How I Cleared My PCOS Acne

Acne as an adult is the fucking worst- let’s be honest here.

I have struggled with acne since I was 10 years old. I got acne earlier than my schoolmates, and it was WAY worse than most of them.

Big, red, deep and cystic pimples all over my face, chest and back. Not pretty.

The first time I ever tried to do anything about it, I was 14 years old and in 9th grade. I went on a medication called Accutane.

It was a bloody miracle because it made all my acne go away. I was told this would be permanent- score!

Then, a year or so later, my acne came back. At 16 I went on birth control, and that seemed to calm things down for another year.

Then the acne came back. So I went on various antibiotics and used tons of harsh creams that left me feeling red and raw (and utterly disgusting).

They didn’t work. So I did Accutane a second time, and it worked again (temporarily).

I seriously thought I was going to be stuck with acne for life.

Enter nutrition school, and I came off birth control. Then my “second puberty” started and the acne got WAY worse- bad like when I was 10 years old.

Super hella embarrassing when you’re in nutrition school and want to look like a glowing health fairy. Yeah, not so much.

I was diagnosed with PCOS at this time and suddenly I knew WHY my skin was so bad- it was the syndrome!

Of course that didn’t make it any easier to get rid of.

During the first 2 years after my diagnosis, I tried all kinds of things.

Tea tree oil.

Oil cleansing.

Yonka skin care products.

DIY face masks.

Store-bought face masks.

“Natural” spot treatments galore.

Some of these worked a little bit (Yonka products are AMAZING), but never got rid of my acne completely.

Now I know this is because I didn’t address the root causes of my acne from the inside. Rather, I stuck with topical treatments.

At this point in my PCOS-skin journey, my face, back and chest are clear.

I get the odd pimple if I’ve been particularly stressed out or had a week or two of shitty eating. It’s INCREDIBLE to not have to worry about covering up my skin, but rather embracing my natural glow.

I get asked a lot how I did it. How did I go from deep cystic acne on my face, back and chest to clear all over?

Let me tell you.

How I Cleared My PCOS Acne

#1: Insulin-Balancing Diet

Whether we like it or not, most of us PCOS Cysters have some form of Insulin Resistance (yes, even with “normal” blood labs).

Insulin resistance leads our ovaries to over-produce androgen hormones like testosterone. High testosterone often gets converted to DHT, or dihydrotestosterone, a “naughty” form of testosterone that increases sebum (oil) production on the skin, among other things- that creates acne.

I started by reducing processed carbs (bread, noodles, crackers, cookies, etc) and increasing healthy fats (coconut oil, olive oil, nuts/seeds, butter, MCT oil, etc). A by-product of this was a healthy weight, too.

I then made sure to eat at regular times, and to include as much fresh produce (mostly veggies) that I could in a day.

All this together helped to balance my blood sugar and restore my insulin sensitivity- leading to clearer skin.

#2: Simplified Skin Care Routine

I tossed out all my expensive store-bought products (like I said, Yonka is FABULOUS, but damn expensive).

I simplified the ingredients in my skin care routine to be made of things I could EAT – no toxins, no fake stuff, no fillers or fancy extracts.

At the time of writing this article, my routine is as follows:

Cleansing: Wash my face with a cinnamon/honey mixture
Optional: If I’m feeling dry, I’ll mist with some rose hydrosol
Moisture: 100% pure rosehip seed oil (I use Skin Essence brand)
Weekly: A facial mask that I either DIY or buy (usually with some clay and essential oils in it)

And that’s seriously it. I don’t wash my face twice a day. Over-washing makes me produce more oil, and therefore get more acne. No thanks. I don’t use fancy creams. My face is no longer an oil slick by lunchtime.

#3: Gut Support

Acne is a sign that your gut needs some help. Your digestion isn’t working properly, and inflammation is running wild in your body.

I started to support my gut first by adopting the diet I outlined in #1. Then I added in some gut support tools – digestive enzymes, and the like. In fact, this is SO important, we devote a whole week to it in my PCOS Hormone Bootcamp program.

Then I upped my probiotic game. Probiotics, aka good gut bugs (bacteria) are ESSENTIAL for glowing skin. E-S-S-E-N-T-I-A-L. Seriously. Don’t skip this.

I started taking a probiotic supplement (I currently use MegaSpore Biotic by Microbiome Labs) and incorporated 1-2 servings of fermented foods with my meals daily.

Sauerkraut was and still is my favourite.

#4 Toxin-Free Makeup

I threw away all my old makeup and replaced it with natural, toxin-free versions that won’t upset my skin. If you want to check out your makeup, go to EWG.org and search their beauty database- it will give you a score of houw good or bad a product is, SO amazing.

