On this website, we bang the drums constantly about getting more nutrients. It’s vital for your skin to hunt down vitamin A, zinc, selenium, magnesium and vitamin E, to name a few. Nutritional deficiencies are running rampant everywhere, and that’s partially why acne is running rampant everywhere…
…but there’s one problem. In the modern world, our ability to efficiently absorb those nutrients is severely impaired.
Westerners, and particularly Americans, have a sanitised lifestyle, reducing exposure to healthy gut bacteria strains which improve digestion. Furthermore, our love affair with antibiotics and pesticides like glyphosate is killing what useful gut bacteria we do have, from semi-popular prebiotics like yoghurt or cheese or sauerkraut.
In the end, even the perfect vitamin A supplement won’t fix your skin if it just passes through your body undigested and untouched.
Is there a solution to this problem?
ENTER PIPERINE.
Piperine is an alkaloid found in both black pepper (piper nigrum) and white pepper, in almost equal amounts (despite claims of black pepper’s superiority). It’s piperine that provides black pepper’s “hot” qualities since it’s a thermogenic compound, and it’s piperine that provides the pepper’s pungent flavour.
Piperine is quite a potent medicinal substance. It can lower blood pressure, increase serotonin (and therefore relieve depression slightly), and even inhibit cancer cell proliferation and the mutation of healthy cells.
But most importantly, piperine can dramatically enhance nutrient absorption in the small intestine.
Piperine boosts antioxidant absorption by 2000 percent?
One of the most powerful antioxidants in nature is curcumin. This yellow substance is abundant in turmeric and therefore fine Indian curries, Pakistani food, and many hot, spicy staples. It’s responsible for turmeric’s health benefits, but also has clear skin potential with its anti-inflammatory properties.
Curcumin’s most famous powers are cancer cell destruction and soothing joint pain and rheumatoid arthritis, and extracts are even sold by supplement companies now. Their adverts make many bold claims about tumour inhibition, DNA protection, etc.
Curcumin has only one problem – terrible absorption. In studies, it is metabolised extremely quickly, fails to boost blood levels when eaten alone, and is rapidly excreted from the body.
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Hence, we have this 1998 study. When curcumin was fed to rats alone, bloodstream concentrations increased decently over 4 hours. When piperine was added, though, bloodstream curcumin was dramatically higher over the first 1-2 hours. Levels peaked much more rapidly, while bloodstream clearance and elimination half-life significantly decreased. Overall, curcumin’s bioavailability was increased by 154%.
The next result is the most impressive. Giving humans curcumin alone produced either undetectable or very low bloodstream increases. After adding piperine though, concentrations were significantly higher after 0.25 to 1 hour. Overall, piperine increased curcumin bioavailability in humans by 2000%.
Several other studies show the same massive enhancements. In fact, the curcumin supplement companies we just mentioned are actually adding piperine to their pills to enhance their potency. So what’s piperine’s secret?
Well, for curcumin specifically, your gut normally secretes digestive enzymes which break it down rapidly, which activate once curcumin reaches “excessive” levels. Unfortunately, those levels are quite low, but piperine can inhibit those enzymes and thus prolong curcumin’s life enough to get it into the bloodstream. Thanks to piperine, curcumin reaches and heals cells across the body for far longer.
What’s really important, though, is piperine’s secondary digestive powers. They go on forever…
ONE: enhancing enzymes like trypsin, amylase, and lipase, which breaks down proteins, starch and fats respectively.
TWO: enhancing the amino-acid transporters in your intestinal lining, and therefore making protein absorption more efficient.
THREE: moving along insidious fungal overgrowths like candida, and parasites.
FOUR: finally, piperine stimulates hydrochloric acid production, which is needed to digest every single nutrient you consume.
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Piperine provides a general enhancement of your digestive processes. Hence, any other acne-clearing nutrient could be a candidate for supercharged absorption, whether it’s antioxidants, phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, or healthy but uncommon proteins like proline and glycine.
Other nutrients
Vitamin A is one such nutrient, and in this 1999 study, healthy humans took a black pepper extract consisting of 98% piperine by weight, amounting to 5mg of piperine. The rest took a placebo, and all patients took 15mg of daily beta carotene (plant-based vitamin A).
The results? You guessed it – the piperine group enjoyed much larger spikes in bloodstream beta-carotene, a 60% rise compared to placebo. The scientists concluded that “serum response during oral beta-carotene supplementation is improved through the non-specific, thermogenic property(s) of piperine”.
Vitamin A, of course, is the number one nutrient for controlling the sebaceous glands. More vitamin A equals less oil on your face, less blocked pores, and a face where acne has almost no chance to be born.
Then you’ve got this 2004 study on epigallocatechin-3-gallate, the powerful green tea antioxidant. Scientists sought to enhance its (very real) cancer-busting benefits. Previously, they had detected a 1.6% bioavailability in rats and 26.5% in mice. Hence, they fed mice an EGCG-piperine combo, and this increased their bloodstream ECGC by 30% compared to mice without piperine.
The intestinal transit time of EGCG plummeted, as did EGCG 3”-glucuronidem, an enzyme that metabolises EGCG. In the piperine mice, less EGCG was excreted from the body. In the non-piperine mice, serum EGCG peaked at 90 minutes and declined thereafter, while in the piperine mice, levels stayed high until after 180 minutes.
