Hormonal Acne: 2. Problematic Cycles
So, although it all started with puberty, for most of the young women acne remained somewhere in the past. They won’t be able to tell you when they stopped suffering from acne.
Thus, many women pass into adulthood without outgrowing their acne. Other may not develop this skin disease until their 20s and 30s, experiencing persistent breakouts a week before their period.
These big differences may vary from woman to woman and they show how different any woman is from another, how different each organism and each chemistry is from another!
During the course of a normal menstrual cycle (this is the case when the woman is not taking any kind of hormonal pills, such as birth control pills and others like that), estrogen levels peak at mid-cycle and then decline as the woman nears her period.
After ovulation, the woman’s ovaries begin to produce progesterone, which is another feminine hormone and which has the role to stimulate the sebaceous glands. So progesterone makes the sebaceous glands to produce more sebum and with the extra sebum comes also acne.
Thus, hormones are also responsible for acne in a percentage of pregnant women, as well, because the sebaceous glands go into high gear during the third trimester of the pregnancy, causing oily skin and frequent breakouts.
Some women might also experience acne after menopause, because of the estrogen levels’ beginning to taper off and testosterone becomes the dominant hormone within their bodies.