Hello, I have very oily skin and acne. I have been trying to find ways to get rid of my oily skin or least make it much less oily. I have read reviews on the medicine Spironolactone and it sounds like it helps a lot of people with oily skin issues. But I am really confused about who this works for? Like I said my skin is oily and has been since I was probably 14 years old(now I am 18) and I have this oily skin because members in my family do so it got passed on to me. So could this medicine work for someone like me or does it work for people who have oily skin because of their hormones make their skin oily? I honestly don't know very much about this subject so I hope somebody can help me!
Ps. I have never been to a Dermatologist but I will be going in a few weeks.
It would make sense to try using spironolactone either topically or orally to reduce sebum production, since it's a proven antiandrogen. However, I think topical spiro is less likely to be successful for that, because I've seen a study or two which had negative results at reducing sebum, when applied topically. You may have to try to find a doctor who will experiment on you with an oral dose of spiro (it can't be used for that purpose at all in men, only in women). Good luck!
If you're looking to reduce sebum production, chromium is a great supplement to try. As long as you get the polynicotinate form and not the picolinate form, then you don't really have to worry about adverse side effects either.
The reason being that they didn't even set an Upper Tolerable Intake for chromium because doses way higher than we would be taking didn't cause adverse effects. However, with the picolinate form, there have been side effects reported at doses of 1000mcg a day or over a decent period of time. Most believe it is due to the picolinic acid, however, I found that chromium when bound to picolinic acid builds up more in the liver and kidneys, where as polynicotinate has a faster half-life. So, what isn't absorbed or used is disposed of quicker. Not to mention, polynicotinate means it's bound to Niacin, which is also supposed to be part of the GTF(Glucose Tolerance Factor), which means you can take less for better results as well.
I've looked up the amount of niacin in each 200mcg capsule and found that there's only 10-20% of your daily value of niacin in each capsule so you don't have to worry about too much niacin either. I've been on chromium polynicotinate for a while now, and where I used to have loads of oil within an hour of washing my face, I now can go a whole day with practically no oil, eating whatever the hell I want. If you decide to try it, take one capsule after each meal. Don't take them all at once as it's been shown with chromium that more at each dose isn't necessarily better. For instance, I've seen a couple studies that showed when consuming 40mcg of chromium, .5% was absorbed, but when consuming 20mcg of chromium, 1% was absorbed, giving an equal absorption amount.
