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Skin Is Only Clear During My Period! Recommend Herbs/supplements?

MemberMember
9
(@quinnmorgendorffer)

Posted : 08/15/2014 5:02 am

Hi! I just wanted to post and maybe get some opinions.

i'm a 23 year old female and my sebum production is annoying. I have tons of blackheads a long my jaw which have recently started crawling up to my cheek & whiteheads on my neck. my chest and back are constantly clogged and there are never not cysts forming on my chin (one cyst comes to a head while a new one is already forming). My skin starts to clear up about a week before my period, stays clear during my cycle and then immediately returns to clogging up the day my period ends. My periods are also a bit irregular (for example this month i was 2 weeks early) and I have at least 8 hours of extremely painful cramps.

I am not currently on birth control and haven't been in years. I eat very well and have been on more restrictive diets in the past and my skin did not improve.

Currently my skin care routine is pretty improvised. I do a calcium bentonite clay mask with acv, peppermint, tea tree, and cucumber. sometimes I will do an oil cleanse with jojoba, small amount of castor, and sweet almond oil. tone with rose witchhazel. all of these things make my skin feel great but I cannot keep up with my sebum production.

a few years ago i visited a dermatologist who prescribed me doxycycline which I ceased taking pretty quickly and didn't take it religiously enough to note any changes. a year or so later I returned to the dermatologist and was prescribed spironolactone and had to stop taking it due to its severe side effects - 2 periods a month, my left breast got very swollen- ER doctor felt a cyst and sent me to have a mammogram, NOT fun.

I currently only take a multivitamin (Garden of Life women's raw with some probiotics) and i've been shopping around for a herbal remedy for hormone imbalances. I do believe my acne is due to an imbalance and I only assume it's androgen dominance but I would like some other opinions

Some supplements I am looking at:

Flax

Maca

Curcumin (unrelated to hormones/acne)

Chaste Tree

DIM

Saw Palmetto

Sorry this is a lot of text, I would really appreciate some shared thoughts or experiences thanks

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MemberMember
36
(@user143021)

Posted : 08/15/2014 11:37 am

 

Hi! I just wanted to post and maybe get some opinions.

i'm a 23 year old female and my sebum production is annoying. I have tons of blackheads a long my jaw which have recently started crawling up to my cheek & whiteheads on my neck. my chest and back are constantly clogged and there are never not cysts forming on my chin (one cyst comes to a head while a new one is already forming). My skin starts to clear up about a week before my period, stays clear during my cycle and then immediately returns to clogging up the day my period ends. My periods are also a bit irregular (for example this month i was 2 weeks early) and I have at least 8 hours of extremely painful cramps.

I am not currently on birth control and haven't been in years. I eat very well and have been on more restrictive diets in the past and my skin did not improve.

Currently my skin care routine is pretty improvised. I do a calcium bentonite clay mask with acv, peppermint, tea tree, and cucumber. sometimes I will do an oil cleanse with jojoba, small amount of castor, and sweet almond oil. tone with rose witchhazel. all of these things make my skin feel great but I cannot keep up with my sebum production.

a few years ago i visited a dermatologist who prescribed me doxycycline which I ceased taking pretty quickly and didn't take it religiously enough to note any changes. a year or so later I returned to the dermatologist and was prescribed spironolactone and had to stop taking it due to its severe side effects - 2 periods a month, my left breast got very swollen- ER doctor felt a cyst and sent me to have a mammogram, NOT fun.

I currently only take a multivitamin (Garden of Life women's raw with some probiotics) and i've been shopping around for a herbal remedy for hormone imbalances. I do believe my acne is due to an imbalance and I only assume it's androgen dominance but I would like some other opinions

Some supplements I am looking at:

Flax

Maca

Curcumin (unrelated to hormones/acne)

Chaste Tree

DIM

Saw Palmetto

Sorry this is a lot of text, I would really appreciate some shared thoughts or experiences thanks

Sorry that you're struggling! We can try to help the best we can, but with supplements it is sort of a guessing game. A few thoughts I had:

You said your acne recently started "crawling up" which rings bacteria to me. You might have a combo of bacterial and hormonal acne. You seem to use a lot of products topically... it may or may not be contributing to things at least on your face. I just know that if I used that many different things on my skin I would have a problem!

Did spiro work for you while you took it? If so you could try taking saw palmetto which is a natural anti-androgen and similar to spiro.

DIM is another anti-androgen and helps with estrogen metabolism as well... I have personally had great success with it. I had cystic acne in all the same areas you mentioned, if it helps. I had to stop spiro due to side effects too, so I took DIM and it cleared me right up. However, as with all supplements it doesn't work for everyone.

Vitex (chaste tree) helps a lot of girls too (though I've never tried it), it lowers prolactin and increases progesterone. I have read that it is also an anti-androgen but I haven't really looked into it much.