My current makeup:

Liquid Foundation: Sappho Organics
Mascara: Raw Mascara by Earth Lab Cosmetics
Eye Liner: Liquid Eye Liner by Lavera
Lipstick: Etherealle Vegan Mineral Lipstick (purchased on Etsy)
Eye Shadow: Zuii Organic and/or Beneficial Minerals Brand (purchased on Etsy)

#5: Stress Management

Stress is bad for your skin. So bad, there’s even a book written about it. This was a big missing piece in my own healing puzzle.

The diet was there. The supplements and skin care were on point. And I still got acne.

Then I started meditating, doing yoga near daily, journaling and just generally working on taking better care of myself, and letting go.

I did something to manage my stress every single day (and still do). If I don’t, my acne flares up.

Affirmations are another great way to shift mindset and reduce stress. Louise Hay has a great affirmation for acne:

“I am a Divine expression of life. I love and accept myself where I am right now.”

How Long Will It Take to Clear My Acne?

This is the BIG question, and I get asked this a lot. It took me personally about 2 years to clear my skin.

If I knew what I was doing at first and if I had created a targeted plan of attack from the beginning, I imagine I could have cut that time in half.

Everyone is different, but that’s my personal experience. It slowly got better- it’s not like I went two years with crazy acne and woke up one day to zero pimples. It was a slow but steady decline.

It can (will) happen. Keep consistent.

What is Insulin Resistance and Do You Have It?

Maybe this story sounds familiar to you. Growing up, I wasn’t necessarily overweight but more on the borderline, gaining and losing the same 10-20 pounds over and over. I grew up on a diet of McDonald’s, fruit juice and sugary snacks. I had constant mood swings and tons of fatigue, right up into adulthood. I would experience extreme mood swings, anxiety and irritability between meals- even if I had just eaten an hour or two prior!

When I did reach that snack or meal time, I would end up feeling super foggy, bloated and exhausted after a meal. Often I was overeating because I was ALWAYS hungry- not peckish or just plain bored- HUNGRY. Like, if I didn’t get something in my belly right this second, I would be shaky, jittery and flipping out on someone.

Of course, I later learned that these symptoms were part of insulin resistance- a big time factor in the Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) that I experienced. Not only did it play into how I felt like what I’ve described above, but it also caused irregular, painful menstrual cycles in addition to excess hair growth (moustache, anyone?), head hair loss and cystic acne (I thought puberty ended in my teens!).

Insulin resistance may not be familiar to you, but I’m willing to bet it’s a large part of the symptoms and hormonal imbalances you’re experiencing, and here’s why.

What Is Insulin Resistance

To understand insulin resistance and it’s impact on our hormonal and general health, we first need to understand insulin and blood sugar control in our bodies- this isn’t just for people with diabetes!

Firstly, insulin is the major hormone in balancing our blood sugar. When we eat a food that has carbs, our body breaks it down into simple sugars or glucose through digestion. All of our cells need glucose for energy, and food is where we get the majority of the glucose. Once glucose has been released into the blood, the pancreas will produce insulin. Insulin then comes to the rescue and helps the glucose get into the body cells by “unlocking” the cell door. Once the majority of glucose has been brought into the cells, blood glucose levels will decline, and this is a good thing.

Now, here’s what goes on in insulin resistance. For various reasons (like a diet high in carbs, long-term stress, and others) many women experience high blood glucose levels. So, the pancreas will create more and more insulin to get all that excess glucose into the cells. The problem starts when the “key” that insulin has to the cells stops working- like your body hired a locksmith behind insulin’s back.

This causes levels of blood glucose to stay high, and insulin stays high as well.

Additionally, your pancreas may become tired after producing SO MUCH insulin for so long, and may drastically reduce or stop producing insulin altogether. Any one of these issues is bad news for your health and hormones.

Causes

So why would this be happening to you? Well, there is no ‘one’ cause, or right answer. Research is still trying to figure it out.

Here are a few idea of what comes into play when insulin resistance occurs:

Poor Diet

If your food mostly comes from a restaurant, bag, box or carton, you can bet diet is playing a role in symptoms. All of these types of foods are generally very high in carbohydrates- especially the refined types like sugars, flours and their products. This puts a lot of glucose in the blood, causing your body to create more and more insulin, potentially leading to insulin resistance eventually. Clinically, every woman I’ve ever consulted with who ate this way had insulin resistance problems.

Additionally, doctored fats like trans fats found in fried foods and the majority of those bagged and boxed foods impairs glucose sensitivity, adding to the problem.

