What is hormonal adult acne?
Hormonal adult acne is acne that occurs after the age of 25. So just when you thought there was a time limit to suffering with a skin condition that is associated with puberty, we now simply have a different label for it in our later years.
When does it start?
So, although teenage acne can sometimes or primarily be triggered by an influx of hormones during puberty, which should then in theory calm down and stabilise after puberty. For adults…and by adults, I mean mainly but not always women, fluctuations in our female hormones can be the cause of our acne returning in our later life.
Your hormones can fluctuate or become imbalanced before and during your period, during pregnancy, when you are pre-menopausal & during your actual menopause. These imbalances can be the cause of your hormonal adult acne.
There is also polycystic ovary syndrome for which some women have a hormonal imbalance, metabolism problem and high levels of insulin.
Periods and the menopause are inevitable as a woman, but how you treat your body can make all the difference as to how much your hormones fluctuate during these times of our lives and pregnancy.
When it comes to men, a disruption in your testosterone levels can be the culprit for your hormonal adult acne.
But don’t despair…you don’t have to suffer!
How can we deal with acne naturally?
To prevent or reduce acne naturally, the food and drink you consume will make a massive difference to your skin. By making simple changes you can help prevent your hormonal/endocrine system from fluctuating during your period, pre-menopause and menopause. You will also help prevent causing changes to other parts of the body that could trigger your acne.
Eating the wrong foods can influence and cause fluctuations or imbalances in your endocrine/hormonal system; can cause low level chronic inflammation in your gut which affects your whole body and skin; can cause sebum/oil production on the skin itself; and can cause a weakened immune system, affecting your overall health and skin WHICH affects whether you get cystic hormonal acne.
So, as you can see by now, those wrong foods cause a whole host of issues to your body and ultimately your skin.
FOOD JOURNAL AND EXCLUSION DIET
Doing a food journal of just monitoring what you eat and drink for 2 weeks, then doing an exclusion diet of removing known acne trigger foods will help to raise some red flags. But remember, exclusion diets should only ever be short term to ensure you are getting a good variety of foods for the vitamins and minerals they supply.
The idea behind a very temporary exclusion diet is to ONLY remove all suspected trigger foods for a few weeks and then add one of your trigger foods back into your diet to see how your health and skin reacts. If no reaction, then enjoy, but if you do react, then the choice is yours as to what you will do next.
Now personally when I gave up certain food groups like milk, I went out and searched online to make sure I was getting my calcium from a plant-based wholefood source and not from processed food. I did this because processed foods for me are also a massive trigger.
When you start to read the labels of some of your favourite packaged foods, you will start to see why you have acne breaks out. All those chemicals that you are unknowingly ingesting are an absolute joke and really don’t belong in our bodies.
FOOD
If your body is getting its sources of energy from ingredients that are unpronounceable, artificial flavourings, artificial colours, artificial sweeteners, and if your food has more than one source of sugar then you’re eating CRAP. The artificial foods are called artificial for a reason…its because they are artificial, and artificial stuff isn’t tolerated well by the body. The same goes for all those different types of sugars that are added to foods. Sugar is added to make it taste nice and to make it more addictive, but ultimately it is ruining our bodies and skin, slowly, so that you won’t notice until the changes are all too obvious.
In fact, if the item of food you have picked up doesn’t look as close to its original natural state as it was picked up from the tree or soil, assume that it is crap.
If the fish you have picked up in the supermarket is from farmed sources and not wild caught, then assume that the fish has been swimming in its own faeces and that antibiotics have been added to the water to prevent disease.
Same goes for our meat, unless you can afford to only eating organic or grass-fed meat, then again assume that the animal will have lived in confined conditions where they will have been given antibiotics and some sort of hormonal treatment for them to grow faster. The same goes for milk and eggs. Washing or cooking the food doesn’t prevent the consumption of all these added chemicals, so they end up in our bodies and cause havoc.
Why am I mentioning all this stuff?
I’m mentioning all these crappy foods, that shouldn’t really be labelled as food, because it doesn’t matter how well you wash your meat and fish, it doesn’t matter how well you cook any of your meat, fish, or heavily processed junk foods. All the bad stuff that is in those foods can’t be gotten rid of from the body anytime soon. Instead, it causes inflammation in your gut, disruption of your endocrine or hormonal system and toxin build up in the different parts of the body.
Although toxins should be eliminated via the liver, kidney, colon, skin and even the lungs they stay in the body way too long and cause chronic issues.
All these points that I have just mentioned then lead to chronic long term health conditions for which our skin conditions are merely the symptoms of the problems within our body.
It doesn’t matter how much the so-called experts tell you how the body is meant to self-clean and remove toxins, because ultimately your body is telling you via your skin issues, that something isn’t right in your body.
When your skin is the symptom of a bigger issue that could potentially be improved of fixed with what you eat or don’t eat, will you do something about it?
My best advice is to first do a food journal, documenting your meals and symptoms daily for 2 weeks and then do your elimination diet. Once you have established what you shouldn’t eat for your body, then do your best to include more plant-based meals.
The main thing is to cut out what you know you react to and get rid of processed crappy foods, as everyone reacts to it on some level, they just don’t realise it.
You will feel and see a change in a matter of weeks!
If you’d like access to a free food journal, simply scroll to the bottom of the home page on the TigsAndMoo website or go to the description on any of our YouTube videos.
Alison x
Check out Natural Ways To Help Acne on our YouTube channel!
For more information, check our YouTube channel to help with your skin journey! Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE, like, comment & share!
Also check out our Instagram and Facebook @tigsandmoonaturalskincare
