How to control hormonal acne.
You would be forgiven for thinking that hormonal acne is best left to the rush of new hormones entering a teenagers body, but for a number of years now, hormonal acne has been on the rise in 30, 40 and even 50 year olds. What can we draw from this and more importantly what can we do about this? There have got to be comparatives and common denominators here that need investigation.
The first thing that we can ask ourselves is where on the face are the acne breakouts showing up, the forehead, cheeks, chin and jaw line. This will help to identify the cause.
➡ Forehead - Usually blackheads and whiteheads, will usually imply over active oil glands.
➡ Cheeks - This doesn’t tell us much unfortunately, this could be hereditary.
➡ Chin and Jawline - We would look at hormonal imbalances and fluctuations here in both males and females.
If we look at causes for our hormones running riot we can see the main hormones involved here are estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and cortisol. If any of these are upset we will get a host of issues and one of them unfortunately can be hormonal acne. So let’s take a look at just one reason that appears over and over again in hormone imbalanced induced acne, food particularly sugar.
The consumption of sugar and processed foods leads to elevated levels of insulin and provide a burst of inflammation through the whole of the body. These rapid spikes of insulin cause an increase in the production of oils within your skin. The types of food causing this issue, simple carbohydrates and processed food, typically white bread, white rice, fried food, ice cream, refined sugar etc are very quickly converted to glucose. The glucose enters the blood stream, this in turn causes a spike of insulin production. We have a many health issues attached to continuing spikes of insulin, but with regard to the skin, these spikes the body now responds by producing androgen hormones which exasperates the acne breakouts even further. Once we are in a spiral of insulin spiking we start to see all manner of skin issues from collagen glycation, which not only causes the skin to look more aged, but also aggregates conditions such as acneic rosacea, hirsutism and PCOS which connect to insulin resistance. The inflammation in the body now adds to the skins barrier function impairment.
It’s fair to say as Iv said over and over, we are what we eat and a lot of the time putting the wrong fuel in our body will throw up plenty of issues not only for our health but our skin too. Hormones play a huge part in the balancing of our body so trying to keep them as regulated as possible is key to homeostasis. The pending new year is a perfect time to try a whole new regime of eating good, clean food and using natural products. Now I will say that sometimes intervention in the way of prescribed medication, clinical treatments and clinical topicals is needed if you have gone down this route and still the acne is persisting, but to the most part you will find the by changing your diet and skin care routine to a more natural approach, reducing your stress levels, regularly exercising, good supplements and plenty of quality sleep will change not only your skin but your quality of life too.