In your quest to cure acne for good, there are thousands of useful facts you could learn about the role of coffee.
Genetics, sensitivities, caffeine, antioxidants – that’s a mere handful of the sub topics. However, if you ate a pill that instantly gave you all the knowledge on coffee and acne, you would probably short circuit.
The subject is so big that we could write a whole book about it. If you’re a newcomer to the natural acne world, then you might end up completely confused.
That’s why today, you will learn the 10 basic facts about coffee that any acne sufferer should know. Keeping these 10 simple facts in mind will help you wade through the thick pools of coffee controversy, immune to the mists of confusion.
The debate about coffee never ends, so let’s get started right now:
One – caffeine and stress hormones
Forget ageing, and forget random sensitivities. The biggest coffee danger an acne patient should focus on is undoubtedly stress.
Specifically, caffeine has the proven ability to increase the stress hormone cortisol by 50-60%. This cortisol surge happens in both the chronically stressed and the chronically relaxed – nobody is immune. In fact, this is partially how caffeine makes you so hyped up that you can run up walls, as cortisol’s physiological role is to draw from your energy stores during times of crises.
The dangers for acne? There’s no single killer, but cortisol loves to weaken nutrient absorption in the gut and delay wound healing by lowering collagen. There’s also a strongly suspected link to oily skin. Cortisol is behind those two pimples which always appear like clockwork during busy work shifts, like an old friend coming to visit (who isn’t as welcome as he thinks).
If coffee is still your nemesis after banishing sugar, then it could definitely be a random sensitivity, but stress hormones are easily the main candidate. Your simple solution, after restricting your intake to 3 cups daily, is allocating your coffee slots to the morning. All humans have a natural cortisol cycle. It peaks at 9:30am to make us leap out of bed (and bang our heads on the ceiling), and slumps in the evening to allow exhaustion neurotransmitters like melatonin to return.
For acne, you want to match your coffee drinking to this natural cycle. Your low cortisol hours will still be low, and the high hours will only be nudged up imperceptibly.
Caffeine’s main acne bullet can be dodged with a 2 minute session of strategizing, leading to decades of lasting benefits.
Two – the genetic connection is real
The raw fact is that if you were born with the wrong genes, your ability to drink coffee and not get acne may be much more restricted.
Caffeine genes are long suspected, long speculated on in the pub, but they’re very real. Specifically, it’s the CYP1A2 gene, determining the ability of your P450 detox enzymes to metabolise bloodstream caffeine.
“A” allele carriers, an estimated 50% of the US population, have a caffeine half life of 5 hours while for F allele carriers (10%), it’s over 10 hours. Two friends can drink the same cup from the Italian coffee house, but the unlucky guy will have surging stress hormones for far longer, and more acne from it. I reckon there’s still undiscovered caffeine sensitivities, but the CYP1A2 probably explains a big chunk of coffee-drinking variation in acne patients.
Be aware of these dodgy genes. A good barometer is your sleep – can a single cup keep your eyelids peeled open all night? That’s a sign of your unusually long half life (it sounds great when you write it like that).
There’s also a second gene called ADORA2A. This controls adenosine, the drowsiness neurotransmitter. Blocking adenosine is how caffeine makes you jittery and hyper, but T/T gene allele carriers have adenosine receptors which adenosine is better at blocking. They’re more sensitive to caffeine – including its stress.
If a shady, heavy coated guy walks out of an alleyway with a blue-coloured syringe, saying that he can inject you with the fast-processing caffeine genes for a hefty price, then ignore him!
It’s also known that more Europeans carry the fast CYP1A2 alleles compared to Indians or Africans. Something directly related to acne is that slow CYP1A2 allele-ers are more sensitive to caffeine’s blood sugar increases.
Three – the mycotoxins made by mould are safe
If you’re a total newcomer then you might stagger back at that title. Mycotoxins? Mould? In my coffee? What? Then you’ll stare down at your coffee to see it looking perfectly normal, which is actually even scarier.
The truth is that mycotoxins are one of many controversies in the vast coffee universe. They’re very real, as aspergillus moulds growing naturally on the coffee bean can manufacture the antioxidant-depleting, inflammation-causing ochratoxin A.
