Unlocking Hormonal Acne: A Naturopathic Approach to Conquering Hormonal Acne with Dr. Stacey Shillington ND

Embark on a journey to radiant skin with Dr. Stacey Shillington ND, who brings her naturopathic expertise to the forefront of the fight against hormonal acne. Her approach isn't just skin deep—it's about striking at the heart of the issue. From the tell-tale signs of internal inflammation to the tumultuous tides of estrogen and cortisol, this episode peels back the layers of mystery shrouding your breakouts. Dr. Shillington ND spotlights why supporting our body's natural cycles, particularly ovulation, is more beneficial than reaching for hormone supplements. Her insights promise to arm you with the knowledge necessary to cultivate hormonal harmony and clear skin from within.

Dr. Shillington ND doesn't stop at theory; she sheds light on the power of individualized testing, like GI mapping and organic acid testing, that can pinpoint the unique reasons behind each case of hormonal acne. By customizing the battle plan to target inflammation and imbalance, she crafts a roadmap to clear skin that's as unique as you are. The episode culminates with an invitation to Dr. Shillington's Clear Skin Program, providing a guided pathway to not only blemish-free skin but also to an enhanced state of well-being. If you're ready to transform your skin and health, this episode is your guidepost to taking that pivotal first step.

Interested in my new Clear Skin Group Program? Click here to learn more!

Click here to watch my FREE Clear Skin Masterclass and learn more about the 4 pillars of clear skin and my top tips to heal acne for good.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions, where we heal your acne from the inside out. Hello, beauties, and welcome to the Naturopathic Beauty Clear Skin Sessions. I'm Dr Stacey Shillington. I'm a naturopathic doctor and for the last 18 years I've been helping people all over the world clear their acne from the inside out. I totally get acne. I've personally experienced it and I know how mentally, emotionally and physically traumatic it really can be and how it can get in the way of your life. And I also know that there's a lot of information out there right now on how you need to heal your acne different skincare, different diets, different supplements and it can be overwhelming. So this podcast is designed to help you on your clear skin journey, to help you figure out exactly what you need to do, not only to clear not just to clear your acne temporarily, but to really get rid of it for good. That's my mission, that's my passion to truly, deeply heal the body from its very root causes so you can live with not only optimal health, but with beautiful, blemish-free skin for the rest of your life. So this session is about hormonal acne, and I know so many women out there suffer with hormonal acne and I want to break it down for you and I want you to understand exactly what hormonal acne actually is. So what hormones cause acne? And I hear this question so much and I'm going to answer that for you as well as I can. But first of all, let's talk about what hormonal acne actually is. So hormonal acne is acne that appears around your menstrual cycle, so it's a pattern. So usually it will come up at a certain part of your menstrual cycle repeatedly, and it's going to be a little bit different for every single woman. So some women may experience increased breakouts just before her menstrual cycle, some during her menstrual cycle, some right after it finishes, and some women may experience hormonal acne right around ovulation, so right in the middle of the cycle. So it really depends on what's going on for you and what the root cause of your acne is. That determines when you're going to experience these breakouts.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Now, hormonal acne usually appears along the jawline, maybe around the chin, maybe around the neck, in the ears, and it can be either cystic or it can be surface. Now, if acne is quite cystic, it means that there's a lot of inflammation in the body. As we reduce inflammation in the body, acne tends to become more surface. So, depending on how your acne presents, that can give you a clue as to how much inflammation is present in your body and how much work really needs to be done. Now, often when there's acne on the cheeks, that can be a sign that there's something going on in the gut as well. Now, if you don't have acne on the cheeks, it doesn't necessarily mean nothing's going on in your gut, but it does indicate that maybe we need to focus more on detox and drainage. It depends.

Speaker 1: 3:02

We have to do investigation, we have to understand what's going on in your body to really solve hormonal acne, because there's a bunch of different hormones that can be involved in hormonal acne. It's not just estrogen, it's not just progesterone, it's not just androgens, there's also prolactin, there's also insulin and there's also cortisol. And if there's one hormone that I really believe impacts all the other hormones more than the others, it's cortisol. When there's cortisol dysregulation, it's usually the result of our nervous systems being trapped in a state of stress, being trapped in our sympathetic nervous system, in a state of survival. And I honestly believe that if we could work on the nervous system and if we could get into a state of survival, and I honestly believe that if we could work on the nervous system and if we could get into a state where our bodies are calm and relaxed and where they're able to heal, then acne would be able to heal far easier, almost effortlessly in fact. So really paying attention to our nervous system, paying attention to our levels of stress, that's going to go a long ways to really solving hormonal acne.

