The topic of acne is near and dear to my heart since it has been something I’ve struggled with since I was about 13. I took antibiotics, went on the pill, and used every topical I could get my hands on. I was never told the cause of my acne when I was seeing a dermatologist, but as I got older, I started to learn about hormonal acne. I assumed this was my root since I had painful periods and PMS my entire life (even on the pill), but it turns out, acne is multifaceted. Most often, there’s more than one root cause to acne, just like there’s often more than one root cause to hormonal issues.
Different Root Causes of Acne
So what are the different possible root causes of acne? There are five major root causes:
My friend and acne expert, Robyn, came on the Are You Menstrual? Podcast, and dug into each of these root causes and what they can look like a lot more, so make sure you listen to this episode here if you want to learn more about this! She does have a great acne face mapping post, though, that I’m sharing below. While we both don’t love face mapping since it isn’t perfect and there are other markers we should be looking at for acne types, it’s always helpful to have a visual.
What you will notice is many of the areas have multiple possible root causes. This is important because often, people box themselves in thinking they have one specific acne type when in reality, something else could be causing their acne. I think the face mapping is helpful to at least look at and get an idea of what could be causing your acne, but even learning more about the types can help you narrow it down. Robyn also has an acne quiz that is really helpful.
Acne & Thyroid Health
What about acne and our thyroid? Hypothyroidism is also a very common cause of acne and is often associated with hormonal acne since our thyroid impacts our estrogen and progesterone levels as well as blood sugar. Many women don’t even realize they have a sluggish thyroid until they start taking their basal body temperature (BBT) and see that it is below the optimal 97.8F. Nourishing our bodies with enough food and getting in adequate vitamins and minerals is essential for optimal thyroid health. An especially important nutrient is vitamin A.
Vitamin A deficiency aggravates any thyroid dysfunction that is caused by iodine-deficient diets. Similar to how it acts with vitamin D, vitamin A helps activate thyroid receptors. It also helps the thyroid product adequate vitamin A and converts it from T4 (inactive form) to T3, the active form that is then utilized inside our cells. Vitamin A has been shown to help reduce TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone). Vitamin A deficiency aggravates thyroid dysfunction caused by iodine-deficient diets.
Research on animals has shown that a vitamin A deficiency leads to higher TSH and an enlarged thyroid gland with possible nodules. When given vitamin A, TSH goes down, thyroid gland size decreases, and overall thyroid function in the body improves. This is powerful! We need adequate thyroid hormones to ovulate, make enough progesterone, and have balanced hormones and healthy skin. Think about Accutane or Isotretinoin. This is a high dose of a toxic version of vitamin A that helps get rid of many people’s acne. It makes me wonder if we focused instead of getting enough vitamin A in our diet and from whole food supplements if that would help many struggling with acne.
Nutrients For Skin Health
When you search for what nutrients are most important for skin health, you often get your typical zinc, vitamin C, etc., but what we often don’t hear about are nutrients like vitamin A (the active kind from animals; it’s different from the vitamin A found in plants), copper, potassium, magnesium, and vitamin E. Vitamin A is essential for optimal thyroid health (like I mentioned above), but it’s also required in order to use copper properly in the body. If you’ve been apart of this community for a while, you hopefully know that we need copper and vitamin A in order to utilize iron and prevent it from accumulating. Iron levels impact inflammation, infection, and hormonal acne since excess iron contributes to inflammation, feeds pathogens, and impacts estrogen levels.
Potassium and magnesium help our bodies balance our blood sugar and respond to stress. This is essential for healthy skin. Vitamin E balances out inflammatory fats and also opposes both estrogen and androgens. Vitamin E is often beneficial for those with hormonal acne.
Normalizing Acne
Acne can be frustrating and painful, but it is normal to have some acne breakouts. I think there is this idea of perfection when it comes to our skin, but just like any other symptom, acne is communication from our bodies that something is off. It’s easy to look at social media and feel self-conscious about your skin, but you have to remember that having skin texture is normal, having pores is normal, and even having acne sometimes is normal. If you ate something that threw your stomach off a bit, didn’t get enough sleep, or had some extra stress, you may break out, and that’s fine. My skin still is not 100% breakout-free, but most of the time, it’s minimal or no breakouts, and I feel comfortable not wearing makeup. To me, that’s what healthy skin means. Not perfect, but predictable. I think never having any breakouts is unrealistic and will set you up for obsession.
I hope this was helpful! If you want to learn more about your thyroid health you can check out my free thyroid training here!
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