Big coffee bodies have growing guidelines for farmers, to stop the mould taking over, but this isn’t 2500AD where all farmers have a satellite chip in their heads which an all-knowing master farmer in a London skyscraper beams instructions into.
Farmers can and do mess up. Some accidentally store mouldy coffee beans with clean ones. Traditional farmers cling on to slowly sun-drying the beans on patios or in cramped drying yards, which gives the moulds weeks to return compared to modern wet processing. Some lorries even reuse the same plastic bags from an older, mouldier batch.
Inevitable mistakes mean that the coffee cup on your desk might contain acne-causing mycotoxins right now, but is it a serious problem? Definitely not. 40-60% of commercial brands contain them, but the levels are typically minimal, a fraction of the safety limits. Mycotoxins are everywhere in nature – you can’t avoid them completely. Pesticides are recent villains, but mycotoxins are natural and the exact kind of threat that our detoxification systems evolved against.
Plus, those farming guidelines are starting to work. The only problems are 1) a particularly contaminated batch, or 2) a random sensitivity to mycotoxins.
Four – it may increase insulin
Is this a hidden danger of coffee, a much sneakier one than causing stress?
The theory is that caffeine causes insulin resistance; it makes your energy stores less receptive to the hormone insulin when it arrives to deposit energy. The result is more insulin flowing through the bloodstream to compensate, and more oil flowing on your face, because insulin stimulates the sebaceous glands. The caffeine fears definitely have some logic behind them. Part of the energy surge comes from lipolysis, the liberation of free fatty acids from energy stores.
What saves the day is that it’s only a short term phenomenon. Studies on insulin resistance’s evil older brother type 2 diabetes have concluded that caffeine is actually beneficial.
Plus, caffeine is only one isolated ingredient of the coffee plant. Caffeine itself messes with your heart, yet coffee drinking protects it. Likewise, coffee itself seems to boost insulin sensitivity. There’s one negative study, but many more positive ones, and the negative one used huge coffee intakes far beyond the comprehension of mortal mankind.
Better, coffee compounds like quinines and chlorogenic acid have individual studies improving insulin sensitivity. The same type 2 diabetes studies found that overall coffee consumption had even bigger benefits.
You can be sure that 3 daily cups of coffee won’t push your insulin sky high, and definitely not to oily skin levels.
Five – its two biggest benefits are perfect
When you hear “antioxidants”, what is the first food that comes to mind?
If I had to place a bet, it would be on blueberries first, and dark chocolate second, but coffee beats almost all fruits and vegetables, even a cheap Starbucks one. One simple cup had an ORAC score of 16,000, and alongside lowering inflammation, that’s its main power, a top reason for acne to keep drinking it.
Stare into the rich brownness of coffee, and you are staring into lignans, caffeic acid, chlorogenic acid, kahweol, cafestol, stilbenes, phenols, quinones – all sorts of special compounds. Coffee is the antioxidant lifeline of the average American, their single biggest dietary source. Likewise, Norwegians and Finnish get about 64% of their antioxidants from coffee (since raw bear meat doesn’t provide many).
The result – drinking coffee washes away the free radicals behind acne in a biblical level flood even Noah would nod approvingly at.
As for inflammation, there’s one negative study. Otherwise though, coffee has been shown repeatedly to lower CRP, the reliable bloodstream biomarker of a hyperactive immune system. It’s impossible to tell which exact compound does the trick, because there’s so many.
Coffee also lowers the deaths from inflammatory conditions like heart disease. It’s called “anti-inflammatory” for a good reason; it’s technically about lowering immune system cytokines and proteins, but the real world result is calmer and soothed pimples.
It’s fortunate that two of coffee’s strongest health benefits are also the exact root causes of acne.
Six – you must control the ingredients
The happy fact is that coffee as an isolated substance, ground down from the raw rainforest beans, is much more acne-friendly than people believe, and it’s a great treat to keep in your rota, to spice things up. But there’s no point in doing a fist pump, saying you knew it was safe for acne, then instantly pouring in a whole jar of sugar.
