, a male sex hormone present in both women and men.

When I learned that the androgen hormone was responsible for oil production in the skin, I was struck by the idea that the cause of acne was hormonal.

I personally have had problems relating to my hormone balance. I’ve heard doctors tell me “there is nothing you can do to balance your hormones.” But as I turned to natural health alternatives, I learned there certainly are things you can do to balance your hormones, but they are just not as easy as popping a pill. (Too bad for all of us.) I learned that a key to hormone balance in the body is to get the insulin hormone under control. Insulin is directly related to what you eat, specifically sugar, and anything that turns right to sugar in your system, like processed grains. So I wondered,

Is there a connection between androgen, the hormone directly related to the cause of acne, and insulin, the hormone directly related to what you eat?

I found that there was. Here it is explained by Dr. Diana Schwarzbein:

“Acne results from the clogging and subsequent inflammation of oil glands. When androgen activity increases, the number and secretion of the oil glands of the body also increase. The higher the secretion of oil, the more likely it is that oil glands will become clogged, resulting in acne. Puberty and perimenopause are the two time periods when androgen activity increases. It used to be these times when women would complain of acne. Men generally experience acne only during puberty. But both women and men of all ages now complain of acne. The reason is that women and men are eating low-fat diets that are high in carbohydrates while also consuming stimulants. High carbohydrate consumption stimulates insulin production, and when insulin rises, androgens are increased beyond “normal” ranges. Stimulants exacerbate this while increasing insulin and adrenaline.”

The Schwarzbein Principle: The Truth About Losing Weight, Being Healthy, and Feeling Younger
pp. 168, by Diana Schwarzbein, M.D and Nancy Deville.

A recent 2007 Australian study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, has made the connection between acne vulgaris, androgen production, insulin levels, and diet. In the study, Professor Mann, along with Robyn Smith, PhD and Royal Melbourne Hospital, divided forty-three males, between the ages of 15 and 25, into two groups. One group was given foods with a low glycemic load, and the other group was fed a more “typical” teenage American diet, high in sugar and processed foods.

After 12 weeks, the boys in the high protein-low glycemic load group showed significantly reduced free androgen levels, and a 50% reduction of acne.

In non-westernized societies, acne does not exist. Although heredity and some other factors may play a part, acne is in most cases a result of the severe hormone imbalance brought about by our diet and lifestyle. After a year of research into the cause of acne, I am convinced that acne can in fact be ‘cured,’ and that a healthy diet and correcting any Vitamin D Deficiency are the two major keys to the “cure.”

I will still sell blue light as a 100% natural, effective acne treatment, but our new website (look for launch around April 2009), will highlight all the above information, and every order will include it. I hope it helps you eliminate the need for any acne ‘treatment’ at all.

Links for more info, book recommendations, etc.

Yes, Acne IS related to Diet

Is Acne a Symptom of Vitamin D Deficiency?

Three Easy Ways to Test for Vitamin D Deficiency

It appears that researchers in Utah have been studying the effect of blue light to combat Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) also known as the ‘Winter Blues’. We’ve been reading a lot lately about research into using blue light to regulate the body’s internal time clock, or its circadian rhythm, so this actually makes a lot of sense. If blue light can help keep people awake by tricking the body into thinking its still daytime, it doesn’t come as a shock that the body would respond in kind by producing the chemicals it needs to stay in balance. We look forward to seeing if this is indeed the case as research continues.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1153354/Health-news-How-blue-light-helps-SAD-eating-sausages-good-you.html

Here are three ways to get tested for Vitamin D Deficiency

1. If you have health insurance, you can ask your doctor to order this exact test:

25-hydroxyvitamin D test, also called a 25(OH)D.

Your results should be between 50–80 ng/ml, year-round for both adults and children.  If you come up deficient, follow these guidelines found at the Vitamin D Council.

2. Order an in-home test through the VitaminDCouncil.org.  They’ve arranged for reduced rates – you can get one test for $65.00 or 4 tests for $220.00.   Click here for details about the test, and how to order.

3. Go to GrassRootsHealth.net and join D*action.  This is what I just did.  You have to register with the site with an email and password, then fill out a short questionnaire.  After that you can purchase your Vitamin D test for a mere $30.00.  The results will be sent directly to you.  You have the opportunity in another 6 months to do it again.  Their goal is to gather information for 5 years and stop the Vitamin D Deficiency epidemic before millions more lives are needlessly lost.  As of this writing, a full 60% of those tested through D*action have been Vitamin D Deficient.  Are you?  Are your kids?  Please check, and pass the link on to everyone you care about.

Join D*action - Get your vitamin D tested today.