You may have noticed that as a child there was little to no problem with acne. It was not until puberty that acne became something to worry about. The reason is hormones. Hormones that are produced during puberty are known as androgens. These can cause the glands in the skin, which produce oil to become over stimulated and thereby create an excess amount of oil within the skin.

Add to this an increase in dead skin cells and the normal bacteria of the skin and you have the perfect recipe for acne. In women due to the increasing and decreasing of hormones during the month, there may be more sensitivity to these conditions during the menstrual cycle. Sensitivities can also occur during pregnancy and during menopause and are also related to hormone levels.

Hormones do not actually cause acne they merely provide the physiological reaction necessary for acne to have a chance at forming. Adult acne however, may be caused by a variety of things; this could be anything from synthetic hormones, to diet and lifestyle.

There are ways however that you can help control your body’s reaction to hormones. The first thing to do is to avoid stress. This is because stress can cause certain hormones in the body to over produce. This in turn stimulates the glands of the skin and excess oil is produced.

Relaxation and exercise are also important in order to keep the body healthy and stress reduced. It also helps to flush toxins from the body and prevents them from building up in the system.

If you are prone to acne, avoid things like caffeine, which may stimulate the production of hormones within the body.

Hormones can be found in plastics so if you are especially sensitive avoid foods and drinks, which come in plastic containers.

Be sure to eat healthy, drink plenty of water and avoid non-organic foods whenever possible.

You may also want to try changing your diet to a fruits and vegetable base rather than meat and dairy this may help to prevent the over stimulation of hormones along with other acne treatment options.

Hormones can have a significant impact on the breakouts of acne that you have by taking the time to stay healthy, reduce stress and exercise you can enjoy the benefits of seeing a reducing in the appearance of acne breakouts and a reducing in the severity of the breakouts you do get.


 Hi! This is Dr Yanni and welcome to Your Skin Mentor. Today we're going to talk about how acne forms. So this is a model of skin. And just to orientate everybody. The top layer, here, this is the outermost dead layer of skin, it acts as a protective layer. It also acts and functions as our skin barrier. The pink layer is the outer layer of the skin or what we call epidermis and the deeper layer of the skin is called dermis. Now. Can you see this structure here? We call it pilosebaceous gland. So this unit is where acne forms. You can see this is a hair follicle. This is a strand of hair. And over here you can see it better illustrated. It is what we call the sebaceous gland or the oil gland. So how acne forms is in two steps. We have exfoliation of the cells everyday and the exfoliation of the cells is not the one on top which is the dead skin, that happens all the time but that's not what causes acne. It is the cells that is within this gland that exfoliate and sometimes this exfoliation is not normal. So two things can happen here. One, the skin cells become really sticky and mixes with the oil from the oil gland and it clungs together, forming a clogged pore. The other thing that can happen here, is that this cell which is supposed to exfoliate and flow outwards actually gets stuck inside and sometimes it is all stuck at the top, forming a bottle neck. So all the oil that is coming out from the oil gland actually gets trapped together with the cells below. So what happens is the formation of something called microcomedome, a very tiny clogged pore that you may not even see on the skin. Okay. I'm going to flip it over. This illustrates how a comedone or a clogged pore look like. Over here, this clogged pore is stuck within the pilosebaceous unit. As you can see, there is no opening on the top so this is what we call a closed comedome or what we refer to as a whitehead. Over here, the clogged pore opens to the top surface and it interacts with oxygen and oxidise so it changes to become a black colour. So we call it a blackhead or an open comedome. You can see it from the top.. Now, in the last figure here, you can see something no-good is happening, right? You can see that it is red, it is swollen. If I touch it, it will feel hot, painful, it might even be itchy. So something has happened that there is inflammation. Okay so, how did this happen? So within this pilosebaceous gland, there are other micro-organisms living within the pilosebaceous gland and they are living off the sebum produced by the oil glands. Now, this includes bacteria, fungi and mites. Now When it is inflammed, it is because there is migration or movement of the bacteria and other micro-organism outwards into the surrounding tissue and that causes inflammation. When your body defence mechanism come to help which is the white cells on the side. They create what you and I know as pus and sometimes that's what you get in your pimple, right? Pus. We call it pus tube. Now, if this inflammation gets really large so its more than half a cm or about- like this size. And it gets hard and painful then we know that the inflammation is bad and it goes deep into the skin, the dermis. Now, analogy. If you fell down and you scraped your knee, and it became hot, painful and there's pus, what would you do? The correct thing to do is to seek help, to get treatment but if you don't get treatment and let it burn out what would happen to your skin? It will eventually heal but it will also leave a scar and that's what happens with acne. If you leave it alone and let it burn itself out or let it heal, it will eventually form a scar on your skin. That is the long term complication of acne and that is acne scarring. Acne scarring is complex and difficult to treat and there is no way to get that normal skin ever again. So, I hope you appreciated and enjoyed this little tutorial on how acne forms. And please follow us, I'll tell you how we can help and treat acne and prevent scarring. Bye.