You should never derail your coffee cup through bonus ingredients which are much dodgier for acne. Aside from stress control, that’s probably your prime acne directive.
I’m not saying you can never sweeten your coffee. In fact, your skin will easily get away with adding very small amounts to every cup, particularly if it’s a natural sweetener like raw honey (stevia is suspicious though).
However, you need to have some limits. If you have 3 to 4 cups daily, then those teaspoons will add up faster than you think.
Sugar also directly counteracts the two biggest benefits of coffee. The antioxidants are depleted by the AGEs (free radicals) sugar creates, while sugar is a notorious pro-inflammatory villain. Inflammation is its main acne danger.
At the end of the day though, it’s your experience that really matters. If you’ve banished donuts, exiled pasta, and dramatically lowered sugar, and notice that a little in your coffee does no harm, then excellent! You’ve found the sweet spot (literally in this case) between clear skin and pleasure. But always keep your eyes open. Some acne-friendly ingredients, some secret weapons, could be the delicious spices ginger and cinnamon.
Seven – the ageing fears are overblown
It’s the classic fear that anything tasty must have a dark side, the dieting concept that if you crave it, you should automatically stay away.
Some fear that every cup of coffee adds 20 minutes to your skin’s age (with broccoli supposedly shaving off 10), but is it legit? The answer is no, with one possible exception. The ageing fears are basic stuff, which can be avoided by restricting your intake to 3 cups daily, which gels perfectly with your caffeine/stress strategy.
The stress hormone surge is brought up with ageing, as cortisol draws upon collagen reserves to summon fight or flight energy. There’s coffee’s very real diuretic properties, which could dry your skin out and conjure up premature wrinkles. The final fear is sleep deprivation, with caffeine keeping your eyes peeled all night.
All three are real dangers, but will easily be prevented by moderation. They’re not mysterious – they’re well understood coffee powers which are perfectly within our control…
…which is more than can be said for coffee’s only legitimate ageing worry. According to very limited evidence, caffeine can inhibit prolidase. This enzyme recycles the amino acid proline from the skin’s layers, using it to create fresh new batches of collagen. Therefore, it’s possible that decades of caffeine madness will accelerate the collagen decline that begins after age 25. You’ll gain wise old man points, but that’s it. It may also slow wound healing in the present, the laydown of fresh collagen.
The good news? The anti-collagen experiments used huge doses, and on isolated skin cells rather than people.
That’s why my concern about coffee and ageing is only about 3%. The antioxidants will almost certainly make it a net bonus.
Eight – it’s surprisingly safe for pesticides
It’s undeniable that coffee beans are blasted with a massive amount of pesticides, synthesised in a chemical factory.
Insects love the coffee bean just as much as humans (at least we have something in common). Mealybugs, red spider mites, and the coffee bean berry borer are all great as costing coffee farmers millions; I’m surprised that tea farmers haven’t unleashed an army of them.
Meanwhile, coffee rust fungus is so deadly that from 1870 to 1889, it reduced Sri Lanka’s coffee exports from 100 million pounds to 5 million pounds. Coffee businessmen looked at each other and said in unison: “never again”.
As of 2020, a single acre of coffee fields can have over 250 pounds of chemicals applied to it. In Brazil’s coffee industry, the pesticides aldicarb and thiamethoxam are staples, but the European Union has banned both.
The same is true for propiconazole, used against coffee pests, but a proven neurotoxin. This chemical chaos is made possible by a simple money-making fact. Most Westerners don’t drink coffee for its health benefits, they drink it for a) its tasty flavour, or b) to jolt themselves awake in the morning…
…but luckily, a simple firewall keeps the pesticides out of your mouth, and out of your skin. It’s the unavoidable firewall of roasting, normally designed to subtly alter the phytonutrients and make the bitter green beans actually taste like coffee. Roasting at 400F obliterates many of the worst chemicals. For example, heptachlor can fall by 99.3%, while chlordane can be decreased by 90%. The notorious atrazine is also obliterated.
