Oregano: A Simple Yet Powerful Acne Killer

On this website we discuss various ways you can get the best nutrition out of your diet. We discuss the foods you should base your diet around, specific foods you should eat, and ways to tweak your diet that result in you getting the best deal for your skin…

…but there’s one acne-curing food that requires little to no effort at all to introduce, and that’s oregano.

Oregano is an herb that’s most commonly used on pizza, but what people don’t realise is that it’s one of the most nutritious foods in the world. This nutrition happens to be extremely useful for clearing acne. Hardly anyone thinks of using common culinary herbs for acne, but oregano is so powerful that you don’t want to miss it.

 

Oregano is an antioxidant powerhouse

The biggest advantage oregano has for your skin is its massive amount of antioxidants. If you have not read the rest of this website, then you might be unaware as to why antioxidants are such a good thing.

The answer is that they are extremely important for preventing blocked skin pores. One of the biggest processes that leads to acne is sebum oxidation, which is when squalene, a key component of your sebum, reacts with oxygen. This then forms squalene peroxide, which is one of the most comedogenic substances in the world; in other words, it’s great at blocking your skin pores.

Squalene peroxide can also kick start the acne process by itself. With most cases of acne, bacteria floods into the blocked pore and gets attacked by a powerful inflammatory response, but squalene peroxide can actually kick start the inflammatory process by itself.

In short, it is vital that you prevent squalene oxidation and that is what antioxidants do.

The more antioxidants you have in your body, the less squalene peroxide is formed on your skin, and the less pimples you develop. 

Oregano is one of the most powerful sources of antioxidants out there. Oregano is packed full of phenols, flavonoids, and all sorts of other antioxidants. In fact oregano has so many that it is the fifth best source of antioxidants in the world. The ORAC scale is a commonly used measure of antioxidants and oregano scores over 200,000.

That is far higher than most fruit and vegetables; even pomegranate, the most antioxidant rich fruit, scores only 10,000.

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Other fruits that are famous for their antioxidants include strawberries and raspberries and they only score about 4300 and 4700 respectively. What’s particularly noteworthy is that those fruits are still extremely powerful; therefore the antioxidant power of oregano must be staggeringly high.

The interesting thing is, a lot of people are attempting to boost their antioxidant intake due to media attention, but they never focus on herbs. If you are just trying to increase your antioxidants by eating more fruit and vegetables then that is a good thing to do, but you are also forgoing one of the very easiest solutions.

The first advantage of oregano is that there are so many different foods you can add it to. You can add it to meat, tea, pizza, soup, pasta, fish, and countless other foods. You don’t have to worry about preparing it; unlike with other antioxidant rich foods you can just reach into the jar and sprinkle some on your dinner. 

Oregano is also extremely cheap, especially compared to how effective it is. You can buy organic oregano in bulk for some insanely low prices on the internet. It’s made even more convenient by the fact that not much is needed. Oregano’s score is 200,000 per 100 grams, meaning that if you add just 5 grams of oregano to your foods every day you can get the equivalent amount of antioxidants as from 250 grams of strawberries.

In short, adding oregano is such a cheap and incredibly simple way to boost your antioxidant intake that you shouldn’t miss out on it. It’s more powerful than almost all other herbs and it also tastes good. It tastes especially great with steak or any other kind of meat.

 

The proof

Oregano’s superior antioxidant power has been demonstrated in several studies. 

• This one found that giving oregano to rats significantly reduced the levels of oxidative stress in their bodies. Reduced oxidative stress is a classic indicator of antioxidant power.
• This study found that oregano is “an effective direct quencher of free radicals”. That’s evidence that oregano is full of antioxidants because destroying free radicals is one of their main jobs.
• This study found that oregano was excellent at preventing lipid peroxidation, which is a key function of antioxidants. That is particularly good news for us acne patients because sebum oxidation is an example of lipid peroxidation.

This is the tip of the iceberg; there’s numerous other studies showing the same benefits. There’s also countless studies that demonstrate the beneficial effects of these antioxidants. You have studies on oregano showing improvements in cancer rates, heart disease, and all sorts of other illnesses that provide more evidence that antioxidants are at work.

 

Oregano has anti-inflammatory properties

Not only will eating plenty of oregano reduce the chances of blocked pores, but it can also reduce your levels of chronic inflammation. This is important because chronic inflammation is what causes your acne to become so red, swollen and painful to touch.

Oregano has powerful anti-inflammatory properties due to its content of carvacrol. Carvacrol is something of a miracle substance for inflammation.

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This study shows that carvacrol directly inhibits the production of inflammatory chemicals, in this case interleukin-1 beta. This study shows that carvacrol inhibited an inflammatory chemical called prostaglandin E-2, and this study found a general anti-inflammatory effect from the substance.

Oregano’s antioxidants will also be anti-inflammatory as this is one of the key powers they have. Therefore by eating plenty of oregano you can give your skin a double whammy of anti-inflammatory power.

 

Oregano is packed full of nutrition

The nutritional profile of oregano is almost as exceptional as its antioxidants. 10 grams of oregano contains 15% of the daily allowance for calcium, lots of magnesium, good amounts of vitamin A, tons of iron, and plenty of other minerals in particular.

Eating some oregano each day will boost your intake of several different minerals and this can have excellent effects on your skin. For example you will get a boost in zinc, which is important for regulating the immune system.

The other good thing about oregano is that it is a highly complicated substance. Therefore it could have a large amount of positive effects that we don’t know about. It seems like every month that new studies detailing new benefits are coming out.

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For example, some studies suggest that oregano could improve insulin resistance. This is far from proven, but given its other vast benefits it is certainly possible that it does. The numerous other healthy effects from oregano (cancer prevention, antibacterial function) also suggest that there could be other acne benefits. What is certain is that oregano has a vast amount of benefits we know about already, and if you consider the potential unknown advantages it makes it an even more potent weapon.

 

Conclusion

When most people try to increase their antioxidant intake, they generally forget about herbs, and focus on fruit and vegetables. Don’t let this happen to you! Oregano will not cure your acne, but it’s a very effective and ridiculously simple way to give your skin a good boost.

If you like the taste then I recommend that you add oregano to as many foods as you possibly can. It’s a particularly great way to boost your antioxidant intake, and it does this without being inconvenient or breaking your bank account.

I also suggest that you add oregano to meat as this tastes particularly good. It goes very well with a steak and you can add tons without the flavour being overpowering. 

NEXT: get the full skin-clearing diet and wave acne goodbye forever

 

Thanks for reading!