Cure for Acne?

This discussion is provided for information purposes only; it is not medical advice. Always consult your physician before taking any supplements!

I posted about 10 days ago in Are Supplements Better for Acne than Chemical Peels about two supplements,  gugulipid and pantethine, that may help to clear up open acne lesions in order to start using a preventative chemical peel, such as glycolic acid or salicylic acid.

As a result, a reader sent me an intriguing bit of information. She feels that she has finally found HER cure for acne.  I think it may be early to know for sure, but I wanted to share what she had to say in hopes it may help others.

She gave me  information on a supplement that she has been taking that seems to have helped only a bit in clearing her skin, but when she added the pantethine, her skin started clearing up very quickly.

She said that within three (3) days, her oily skin had normalized, and by day five, she was clearing up completely with no new spots or bumps.  Here's how she said she's taking the supplements.

She was already taking 1000mg/day (two tablets of 500mg each) of L-cysteine, and she added 1200mg/day of pantethine (two tablets of 600mg each). She began taking one L-cysteine (500mg) and one Pantethine (600mg) in the morning, and did the same at dinner.

Since I get mild flare ups near my cycle, I think I may try half of this just to see if it helps, but I wanted to share this with you all since I know how frustrating it can be!

If anyone else decides to try this combination, please let us know (or me privately by email if you don't want to share with all) how it works for you! I'm kind of excited to give this a try since it's fairly cheap, considering other options out there.

Here's what I've found out about L-cysteine: it's an ingredient in many skin care products! I don't know what it does topically, but it's also very popular for reducing cholesterol, which is interesting consider what I heard from several other readers about gugulipid.


Two readers said that they use gugulipid to reduce cholesterol, and they both mentioned having clear skin. Another reader told me that it has a mild estrogen-balancing effect, much like soy.  If that's the case, I can see why it may benefit the skin.

This makes me wonder about the possible connection between cholesterol and acne.

Remember, if you have high cholesterol, consult your physician before taking any supplement. This information is not provided as medical advice.