Hi All!
I went to a naturopath for my hormonal acne yesterday. It was something I was considering for a long time, but really hesitated to go since the treatments are not covered by insurance, and there are plenty of useful information on the internet. However, I decided to go because:
1. I wanted to be under the guidance of a professional
I knew DIM and Vitex were good for hormonal acne, and it worked for many people, BUT I didn't know if it will work for me. Vitex increases progesterone production, so it isn't for someone who already has high enough progesterone, which I wasn't sure if that was the case for me (and an outbreak in acne is the last thing I would want). The doctor and I reviewed my past blood tests and together we came to the conclusion that I was low in progesterone, and high in testosterone, and likely high in "bad estrogens". Without her interpretation I wouldn't have had the courage to take I3C and Vitex.
2. I wanted to stop restricting my diet
I have been restricting my diet tooooo much (currently the only thing I'm eating is zero-fat vegetable soup, salad and a little bit of fish). No grains, no dairy, no soy, no processed food. I am underweight and possibly malnourished. Although I stopped eating all the "bad" foods I still got hormonal acne, which told me food restriction alone is not going to give me clear skin.
A Naturopath does a systematic physical exam. Now I know I have an overworking liver and a thyroid that's giving me my acne. The doctor told me, if we improve my organ functioning, I won't have to strictly restrict my diet because my body will be able to eliminate it efficiently. That sounded appealing to someone who was tired of all the "I can't eat this" jazz.
3. I want to become a naturopathic doctor myself in the near future
This is purely personal therefore I won't go into detail, but having acne all my life given me lots of holistic knowledge I want to use to heal people who suffered the same situation as I did. Although a $300 trip to a naturopath is crazy expensive, I wanted to have the experience.
I will detail my experience if anyone is interested, so far I learned LOTS of interesting information that may be useful for some acne suffers out there that I am willing to share, so please reply to this post if you're interested 
Thanks for reading
Hannah
Yay! I'm so happy for you, honey
So funny-- I was actually thinking about writing a post about the liver and acne before I signed in today.
I can't wait to hear more about how it went and what sort of plan you guys decided on.
Also, high five on the career goals! My sister runs a yoga practice and specializes in somatic yoga. She's been tying to convince me to go back to school for naturopathic medicine so I could work with her, since it's what I spend 90% of my time researching and talking about anyway. I had been laughing off the idea because I just finished a masters program and the thought of going back to school again made me want to hurl. But lately I've been checking out some programs and doing the math to see if this is something I could really do.
Have you looked into any programs? Do you know if you want to do a masters/phd or go the certification route?
Hi All!
I went to a naturopath for my hormonal acne yesterday. It was something I was considering for a long time, but really hesitated to go since the treatments are not covered by insurance, and there are plenty of useful information on the internet. However, I decided to go because:1. I wanted to be under the guidance of a professional
I knew DIM and Vitex were good for hormonal acne, and it worked for many people, BUT I didn't know if it will work for me. Vitex increases progesterone production, so it isn't for someone who already has high enough progesterone, which I wasn't sure if that was the case for me (and an outbreak in acne is the last thing I would want). The doctor and I reviewed my past blood tests and together we came to the conclusion that I was low in progesterone, and high in testosterone, and likely high in "bad estrogens". Without her interpretation I wouldn't have had the courage to take I3C and Vitex.2. I wanted to stop restricting my dietI have been restricting my diet tooooo much (currently the only thing I'm eating is zero-fat vegetable soup, salad and a little bit of fish). No grains, no dairy, no soy, no processed food. I am underweight and possibly malnourished. Although I stopped eating all the "bad" foods I still got hormonal acne, which told me food restriction alone is not going to give me clear skin.
A Naturopath does a systematic physical exam. Now I know I have an overworking liver and a thyroid that's giving me my acne. The doctor told me, if we improve my organ functioning, I won't have to strictly restrict my diet because my body will be able to eliminate it efficiently. That sounded appealing to someone who was tired of all the "I can't eat this" jazz.3. I want to become a naturopathic doctor myself in the near future
This is purely personal therefore I won't go into detail, but having acne all my life given me lots of holistic knowledge I want to use to heal people who suffered the same situation as I did. Although a $300 trip to a naturopath is crazy expensive, I wanted to have the experience.