Speaker 1: 4:07

So let's talk for a moment about estrogen and progesterone. So these are the main hormones of the menstrual cycle. Just before ovulation we see a spike in estrogen, and after ovulation we see a rise in progesterone. When we don't see this rise in progesterone this is when a lot of premenstrual acne takes place it's because of a progesterone deficiency. Now, this is not always what's causing it, but usually it's due to suboptimal ovulation. So when you do not ovulate optimally, you do not produce a corpus luteum that is able to produce adequate progesterone. That's what's going on. So when I see patients that have estrogen and progesterone imbalances, we always want to look at ovulation. Ovulation is the key process that is going to lead to balanced estrogen progesterone levels and for many women it's really going to lead to clear skin. So how do we optimize ovulation? We optimize ovulation by reducing inflammation in the body.

Speaker 1: 5:11

I don't give bioidentical hormones. I don't manually try to alter estrogen and progesterone levels. I did at one point in my career, but I found that that does not yield lasting results. If you have too much progesterone, you're going to get acne, just as if you have too little progesterone, if you have too much estrogen, you're going to get acne, and if you have too little estrogen, you're going to have acne. So, as you can see, trying to regulate estrogen and progesterone can be very difficult to get to that sweet spot, and the very best way to do this is to optimize ovulation, because the body is so intelligent it knows exactly how much hormone it needs to produce to optimize your health. So we have to give the body the time and the space and the health to be able to do that for you. So that's the whole reason of my work is that I want to bring the body to a place where it is so much in homeostasis that your skin is just naturally going to be clear and any other symptoms of hormonal imbalance are going to start to fall away as well.

Speaker 1: 6:19

So another hormone that is often implicated in acne is prolactin, and we we see this on blood tests, and this is a hormone that's always present in breastfeeding, but it can also be caused by stress, the birth control pill, pcos, low thyroid and tumors, and elevated prolactin. This suppresses the hormones that are responsible for a normally functioning menstrual cycle, which means it will suppress ovulation exactly what we don't want. And when we have high prolactin it's also going to increase the activity of an enzyme called 5-alpha reductase, which really will increase the amount of active androgen, and we're going to talk about that in a. But prolactin is usually elevated because of cortisol dysregulation. So again we're back to the stress piece.

Speaker 1: 7:05

Whenever I see a patient that does have elevated prolactin, the first thing I look at is her nervous system. Is her nervous system regulated? Is she able to get into her parasympathetic nervous system where her body is able to heal, rest and digest? Because if you're stuck in your sympathetic nervous system, if you're stuck in stress and survival, your body cannot heal. And this is so important. And you know, this is something that I really want to emphasize to anybody out there that's suffering with acne that's trying to heal your body. Your nervous system is the most important component of healing.

Speaker 1: 7:41

So let's talk about androgens for a moment. So androgens are the hormones that directly cause acne. A lot of things are going to cause androgens to be imbalanced, but these hormones get a lot of focus because they're kind of the end hormone that really lead to acne. Specifically, we're talking about testosterone, dheas and androstenedione, and these hormones convert into DHT and this is the most potent androgen. It resides in the skin and it causes acne by increasing the amount of oil that's produced and also increasing the formation of skin cells and preventing normal skin exfoliation, and when we have those two actions occurring, it's like a perfect storm for acne. So more oil in the pore, reduced optimal exfoliation this is going to lead to acne.

Speaker 1: 8:32

So DHT is often really implicated in acne. It's a really important hormone to look at, but it's not the end all and be all of hormonal acne, because we have to understand why DHT is elevated in the first place. If you're just focusing your acne efforts on taking five alpha reductase inhibitors and there's a lot of herbs that can do this you're not really stopping the reason why there's too much DHT being produced and there's too many androgens that are converted to DHT in the first place. So instead of being reliant on that herb to repress that enzyme. We have to understand why that enzyme is overactive and address the root cause of that overactive enzyme. It's the only way to really truly clear your skin for good.

Speaker 1: 9:22

So the really big question that we're asking is what causes high androgens and there's a laundry list of what causes high androgens, and we have to look at all these different hormones when we're truly solving hormonal acne. We have to look at insulin and IGF-1, impaired detoxification, inflammation in the gut, dysregulated cortisol, pcos, high estrogen, low estrogen, low progesterone, high progesterone and high prolactin levels, and this may sound really complicated, but when you understand these hormones deeply, it doesn't take a lot to really figure out what's going on in the body. And what is needed, however, is some great testing. Testing is what we require to really figure out what's going on in the body, what's causing the elevated androgens, and then balancing the body and bringing homeostasis not only to your body but to your hormones. That is how we solve hormonal acne by figuring out what's causing those hormones to be imbalanced in the first place. So one of the tests most people do first is a Dutch steroid hormone test. This is the gold standard test for hormonal analysis.

