Hormonal Acne - help

Hiya, ok so I have suffered from acne - bad enough to make me feel ugly. while I was pregnant with my 3rd child I noticed that my acne cleared up totally. I woke up and didn't have to stress about how many new pimples had arrived overnight... however my baby is now 20months and since I stopped breast feeding, when she was about 13months, my pimples have come back. This makes me think that it is a hormonal issue as I didn't change my skin care range while pregnant. I have read that going on the pill can clear skin. Im not sure if I want to pump my body full of chemicals tho- but my skin is starting to get me down again. Any advice?

Hi Helen - what you are describing sounds very much hormone related and due to the changes in Eostrogen levels esp. during pregnancy. Worth a trip to your doctor I think to discuss. Have you also investigated PCOS - a strong symptom of PCOS is adult acne. However yours may simply be hormone related and not necessarily PCOS related. The pill you are talking about is the combined pill Estelle (used to be called Diane). In fact I think the name has changed again recently.

I went on Estelle a few years ago and it was great for my skin (but not perfect)! But now I'm UTD bad skin has come in cycles again it's currently not as bad, been like this a couple of weeks, but I know that it is going to flare up again! So frustrating, so I know how you feel!

the pill can help, and I used to be on it for my skin. However as soon as I stopped taking it, my skin would be bad again. What helped me was changing my diet - eating lots of fruit, veges etc, drinking lots of water, and I also stopped using any products on my skin except for water (this was REALLY scary to do!!! - but made a huge difference). It took about a year, but now I have beautiful skin.

I so feel your pain. I have always had mild acne, sometimes better sometimes worse, oily skin so definitely seems hormonal. When I was pregnant with DS I had no pimples and my skin was glowing, I never even wore foundation which was huge for me as I had been wearing it since I was about 14! I too was gutted when my skin changed again when I stopped breastfeeding.

One thing that has helped me recently is taking zinc and evening primrose oil. My skin seems less oily and not many breakouts. I am also on probiotics, I don't know whether they help with that or not but they are definitely good for wellbeing.

Zinc in particular is reccomended for hormone balance so I would give that a try, nothing to lose. Like you I don't want to go back on the pill and my skin wasn't that good when I was on it anyway

There are a couple of books around The clear skin perscription by Dr Nicolas Perricone(I think that's right?) and another The good skin diet, can remember the author but she is an australian lady. The both work on the idea of it treating the skin using diet. They both work on the idea of reducing the inflammation of the skin due to the food that you ingest. Mainly sugars/carbs I believe. The clear skin perscription focus is on acne. The good skin diet talks about other skin conditions including acne. I have both and did find it helpful to reduce or remove certain foods from my diet. I have also heard following a gluten-free diet is really beneficial for your skin. I find a mix of both diet and skin care really help. Even if it is hormonal, skin care can help, even if it's just to make you feel good. The decleor aroma matte moisturiser is really nice, I use that as it's not oily or heavy on the skin and a gentle exfoliant like md formulations face and body scrub. Or the joyce blok gentle facial exfoliant is amazing, it can be used two ways, mixed with a little water and buffed onto the skin or my favourite way which a little trick I learned when training is to apply it onto the skin leave it to dry(about 5mins) then gently roll off. The second method is a lot more gentle. It's a great product smells of roses so nice and relaxing. Then a good clay based mask does help too.

I'm thinking of doing something to get rid of my wrinkles. Because of them, I look older for my age, and the company I work for has a new policy. Now, they want all employees to be in the age range of 25-30. And because of my wrinkles, I look 37, when I’m actually 27. Microneedling plastic surgery seems easy if it can be considered as plastic surgery. Have someone tried it? How does it feel? I found this info about micro-needling on https://www.cosmeticsurgeryforyou.com/procedures/microneedling-in-kirkland-seattle-bellevue/

Edited by Robin262702 - 18 August 2020 at 9:15am