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.

Hormonal Acne. Women Only; Guys Allowed

Hormonal acne is represented by the acne breakouts that appear only before and during the women’s period.
This kind of acne is caused by the hormonal imbalance produced in the women’s bodies during this time. Once this period is over, acne slowly disappears as if it were never there. Until next month, women will be free to enjoy their lives as girlfriends, wives, sisters or daughters!
As girls and women might have already noticed hormonal acne is likely to fail to respond to traditional therapies, such as topical retinoids and systemic or topical antibiotics.

Physicians usually have about six clues that can help them to identify whether your acne is influenced by hormones or not. These clues are the following:

• Adult-onset acne or acne breakouts that appear for the first time in adult women
• Acne flare-ups preceding the menstrual cycle
• A history of irregular menstrual cycles
• Increased facial oiliness
• Hirsutism or excessive growth of hair, or hair in unusual places
• Elevated levels of certain androgens in the blood stream

Hormonally influenced acne typically appears for the first time around the age of 20 – 25, although it can strike as well both teen girls and mature women. However, it becomes most persistent in women over the age of 30.
In these cases patients are usually experiencing acne lesions on the lower face, that is especially the chin and the jaw line. While some women may have breakouts also on their chest and back, most of them have acne blemishes exclusively on the face.
Hormonally-influenced acne is usually moderate and it gets limited to inflammatory papules, as well as small inflammatory nodules and occasional comedones. However, the women’s faces aren’t perfect anymore and this makes hormonally-influenced acne even more irritating then “normal” acne.
When you know that you suffer from acne, you’re at least involved in fighting it and you hope that someday it will all disappear. But when you suffer from time to time because of this irritating disease, it is even more annoying. Acne becomes like a real phantom that haunts your from time to time. As if that period weren’t enough painful and irritating!
We will next present a scenario that will introduce you to the inner mechanism of hormonally-influenced acne.

Men, Women and Acne

As we have showed till now, acne really seems to be a disorder that at some level chooses between the two genders, or in other words it affects women and men in different ways or through different forms.
So, the special things about acne in boys and men are two: the first of all is that the disorder attacks more the teenage boys than the teenage girls, because of their oil glands producing more male hormones, which are the primary cause of acne; and the second thing is that there is a form of severe acne that attacks mostly men and another also severe form that attacks almost only men. So, while Acne Conglobata appears mostly in men, Acne Fulminans attacks almost only young men.
Although it might sound simple and similar to men’s case, acne in women seems to be rather a more complicated thing. We’re not telling here about how acne affects women and men’s lives and psychics, we’re not talking about aesthetics; we’re just drawing your attention on the fact that women’s bodies are far more complicated than men’s and that this is very important in the case of such a strange disorder as acne because it is all about hormones.

However, what is similar to men is that women’s problems related to acne start along with their reaching adolescence. But in the normal way acne should disappear after this period of time passes away and the girl becomes a young woman. But what is still normal on this world, so that acne could act normally too? For some women the real problem with this skin disorder breaks out in their late 20s or even early 30s. For some of these cases this eruption would take place for the first time in their lives.
However, the thing that makes the difference between men and women when talking also about acne is the fact that women have been created to be mothers and because of this fact their bodies experience monthly hormonal changes and not only. When they become mothers, the women also experience other hormonal changes. And finally when they enter the menopause or even the post-menopause periods, women may also experience hormonal changes and this way may still get acne.
So, whatever her age is for a woman the hormonal changes, that is in fact the disequilibria between her body’s male and female hormones, are very often things. Women should see a dermatologist or their physician and try to treat their acne. If they are pregnant and are also willing to treat their skin against acne, they really MUST see the doctor.
Among the treatment options for adult females that suffer from acne there are the antibiotics and topical treatments. Because there are women for whom the antibiotics and the topical treatments don’t show any result, they could turn to birth control pills, but only at their doctor’s advice.
Taken in low dosages, the birth control pills represent an acne treatment because they can decrease the amount of extra androgens, limiting breakouts. However, you should be aware that birth control pills have side effects and that you should first find them out and consult a gynecologist.
There are also other mixed treatments for women, but it is very important that they should be started only at the doctor’s advice and not by the word of mouth. When hormones get in the middle of the action, you should be very careful! Your body’s equilibrium between the male and female hormones is very sensitive and every wrong treatment could in fact harm you, your skin and not only, than be helpful and fight (only) acne.
All in all, practically the treatments against acne for men and women do not differ radically. The difference is just that women’s bodies’ inner mechanism is more complex, sophisticated and sensitive (to hormonal changes) than the men’s bodies.

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