Speaker 1: 10:40

I've done so many of these throughout my career, and at one point I was relying heavily on hormone testing to help me really solve my patient's acne, and I have to tell you that the results were mediocre, because when you work at the level of the hormones, you are never going to address why the hormones are imbalanced in the first place, never going to address why the hormones are imbalanced in the first place. Now I still use Dutch testing, and I don't use it on every patient, though, because when I first work with a patient, I meet with them. I really get a good understanding of their clinical symptoms and their health history, and so now, based on my patient's clinical symptoms, that will determine what testing I do. Very often I do GI mapping testing. Very often I do oak testing, which is organic acid testing, and I usually always do blood work. Those are my three staple tests that I always do with my patients. Sometimes I'll do a Dutch test if something really interesting is going on with the hormones. Sometimes not very often while I do an HTMA test, I find it not specific enough.

Speaker 1: 11:46

I really want to drill down, but testing is so important because that is going to give us the clues and the answers as to what we need to do to truly solve hormonal acne. So the really big takeaway that I want you to take from this podcast is that you need to solve hormonal acne at a deeper level than just your hormones. You have to ask why all the time, so you know. If a practitioner is telling you this is what's causing your acne, always ask why. Why is that causing my acne? Why are my progesterone levels too high? Why are my estrogen levels too high? Why are my progesterone levels too high? Why are my estrogen levels too high? Why are my progesterone levels too low? Why are my estrogen levels too high? Why are my androgens so high? You know, why is my insulin dysregulated?

Speaker 1: 12:32

You always want to ask these questions so that you can dig down to the root cause of your acne and always ask for testing, because I will tell you, if I see a patient and I don't have test results in front of me, I'm guessing. I can make a very good, very educated guess based on clinical symptoms, because I've been doing this for 18 years. But very often I will get test results that do surprise me. I will see an overgrowth of Morganella bacteria, for instance. That's so high when I was thinking that it was an H pylori overgrowth. You know I'm always getting surprised by patients and what shows up on their test results, so I really encourage you to find a practitioner that does testing that has experience with acne as well, because you want a practitioner to look at your test results through a lens of a patient that has acne, because acne patients are very sensitive. They respond to medications, herbs and nutrients differently than patients that do not experience acne.

Speaker 1: 13:36

We tend to have a very different hormonal profile, so our hormones have to be treated very differently. We have a different root cause of our hormonal imbalance. It our hormones have to be treated very differently. We have a different root cause of our hormonal imbalance. It's as simple as that. So timing how long does it take to heal hormonal acne?

Speaker 1: 13:50

So here's the thing. First of all, we need to reduce inflammation in the body. For some people, this can be a very quick exercise. We can reduce inflammation in a matter of weeks. For other patients, it could take months, especially if there's a chronic gut infection. However, once the inflammation has been reduced, then we have to allow three months or a hundred days for an ovarian follicle to mature. When an ovarian follicle completely matures, which takes a hundred days or three months, you are going to ovulate optimally, you are going to produce a healthy corpus luteum and you are going to produce adequate progesterone, adequate estrogen, and you are going to achieve hormonal balance.

Speaker 1: 14:32

So for some women, this process is going to take quite a few months and we just have to give the body the time and the space that it needs to heal. But if you've experienced acne for many years, it is going to take time to reverse the process and we have to be patient and we have to be very intuitive and very kind and loving towards our body as it does this work, because this is a lot of work. We have to really take our energy and put it into healing our body so that we can have optimal health, beautiful skin, and that we can have optimal health, beautiful skin and that we can start to cultivate self-love at the same time. So I hope that this podcast has helped you. Maybe it's given you an aha moment or shed some light on the direction that you need to take to truly heal your hormonal acne.

Speaker 1: 15:18

And I have some really exciting news I am launching my hormonal acne healing program. This designed for you to take at the same time that you're being supported by a practitioner. So click the link in the show notes to learn more about this program. I'm so excited and I've really put all my experience, all my knowledge and all my passion into it to help you on your clear skin journey, because I know that you're suffering.

Speaker 1: 16:00

I know that you've been looking for answers for a long time and I've really designed this program to give you what you truly need. And if you feel like working with me personally or with my team the link to book a call is in the show notes you can talk to my team about my program. Make sure that you're a good fit and we can get started right away. Bottom line there is a way to clear your acne for good. I've helped thousands of people do it, so I don't want you to feel hopeless about your skin. I want you to understand your skin is sending you a message that there's something in balance that needs to be addressed and there's nothing to do but to address that and optimize your health. So thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Thank you for allowing me to guide you on your clear skin journey. I am sending you love and I will see you in the next show.