The only slight worry is undetectable breakdown products of these chemicals, toxic relatives with a mutated molecular structure, forged in the fire, like every good horror film where the heroine thinks it’s all over before a single hand appears out of nowhere, the enemy coming back for one last bout. If you want to be really sure, then go organic, but for acne sufferers, conventional coffee is almost certainly safe. Blueberries, bananas and apples are another story though.
Nine – decaf is not ideal
The big theory about decaf is that it’s simply the musty, leftover beans scraped from the bottom of the barrel.
That when sifting through beans, farmers throw the dodgy ones across the room and into a bin that actually leads to a pipe funnelling them directly to decaf headquarters. Taste correlates with nutrition, so is decaf devoid of acne-clearing power?
It used to be – because its selling point was solely having no caffeine, producers used to get away with skipping the fine, exquisite taste. However, as the reputation spread, the market evolved, and brands promising to be high quality suddenly materialised. They’re no longer the by-product of the 1970s energy drink industry, which extracted their caffeine from coffee beans and flogged the grotty remains off.
Similarly, the fears over chemicals are overblown. I always recommend caution over pesticides – we recommend plenty of organic foods here – but the caffeine-removing gas methyl chloride gets destroyed during the roasting. Both decaf and normal coffee beans spend 15 minutes in scorching 400F heat. Methyl chloride has some antioxidant-depleting powers, but the FDA’s safe limit is 10 parts per billion and the average decaf bean contains just 1 part per billion, and that’s before you brew the coffee in your kitchen.
The only worry is firstly, that decaf coffee is consistently lower in acne-clearing antioxidants in studies, including chlorogenic acid, 1,5-gamma-quinolactones, caffeine acid, and phenols. Secondly, caffeine reduces the moulds that produce mycotoxins, starving them of their glucose energy source.
Caffeine is the coffee bean’s natural defence, and that’s why decaf coffee is acceptable for acne, but only a priority if you’re mega sensitive to caffeine.
Ten – coffee is a sunlight shield
That’s right. You’d imagine that to defend your skin against sunlight’s harshness, you’d have to gulp down a mug of spinach and lettuce tea, but it’s actually your favourite beverage coffee which does the trick.
Caffeine addiction can make a beach trip much less damaging. We’re not talking about caffeine cream – it works from the inside out. It’s down to caffeine and various antioxidants and molecules, which flood down your throat and pop up in your skin 6 hours later.
Across various studies, coffee has prevented all three types of skin cancer: basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and cutaneous malignant melanoma. Apart from being an excellent power itself, this hints that coffee can slay the acne dangers of sunlight. For example, free radical formation from sunlight (like 8-OHdG) is common to skin cancer and acne.
Coffee’s sunscreen powers are multiple. Caffeine can suppress AKR, a skin molecule which itself suppresses the self-programmed death (apoptosis) of cancer cells. Caffeine suppresses UV-produced increases in the pro-inflammatory chemicals COX-2 and NFKappaB; the antioxidant caffeic acid does the same thing. For decaf coffee, these benefits either disappear or fall massively, showing caffeine’s importance.
Coffee addiction could explain the puzzling (and annoying) case of your friend who never seems to burn after a day surfing. You’ll be slathering on SPF100 sunscreen while he’ll be saying “the sun is our friend, dude, just roll with it”. This might be coffee’s top secret power for skincare. Antioxidants and calming inflammation are fantastic, but fairly common.
The great thing is that you only have to drink coffee, not dunk your head in it while hanging upside down like Batman in your personal skincare chamber.
Conclusion
Hopefully, the role of coffee in an acne-friendly diet is now clearer to you. Make no mistake that diet IS the main cause of acne, but coffee is barely to blame.
Of course, we’re only scratching the surface here. Now that you’ve got the basic facts locked down, the basic knowledge secure, immunising you against confusion, you can read the more advanced articles on each topic. You can become the official expert on coffee and acne, the clear skin king of your local neighbourhood.
The more you learn, the closer you will get to the fabled land where clear skin and pleasure co-exist, but these 10 points will do the trick. Keep them at the back of your mind and you chances of success will rise by 1%.
Thanks for reading!