Lastly, poor diets are often low in nutrients. Not eating enough fresh produce, healthy fats and clean proteins leaves the body devoid of many insulin-sensitizing nutrients like omega3s, vitamin D, B vitamins and Magnesium.

Sedentary Lifestyle

As much as we hate to believe it, exercise has a profound impact on our health and on insulin sensitivity. Regular movement and exercise helps our bodies to use up excess blood glucose (for energy), reducing the amount of insulin required in the body. Second, the right exercise in general helps the body to be sensitized to the effects of our insulin hormone.

Genetics

Some research has pointed to genetics or heredity playing a part in insulin resistance. If you have a family history of diabetes, obesity, high triglycerides, cancer and heart disease- it is possible these factors may happen to you later in life. Genetics is funny business though, because not everyone with a family history gets whatever the disease is. Our environment has a large impact on what genes turn “active” and which don’t, which is why most things are still in our control.

Main Symptoms

There’s a host of symptoms involved in insulin resistance, but I’ve only listed a few major ones here.

Getting “Hangry” (mood swings, irritability in between meals)
Family or personal history of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, or high triglycerides
Weight gain, especially in the belly (the dreaded belly fat!!)
PCOS
Tiredness after a meal
General fatigue or exhaustion
Poor menstrual cycle health
Infertility

Insulin Resistance and Your Hormones

Who gives a hoot about insulin resistance when dealing with reproductive hormone imbalances? We all should!

Firstly because insulin itself is a hormone- and how well or unwell insulin functions will determine the health of your other hormones- like cortisol and estrogen.

Cortisol

Cortisol is our main stress hormone. When we experience a stressful situation or live in long-term stress, our body releases cortisol to help us. It does this as part of the ‘fight or flight’ response. This response was initially for real, life-threatening events, like a large animal predator coming after us, in the early human days. Currently, the fight or flight response is chronically activated as we experience non-life threatening stresses like fights with spouses and long commutes, which our bodies read as emergencies. During this response, cortisol tells places of glucose storage (like the liver) to release glucose into the blood for energy. This extra glucose causes insulin to be released. The longer this cycle goes on the more vicious it gets, and the more likely insulin resistance will occur.

Reproductive Hormones Like Estrogen and Testosterone

Insulin is one of the “major” hormones, and insulin resistance makes it almost impossible for your body to balance its “minor” hormones (estrogen, progesterone and testosterone to name a few) until your insulin metabolism is balanced first. To put it simply, if you have hot flashes, weight gain or painful periods and you are insulin resistant, it’s going to be nearly impossible to heal them without first healing the insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance impairs the body’s ability to ovulate, so making some women struggle with irregular or absent periods, and infertility. It does this by creating excess LH, a hormone normally involved in ovulation, that when chronically high actually prevents ovulation from occurring. No ovulation = no period.

Insulin resistance also impairs the ovaries’ ability to create reproductive hormones like estrogen and progesterone- both important for health cycles and hormonal balance throughout the lifespan.

This ovarian and insulin imbalance could contribute to the creation of more testosterone, causing symptoms like cystic acne, excess facial hair (hirsutism) and head hair loss (androgenic alopecia). This is the main reason that women with PCOS experience these symptoms, plus irregular or absent periods.

In regards to other conditions like Endometriosis and Fibroids- the insulin resistance could contribute to to estrogen dominance, in part because progesterone ends up so low. This could contribute to the pain women with endo experience, as well as the weight gain that often accompanies it.

The first thing I do with any private client is work on balancing their blood sugar and insulin. Often this in and of itself will effect profound changes in their symptoms and overall hormonal health. I highly recommend any women do the same, for happy hormones and optimal health.

4 Amazing Reasons to Use Probiotics for PCOS Acne

I have struggled with acne for more than half my life. I remember being in fifth grade, the first girl in my class to get acne (plus body hair + boobs!). I was scared shitless. . .Why do I have all these painful red bumps on my face? Why do I have it and no one else does?

Little did I realize that I was entering puberty, a time in which my skin (face, back + chest) would be riddled with cystic acne. Once I hit high school, I finally decided to do something about it. I went to a dermatologist and was put on Accutane. Fantastic! It worked fabulously. Or so I thought.

Several months after discontinuing the Accutane, the spots started to come back. Back to the dermatologist I went (again and again), coming out with different prescriptions for creams, washes, antibiotics, and yet another round of Accutane. By the time I finished high school my acne was not too bad- maybe 15% of what it was. I think I owe that to the birth control pill! Once I decided to come off the pill in order to use a non-hormonal method of birth control, my acne returned with a vengeance. Just like puberty all over again.