I will detail my experience if anyone is interested, so far I learned LOTS of interesting information that may be useful for some acne suffers out there that I am willing to share, so please reply to this post if you're interested
Thanks for reading
Hannah
Sounds like you had a good experience with the naturopath. I went to one once and didn't feel they were very knowledgable, but yours sounds like they might be more helpful
You say your testosterone levels are high. I'm interested to know what the naturopath suggests for lowering them ??? I think mine are probably high since i have such oily skin.
Yes with diet you have to keep things in balance. I mean we want to eat healthy but you shouldnt have to be so restrictive that you are starving yourself and becoming malnourished.
Good luck with it all.
High testosterone has been linked to acne via the following pathway (this is just the big picture):
'Bad foods' like saturated fat, IGF-1 content in dairy, and high glycemic foods like sugar and white breed etc. will put certain cells in a state of 'overactive' mTOR.
Aktive mTOR is a process in our cells created to get 'things to grow'. The state is perfect for children (milk), perfect if food supply is in abundance (lets say for spring and summer) and at some point there will be a lack of food (for winter). Then we can grow, get big, get muscular, and we will have a bigger change to survive the winter.
If we do not use that excess food, if we are always in abundance we will store it and storage on storage will cause us to get fat / or skinny fat, altered lipid balance, high cholesterol nasty diseases and acne.
Whit altered lipid balance we see changes in hormones. We see bioavailable testosterone be bound to Dihydrotestosterone(DHT) instead of Sex Hormone Binding Globuline (SHBG) and maybe hormonal acne from this overload of DHT
Studies have shown that SHBG can be altered via diet, and testosterone bound to SHBG is ineffective or cannot be bound into dihydrotestosterone(DHT). And then hormonal acne will maybe be gone again.
Sorry for any bad english here. I live in Denmark, and it's 6.30 am and I am way to tired for grammatics grammaticals ? grammatition fck it that word you know 
I have slightly elevated testosterone levels for a woman, and when my ex-derm discovered it, she immediately put me on Spiro. All it did was turn my naturally thin/muscular frame to flab, kill my sex drive, and make me start missing periods. I just felt sluggish, emotional, and chubby on it. Plus I had to pee like a pregnant woman. I think naturally slightly elevated testosterone levels aren't the worst things in the world. They keep your metabolism kicking, give you an awesome sex drive, and give you vitality. If your natural estrogen and progesterone is doing what it should be, a little bit of testosterone never hurt anyone, so long as you're careful about keeping extra androgen precursors out of your body.
I have slightly elevated testosterone levels for a woman, and when my ex-derm discovered it, she immediately put me on Spiro. All it did was turn my naturally thin/muscular frame to flab, kill my sex drive, and make me start missing periods. I just felt sluggish, emotional, and chubby on it. Plus I had to pee like a pregnant woman. I think naturally slightly elevated testosterone levels aren't the worst things in the world. They keep your metabolism kicking, give you an awesome sex drive, and give you vitality. If your natural estrogen and progesterone is doing what it should be, a little bit of testosterone never hurt anyone, so long as you're careful about keeping extra androgen precursors out of your body.
Wow spiro side effects sound awful! I wonder if there is some naturaler/ gentler way to lower testosterone. The only way i've heard of is through diet modifications which i'm already doing.
Considering estrone, estradiol, and estriol are all classified as group 1 IARC carcinogens, I would be much more abliged to have a naturally elevated physiological level of testosterone vs. elevated oestrogen concentrations.
Esney, I love how you always stress the effects from mTOR pathway overexpression. Unfortunately very few actually understand the molecular mechanics involved. I even had to take some time to thoroughly comprehend what you were trying to articulate about the significance. I feel mTOR mediates activities that are predominantly downstream in the cascading signal transmissions that eventually substantiate the development of inflammatory acne.
Receptor activation in the TLR family more likely the culprit rather than increase activity within the intracellular mTOR. P. acnes can produce bacteriophage capable of performing gene transduction allowing an alteration to its regulatory expressions. It could cause an inability for the PRR to properly distinguish between host molecules and external pathogens eg. Gram positive/negative bacterium
The cytokine response from the immune system is the result of activation to the TLR2. TLR2 also cooperates with TLR6 and TLR1 further increasing the affinity for proinflammatory expressions.
Considering estrone, estradiol, and estriol are all classified as group 1 IARC carcinogens, I would be much more abliged to have a naturally elevated physiological level of testosterone vs. elevated oestrogen concentrations.