It’s likely that piperine can boost the activity of many antioxidant-packed foods, whether it’s a bar of dark chocolate, a fistful of pomegranate seeds or a plateful of broccoli.
Other nutrients which piperine is proven to enhance include selenium (a gravely underestimated acne mineral), co-enzyme Q10, vitamin B6, and almost all amino acids.
What can you do with this interesting information?
It’s simple – go nuts with black pepper on all your favourite dishes.
Piperine can enhance the absorption of pretty much everything, so if it works with black pepper, mix it with black pepper. There are all sorts of possibilities.
For starters, you can take the studies above to their logical conclusions and sprinkle black pepper on curries and sweet potatoes (vitamin A). That incudes most Indian dishes and anything with turmeric, since curcumin is its signature phytonutrient. Curcumin has some seriously strong acne-clearing powers:
ONE: increased serotonin production and thus relief from stress and anxiety.
TWO: acting as an antioxidant itself and also boosting your body’s production of its own antioxidants, like SOD and glutathione.
THREE: anti-inflammatory powers comparable to pharmaceutical anti-inflammatory drugs. Curcumin fights inflammation at a molecular level, by inhibiting NF-KappaB.
Just yesterday, the Chinese BMJ Journal published a new study following nearly half a million Chinese people. Eating spicy foods once or twice a week lowered the risk of dying young by 10% compared to those who didn’t bother. A spicy compound called capsaicin was “blamed”, but curcumin has been linked to life extension before.
The relevance for acne? One of the biggest causes of premature ageing is free radical overload.
As for vitamin A, beta-carotene has significantly weaker absorption; your intestine has to convert beta-carotene, whereas animal-based retinol is pre-formed. Therefore, it’s excellent news that piperine can enhance it. Sweet potatoes, carrots, pumpkins, butternut squash, eggs, and green vegetables are excellent sources of beta-carotene.
Those foods are hardly black pepper staples, but piperine will work perfectly well if you combine sweet potatoes, for example, and a pepper-laced steak in one meal. Your mission is simply to get the piperine and the vitamin A in your stomach at the same time.
Generally, the acne-clearing community pays little attention to protein, but it’s important as a main ingredient of collagen. That’s the structural skin protein which shields against ageing and helps your old acne to heal.
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It’s lucky then, that black pepper tastes absolutely fantastic with meat products. Black pepper is a staple with steak and for good reason; the flavours complement each other perfectly. Fried eggs, fish, steak, and pork chops are perfect targets, or even dairy products if you’re especially determined. If your fried egg doesn’t look like a blackened, burnt, charcoal covered crisp then you’re doing it wrong (joking). Also remember that white pepper is just as strong as black pepper.
To supplement or not to supplement?
Ordinary black pepper should work well, but supplements like Source Naturals Bioperine Black Pepper can take things to the next level. Such pills are a highly concentrated source of piperine, containing vastly more than available from black pepper alone. Additionally, such high doses of piperine have no side effects, according to studies.
The strategy is identical – take your piperine pill with any food whose nutritional content you wish to dramatically enhance. Take it with vitamin A, protein, magnesium, selenium – whatever you specifically need.
You’ll also enjoy other health benefits, as piperine has been linked to…
Cancer prevention – in this study, piperine significantly inhibited the growth of cancer cells in the prostate. It also “helped” them to die earlier. This study, meanwhile, found benefits against colon cancer. Piperine left healthy cells like epithelial cells and fibroblasts untouched, but inhibited several cancerous ones. Piperine caused “cell cycle arrest” in cancer cells and weakened their membranes substantially. Hopefully, this will translate to a preventative effect across the whole human body.
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Improved skin pigmentation – one study found that piperine improved vitiligo, the melanin-killing disease which Michael Jackson suffered from. After applying piperine to discoloured areas, the colour began to even out and in some cases, returned to an even brown within six weeks. Combining piperine with UV light accelerated the darkening. This was a topical piperine study, but consuming piperine could easily work all over the body.
Lowered blood pressure – this study gave rats piperine or a placebo, and noticed decent reductions in blood pressure after 6 weeks. Another rat study also found dose-dependant reductions in blood pressure.
Conclusion
Piperine is a potent way to improve nearly all acne-clearing nutrients. That includes standard acne supplements like selenium, zinc, vitamin E, or rogue antioxidants like curcumin, resveratrol and many more. With black pepper being so freely available, this is too good an opportunity to ignore.
We discussed earlier how our gut bacteria is crippled, and how that’s crippling our nutrient absorption. Well, many foods also contain less nutrition than they once did. Vitamin C in fruits has fallen by 40% in recent decades, and magnesium in foods has fallen by up to 80% in extreme cases.
Two culprits are soil depletion and excessive pesticide usage by farmers, which reduces a plant’s need to manufacture its own natural defences (like antioxidants). Maximising your nutrient usage is more important than ever today, unless your wallet is full to bursting point.
After discovering the magic of piperine, I’ll now be using black pepper on my meat every day. I advise you to do the same.
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Thanks for reading!