Do you get enough vitamin D? It's a hormonal vitamin, and when taken in high enough amounts has cleared some people alone. I would make sure you're getting enough before starting anything else.

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MemberMember
9
(@quinnmorgendorffer)

Posted : 08/15/2014 5:52 pm

 

Sorry that you're struggling! We can try to help the best we can, but with supplements it is sort of a guessing game. A few thoughts I had:

You said your acne recently started "crawling up" which rings bacteria to me. You might have a combo of bacterial and hormonal acne. You seem to use a lot of products topically... it may or may not be contributing to things at least on your face. I just know that if I used that many different things on my skin I would have a problem!

Did spiro work for you while you took it? If so you could try taking saw palmetto which is a natural anti-androgen and similar to spiro.

DIM is another anti-androgen and helps with estrogen metabolism as well... I have personally had great success with it. I had cystic acne in all the same areas you mentioned, if it helps. I had to stop spiro due to side effects too, so I took DIM and it cleared me right up. However, as with all supplements it doesn't work for everyone.

Vitex (chaste tree) helps a lot of girls too (though I've never tried it), it lowers prolactin and increases progesterone. I have read that it is also an anti-androgen but I haven't really looked into it much.

Do you get enough vitamin D? It's a hormonal vitamin, and when taken in high enough amounts has cleared some people alone. I would make sure you're getting enough before starting anything else.

hi! My skin did improve a lot with spiro though it did not completely clear me up, I think I was on it for a little over 2 months.. maybe if I would have stuck with it longer I would have cleared?

Today I purchased DIM plus, Flax, and Saw Palmetto (25% off whole foods supplements woohoo!)

If you were me would you start out with Saw Palmetto only? or do you think I could take both saw palmetto and DIM? also unsure about whether I should incorporate Flax, I've read that it contains "good estrogen"

I get 1000 iu of vitamin D, I think I once calculated based on my weight that i require 3 or 4000 iu but I don't really remember.

thanks for your response!!!

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MemberMember
173
(@green-gables)

Posted : 08/15/2014 11:56 pm

I didn't clear on spiro until month 8, I think you quit too early.

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MemberMember
9
(@quinnmorgendorffer)

Posted : 08/16/2014 1:46 am

I didn't clear on spiro until month 8, I think you quit too early.

Did you experience any side effects?

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MemberMember
2
(@lifesnotfair)

Posted : 08/16/2014 1:20 pm

I would try vitex to help regulate your cycle. It helped me a lot after quitting bcp.

It seems that you break out when estrogens are in their highest. After your period ends estrogen starts to rise and you start to break out, right? You start to clear up when there is a drop in estrogen (after ovulation) and stay clear till it starts to rise again after your period.

Weird since it's usually the other way around (most people break out worse before their period..)

This is just speculation but maybe you have high estrogen levels.. Vitex should also help balance progesterone-estrogen ratio so it could be helpful.

DIM is another anti-androgen and helps with estrogen metabolism as well...

How is DIM an anti androgen :0 ? From what I've read by lowering estrogen it actually causes more testosterone to be freed. Here's a quote I found on it:

"Diindolylmethane helps to eliminate active estrogen from the body by actively promoting its conversion into the "good" metabolites. These "good" metabolites then work to free up testosterone by bumping it off the testosterone-binding proteins. The end result of this is a healthier balance of testosterone to estrogen and increased free testosterone circulating in the body."

Isn't free testosterone supposed to be a bad thing for acne sufferers? I'm confused..

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MemberMember
36
(@user143021)

Posted : 08/20/2014 4:14 pm

hi! My skin did improve a lot with spiro though it did not completely clear me up, I think I was on it for a little over 2 months.. maybe if I would have stuck with it longer I would have cleared?

Today I purchased DIM plus, Flax, and Saw Palmetto (25% off whole foods supplements woohoo!)

If you were me would you start out with Saw Palmetto only? or do you think I could take both saw palmetto and DIM? also unsure about whether I should incorporate Flax, I've read that it contains "good estrogen"

I get 1000 iu of vitamin D, I think I once calculated based on my weight that i require 3 or 4000 iu but I don't really remember.

thanks for your response!!!

Two months was not long enough to know exactly how much spiro would clear you, but it's a good sign if it helped even in that amount of time. Perhaps an anti-androgen will clear you if you stick with it. (:

However, I recommend only starting one thing at a time. If you are taking more than one thing, you won't know which one is helping or even causing you to break out or give you side effects again. Take one supplement for 4-6 months before adding another or switching to another supplement. That gives it enough time to adjust your hormones and then you can evaluate your results.

And 1000iu of vitamin D is still pretty low.

How is DIM an anti androgen :0 ?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12665522

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