Esney, I love how you always stress the effects from mTOR pathway overexpression. Unfortunately very few actually understand the molecular mechanics involved. I even had to take some time to thoroughly comprehend what you were trying to articulate about the significance. I feel mTOR mediates activities that are predominantly downstream in the cascading signal transmissions that eventually substantiate the development of inflammatory acne.
Receptor activation in the TLR family is obviously perpetuated through the Pl3K-ATK-mTOR pathway, but the immune response resulting in inflammatory developement mediated by cytokine response is considered generalized transduction via bacteriophage within P. Acnes bacterium. (toll 2 receptors)
Oh yes toll 2 receptors
I think it goes something like this: from excess 'bad diet' we get high amount of insulin and IGF-1, this will down regulate FOXO1. We also get BCAA's like leucine and also palmitic acid which will activate mTORc1. Foxo/mtor is regulator of SREBP(-1c), LXR-alpha, NR3C4 and gamma-PPAR. Upregulation of Y-PPAR and SREBP = excess sebum
SREBP(-1c) upregulates stearoyl-Coenzyme-A (fatty acid metabolism) and then we will se abundance of monounsaturated fatty acids in sebum secretion.
So now be have an overload of sebum, and an altered sebum structure or content.
Now we will see a stimulation of the toll 2 receptor via abundance of free palmitate? and probably via a pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukines. Those have different names, structures (and functions). I have not looked deeply into this part. But we need to.
@BaxterMcd. I am at law school, before acne I knew nothing about cell structure or anything like this, it took me 6 months to even understand the most basics..
This is pretty complex stuff
Luckily this is the kind of terminology I use on a daily basis for class.
You are spot on as I was about to include a good study to further educate yourself with.
Enjoy!
I have slightly elevated testosterone levels for a woman, and when my ex-derm discovered it, she immediately put me on Spiro. All it did was turn my naturally thin/muscular frame to flab, kill my sex drive, and make me start missing periods. I just felt sluggish, emotional, and chubby on it. Plus I had to pee like a pregnant woman. I think naturally slightly elevated testosterone levels aren't the worst things in the world. They keep your metabolism kicking, give you an awesome sex drive, and give you vitality. If your natural estrogen and progesterone is doing what it should be, a little bit of testosterone never hurt anyone, so long as you're careful about keeping extra androgen precursors out of your body.
Wow spiro side effects sound awful! I wonder if there is some naturaler/ gentler way to lower testosterone. The only way i've heard of is through diet modifications which i'm already doing.
Some people don't notice Spiro side-effects. Or maybe they just don't pay attention to changes in their bodies as obsessively as I do, haha. Because the fact of the matter is, blocking all of your testosterone at once like that is bound to turn muscle to fat, turn ambition to apathy, and make you somewhat more weepy--not to mention wreak havoc on your sex-drive. Another thing that will kill a woman's sex-drive is too little progesterone (aka, estrogen-dominance).
My boyfriend is significantly older than me (he's 47) and he was starting to complain he was getting "man-boobs" and love-handles. Being kind of aspie as I am, I'm not one to say "what love-handles? you look fine!" I'll usually say to someone, "Okay, if you feel uncomfortable with your body, how can we change it?" So I told him to switch from beer to vodka (he was a big beer-drinker, and beer is LOADED with phytoestrogens) and put him on Estroblock and low-dose DHEA 2 times a week to re-balance his testosterone levels. However, he's not acne-prone at all. If he was, the DHEA may not have been good news for his skin.
The most important thing I feel like I'm doing to keep my androgen levels down is making sure my zinc:melatonin ratio is always balanced.
Yay! I'm so happy for you, honey
So funny-- I was actually thinking about writing a post about the liver and acne before I signed in today.
I can't wait to hear more about how it went and what sort of plan you guys decided on.
Also, high five on the career goals! My sister runs a yoga practice and specializes in somatic yoga. She's been tying to convince me to go back to school for naturopathic medicine so I could work with her, since it's what I spend 90% of my time researching and talking about anyway. I had been laughing off the idea because I just finished a masters program and the thought of going back to school again made me want to hurl. But lately I've been checking out some programs and doing the math to see if this is something I could really do.
Have you looked into any programs? Do you know if you want to do a masters/phd or go the certification route?