To add insult to injury, this all happened when I was in nutrition school- just the time and place where you really want to look and feel your best- to be ‘healthy’. Of course, a short time later I learned I had PCOS, and my lifelong acne struggles finally made sense. I had an answer! It took me about 2 years post-pill to clear up my acne to the point where I only get minor bumps before ovulation now.

One of the major things that helped to clean up my PCOS acne (besides balancing my hormones, exercising and eating more veggies and less crap) was using probiotics- in the form of supplements and fermented foods. There are so many reasons why probiotics are helpful for acne, and I’m outlining them below. Note that while they won’t ‘fix’ your acne the way that a health-promoting and anti-androgen lifestyle will, they are certainly a big part of that picture.

Reason 1: Clear Up Skin + Mind

I don’t know how many times I’ve cried about my acne. Why ME? Why now? What did I do to deserve this? And the spiralling goes on and on. . .Have you been there too?

You might be interested to know that emotional disturbances like feelings of depression or anxiety are two to three times more prevalent in people with acne than those without. Makes sense to me! Women with PCOS are also at higher risk for depression, anxiety and mood problems- potentially compounding this effect.

Where do probiotics come in? Well, the use of probiotic supplements have both an acne-clearing and mind-clearing effect. They are potentially powerful agents to do this. Many of our ‘feel good’ neurotransmitters and other compounds are found mostly in the gut. Probiotics help to restore balance in this case, while clearing the skin.

Reason #2: Healthy Gut for Healthy Skin

Like the connection between mood problems and acne I mentioned above, people with acne are also more likely to have a variety of digestive complaints like constipation, burping, bad breath and bloating. Yuck! While this wasn’t something I ever experienced in great amounts (except maybe some bloating), I see this a lot in the women I work with.

The biggest possible reason for this is something known as Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth or SIBO. What this means simply is that there’s too many ‘bad’ bacteria and other pathogens in the body than ‘good’ bacteria. While SIBO can be a severe issue, even a small amount of bacterial overgrowth like candida or even leaky gut can cause digestive and skin disturbances.

Probiotics are ‘good’ bacteria, and so help to ‘crowd out’ the bad guys with their body-loving superpowers. The means a healthy gut and healthy skin for the user!

Reason #3: Reduce Inflammation

What is something that both acne and PCOS have in common? Inflammation! Higher levels of internal inflammation is connected to both of these conditions. Where the inflammation comes from can change depending on the person. It could be an autoimmune response, poor diet and toxic body, leaky gut, bacterial overgrowth or any other number of reasons.

How in the heck can beneficial bacteria reduce the inflammation in your body? In a few ways, and they get pretty technical. Firstly, they enhance the production of short-chain fatty acids, which have an anti-inflammatory effect. There’s even some burgeoning science that they enhance the production of regulatory (rather than inflammatory) cytokines, and can effect the regular lab markers for inflammation like C-reactive protein (CRP). That’s a pretty sweet deal for some little bugs!

Reason #4: Improve Immunity

Your immune system is intricately connected to most every process in the body. (BTW, everything in your body effects everything else- it’s ALL connected!). For example, if your immune system isn’t functioning well, it’s likely you have some bad gut stuff going on. Usually this means that imbalance of bad to good bacteria that I already mentioned.

In the case of acne, the reduction of inflammation and promotion of good gut health go a long way in strengthening immunity for glowing, clear skin.

Also, I’m sure you’ve heard of vitamin D and how good it is for your immune system. Well, it turns out that Vitamin D is often deficient in people with acne and women with PCOS, and acne lesions can be reduced greatly by getting those Vitamin D levels up to par. Probiotics play a role here by potentially helping your body to absorb and utilize Vitamin D. Win!

As you can see, the argument for using probiotics for PCOS acne is pretty strong. I’ve been using probiotics in the form of supplements and fermented foods with myself and clients for a long time now, and have to say I do believe it’s helped the acne (and MANY other symptoms). There’s no telling what it might do for other women with PCOS acne!

Do you use probiotics? Have you noticed a change in your acne? Please share below in the comments!

7 Hormone-Balancing Foods for Glowing Skin

Post originally published on July 26, 2015 on MindBodyGreen.

Our skin is the protection we have against the elements. For those with glowing, smooth and clear skin, it’s also a source of pride. For others, plagued with acne, eczema and other skin conditions, showing their skin can be a source of anxiety. This is especially true if you’re a woman with a hormonal imbalance.

Click here to read the rest of my article on MindBodyGreen.