If you are suffering with stubborn cystic acne, your hormones probably have something to do with it.

You may have even googled ‘hormonal acne’, in an effort to understand wtf your hormones are doing and why are they torturing you like this, when all your friends get to eat pizza AND have clear skin!?

First of all, you’re not alone. Welcome to the club - we have T-shirts.

Androgenic acne is the term given to pimples and breakouts that are caused by hormones like testosterone. Testosterone falls under the category of androgen hormones - for the purpose of this article I’m using them interchangeably.

How do you know if you have androgen driven acne (rather than some other equally horrendous form of acne)? If your acne is androgenic, you can probably relate to my experience:

My skin started to breakout when I was about 13 years old and got progressively worse through my teen years. So far, nothing unusual even if it was very unpleasant. I got out the St Ives Apricot Scrub and went to town in an effort to cleanse my greasy, pimple prone skin. If you’re about to get out your own tube that’s been decaying in your bathroom cabinet since 2006, don’t. It will literally wear away the outer layer of your skin and that really doesn’t help.

ANYWAY…

When I was sixteen, my mum decided the time was ripe to take me to the doctor to talk about going on The Pill. Doc told me that my skin was breaking out because I had too much testosterone in circulation and that I could go on the pill to fix this. Job done. I didn’t think too much about it and cashed in my prescription at the chemist for my magic clear skin beans.

Side note:

The Pill works on acne because it suppresses ovulation and stops your body making sex hormones. Yes, The Pill contains synthetic versions of hormones, but they aren’t the same chemical structure and they don’t affect the body in the same way.

Because The Pill technically sends you back to pre-pubescence, your skin stops producing adult levels of sebum and your skin becomes as smooth and clear as a baby’s behind.

Back to my sob story:

After five years or so on The Pill, I started studying Naturopathy and decided I didn’t want to chemically castrate myself anymore. Plus I’d become a bit more cluey and realised I was having some mild side effects. I stopped taking The Pill and a few months later, my skin went beserk. I hadn’t timed it very well you see – I withdrew from The Pill at the same time as studying, working two jobs and entering a new relationship. The stress I was under, combined with the hormonal rebound spelled trouble with a capital A (for Acne).

 Coming out of hibernation, my ovaries kicked in with gusto! I was back to making normal, adult levels of sex hormones which caused my sebum production to rebound. Now my skin was making more sebum than EVER before. I had about 20 cystic lesions on my cheeks, chin and jawline. Awful.

Understandably, I was super self conscious about my skin. I hated being in photos and refused to go anywhere without make-up on. It took me a long time to recover from the self-confidence issues caused by acne.

I dabbled and tried many different natural remedies, diet and lifestyle changes over the next 18 months and everything helped a little bit at a time. I wish now that I had bitten the bullet and invested in someone who knew what they were talking about, to guide me. It would have saved me a lot of money, time and hours standing in front of the mirror critiquing my skin!

A few years later and I understand a lot more about what was happening at the time. After coming off the pill, my body was producing more androgens and sebum than it was used to. 

My body was also metabolising (breaking down) these androgens in a way that was making them a lot more potent. This can be why the levels of testosterone in our blood is normal, but the skin and hair reacts so intensely!

The skin is intimately connected to our hormone and nerve communication, so my skin was picking up signals from the androgens in my blood, and processing them into a more androgenic form right there in the skin! Totally not fair. Some people are more genetically susceptible to this than others.

Androgens affect the skin by increasing sebum production and accelerating hair growth. Add some inflammation and bacteria into the mix and you can guess what happens next. 

 Classic signs of excess androgens:

• Acne on the jawline, chin, neck and back

• Hair growth on the jaw and upper lip (in a beard pattern, not just that one stray hair on your chin)

• Greasy skin and greasy hair

• Aggression and mood swings

• Excess body odour

• Irregular menstrual cycles

• Long, coarse, dark hairs around the nipple

If you are experiencing these same symptoms, chances are that you are either making excess androgens to begin with, or your body is metabolising them down that pathway that makes them way more potent when they get to the skin.

Now that you know how testosterone causes acne, what can you do about it?

Get your hormones tested

My motto is, ‘test don’t guess’. Before messing around with hormones, it’s best to get a thorough understanding of your baseline hormones. You can do this through your doctor with a blood test, or with me via the DUTCH test. Stay tuned for my blog about DUTCH hormone testing…

Learn about what’s causes high testosterone in the first place

Read more about that here and try supplementing zinc.

 These are actionable things that you can do to get started.

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