Hi SkinDeeply
I read your profile and noticed you're into this stuff too! What kin of masters do you have? I'm currently thinking that I should get a certificate as a nutritional counselor and then work my way into naturopathy, but the tuition is crazy expensive here in Canada as naturupath programs are not supported by the government :S I wish the government can reconsider their use of funding....
Hi everyone!
Glad to see this forum is still active!
I've been busy running around doing errands these days but my big long post to my naturopath is started
I will promise I'll post it by tomorrow,
Till then, keep chatting! I love seeing lively discussions
Love,
Hannah
Hi ALL!
2) Nutritionist consultation
The consultation with the Naruropathic doctor
A few things she addressed:
Solution: Zinc citrate 100mg per day
There is controversy regarding zinc and testosterone (T), some say it raises T, but this is because most studies were conducted amongst men with already low levels of T, and the dose was low as well (20-50mg). Higher doses of zinc can inhibit 5-a-reductase (enzyme that converts T into DHT), especially in people who already have high enough T (which is me 
). Any ways, I think it's worth doing some of your own research as well, but I must ask you to please do not discourage me in my treatment. PLEASE DO NOT START PULLING UP CONTRADICTORY SCIENTIFIC STUDIES AND CONVINCE ME I'M WRONG. These supplements were recommended to ME by MY naturopath and probably she would have prescribed something different if she was seeing YOU
Estrogen too low
My estradiol = 150nmol/L
We didn't discuss this into detail but Dr. Natalie supported the estrogen dominance theory.
Solution: 400mg I3C per day
I asked her what about DIM and she said that I3C is a precursor to DIM. Since DIM is synthesized, the body better recognizes I3C because it is just a concentrated nutrient of broccoli. But I don't think people who are on DIM should switch to DIM for the sake. She also told me to cut back on black cohosh, a phytoestrogenic herb I was taking in hopes to alleviate my PMS. I3C can aid the liver in detoxifying bad estrogen and promote production of good estrogen.
Progesterone too low
Mine = 2nmol/L
I wasn't ovulating since May 2014, I am under weight (45kg/165cm), and I was under chronic stress.
Solution: Vitex 500mg per day
As most of you know, Vitex increases progesterone production. I was hesitant in taking this herb for a long time because of the:
1) Initial breakouts
2) Why should we increase progesterone if high levels of progesterone increase breakouts?
Initial breakouts
I told her I read on the internet some women had initial breakouts. She told me from her clinical experience she has never seen women having initial breakouts while on vitex (and she is a hormone and skin expert). It's possible that women who have high progesterone may experience adverse effects, but in most cases women are often deficient in progesterone.
Why should we increase progesterone if I get more breakouts during the second half of my menstrual cycle (when progesterone is dominant)?
To answer this she pulled out the chart below:
Most women are breakout prone 7 days before their period, which is when actually progesterone starts to decline. Further, though it's true that an increase in progesterone promotes sebum production and pore compression, however, it's the high testosterone levels that further exacerbate the condition. Because testosterone levels are constant throughout the month, it's when both estrogen and progesterone declines that the testosterone can kick in and give women the nasty pre-menstrual breakouts. In addition, increases in progesterone can indirectly decrease testosterone since the resources that produced testosterone are not being used to produce progesterone.
And finally in the last 40 minutes she performed a Total Body Modification assessment/treatment on me. Basically what she did was asked me to lay down and pressed certain "points" on my body that were "linked" to my internal organs to assess performance. Once she located the weak areas (which were the liver and pancreas) and "corrected" it by adjusting my spinal cords, she also adjusted the position of my rib cage, pelvis and colon (which felt so weird! Imagine someone grasping your colon from over your skin!). This may be placebo but I felt so much energy that evening, I would usually crash the moment I come home but I was able to do some house work and I slept like a baby! It's been 3 days since but I am still feeling good.
Overall, my visit to the naturopath was great! Dr. Natalie spent a lot of time explaining to me how these herbs will help my acne. She understood my priorities were to get a regular menses without breaking out for every cycle.
The next post on the Consultation with the nutritionist might be helpful for everyone, as this post was mostly for women. In the next post, I'll talk about a hydrating electrolyte drink, why seasonal eating is good for the skin, and the questions I asked about gluten, soy and enzyme inhibitors.
Thanks for reading! (I realized this was a lengthy post, please tell me if I did bore anyone out and you guys want less detail)
Love,
Hannah
