Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions
Clear skin and aging beautifully conversations, trainings and challenges by Dr. Stacey Shillington ND.
Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions
Hormonal Acne, Finally Explained
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Breakouts that bloom along your jawline a week before your period aren’t random—they’re hormonal signals. We unpack how the menstrual cycle shapes your skin, why low progesterone lets androgens run the show, and how insulin swings, inflammation, and sluggish detox pathways keep cystic acne on repeat. You’ll hear a clear, practical framework for understanding PMS acne and a plan to calm it without chasing yet another serum.
We start by mapping the follicular and luteal phases in plain language, then connect the dots: when progesterone underperforms, estrogen becomes unbuffered, androgen activity climbs, and pores clog. We explain why lab tests can read “normal” while your face tells a different story—the issue is often receptor sensitivity fueled by infections, mold exposure, oxidative stress, or blood sugar instability. If you also see mid‑cycle flares, we break down the temporary estrogen and testosterone bump around ovulation and the common role of insulin dysregulation.
Next, we move into action. You’ll get five immediate steps to lower the volume on hormonal acne: stabilize blood sugar with structured meals, protect sleep to lower cortisol, ensure daily bowel movements for estrogen clearance, remove inflammatory triggers like sugar, dairy, and gluten, and train your stress response with short, twice‑daily flow sessions. These shifts support optimal ovulation, strengthen progesterone signaling, and reduce the flare window. For lasting results, we share why targeted testing matters—GI mapping to assess the gut, organic acids for cellular function, and oxidative stress insights to personalize detox and antioxidant support.
Our goal is bigger than clear skin. By fixing the systems that drive acne—hormones, gut health, detox, and the nervous system—you gain steadier moods, fewer PMS symptoms, better digestion, and sustainable energy. Ready to stop guessing and start healing from the inside out? Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to get the first module of our seven‑week Clear Skin Program free.
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Welcome to Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions where we heal your acne from the inside out. Hello, beauties, and welcome to the Clear Skin Sessions. I'm Dr. Stacy Shillington, Natropathic Doctor. This podcast is to help you on your clear skin journey. I've been there, I understand what it's like to have acne, and it is not fun at all. In fact, I would say it's traumatic. It's painful emotionally, mentally, physically. But the good news is that we can heal your acne. We are working with a completely different paradigm in this day and age. Gone are the days of acutine and the birth control pill and antibiotics. We are working with an entirely new set of tools and a new set of knowledge so we can clear your acne, not so that it comes back next year, but so that your acne never comes back because we are healing your body from deep inside. So not only does your acne not come back, but we are also solving other issues. We are solving PMS. We are solving constipation. We're solving bloating. We are solving so many things when we heal the body from the inside out so that you no longer experience acne. So for me, I get very, very excited when I talk about this. I see it happening all the time. And I'm so excited because this can be happening for every single woman who is out there that it is that is experiencing acne. And today I want to talk specifically about hormonal acne. So if your skin is calm for most of the month, but then seven to ten days before your period, it suddenly flares. We're talking about deep painful breakouts along your jawline or chin. This episode is specifically for you. And if your acne is a little bit different than that, I mean you will totally get a lot out of this episode. But I specifically want to talk about the hormonal acne that pops up just before your period. And I know so many women experience this, and there's so many things that are out there, so many tips and tricks to fix your hormonal acne. And I'm gonna lay it out there really, really like honestly, it's an inner issue. You cannot treat hormonal acne at the skin level. So if you are thinking about buying a new serum to address your skin issues, I want you to stop. I want you to save your money, and I want you to understand what your acne actually is, what's going on with your hormones to create hormonal acne and what you can actually do about it. So let's talk about the menstrual cycle. Just a just a very general overall view, like a bird's eye view, so you understand what's going on. I'm gonna make this really simple. So your cycle has two main halves. The first part, which starts the first day of bleeding, is called your follicular stage, and it lasts until ovulation. So it's about 14 days, and it's estrogen dominant. This is when we have the most estrogen in our system. And then the second half of your cycle, which is from ovulation until you get your period, this is the luteal stage, and this is progesterone dominant. This is when we want to have the most progesterone. And I'm gonna like just say this. When you have PMS acne, usually it's because you don't have enough progesterone. So let's let's talk about this. So when you hit ovulation, that smack dab in the middle of your cycle, this is when estrogen peaks. This is usually when skin looks the best. However, some women actually do get acne at ovulation. I want to talk about that briefly in a minute. But generally, when estrogen levels peak, that's when skin looks really, really great. And in our luteal phase, which is the second phase, we want progesterone to rise. Because if progesterone is low, we get estrogen dominance. And this is when we get androgen activity. We all know androgens. These are the hormones that actually cause increased oil production and poor skin shedding. And this is the perfect recipe for acne. So when we have too much estrogen that is not buffered by progesterone, androgens act up. And this is when we get clog pores. This is when we get acne. And right before you bleed, your progesterone levels are going to drop. And if your system is not stable, the drop is going to trigger inflammation and breakout. So this is what I really want you to understand. Most women with hormonal acne, they don't actually have too much estrogen, but it is a it's a condition of not enough progesterone or poor progesterone response. So, really, if you have hormonal acne, it's all about your progesterone levels. That is the number one driver of acne just before your period. And when you have too little progesterone, you're in a state of chronic stress. That's because progesterone binds to GABA receptors. It helps you to relax. When you don't have that progesterone surge from ovulation, you are gonna feel stressed. And I know many women come into my program and they're like, it's nervous system dysregulation. My nervous system is all over the place. I have to heal my nervous system. And it's true, we do need to work on stress levels, but sometimes when progesterone is just consistently low, we can work so hard on stress, and it's actually going to be more difficult because things have not balanced out yet. So that's why we have to do everything at the same time. We have to look at the nervous system, we have to support the nervous system, and we also have to address the reasons why progesterone levels are low. So when we have low progesterone levels, often what we also have is androgen sensitivity. Now, this is why many women they go and they get their hormones tested, they get their hormone results back, and their doctors are like, well, everything looks normal. Your androgen levels are actually within range. And you're like, well, if my androgens are in range, why is my skin breaking out? That's your question. They're like, I don't know. You know, take this, take the birth control pill or take an antibiotic or go in accutane. No, no, no. What's happening is your androgen receptors are too sensitive. So even a small amount of androgenic hormone is going to cause a huge response. Often this can be because this can be because progesterone is not offsetting, you know, the androgen sensitivity. And often the androgen receptors are sensitized because there's an infection, there's inflammation, there's insulin dysregulation, there's other things that are causing these androgen receptors to be abnormally sensitive. So that's the second driver is androgen elevation or sensitivity. And the third driver is detox, poor detoxification. And I will say this over and over again, but acne patients, we are poor detoxifiers. We just are, and not only that, but we tend to accumulate oxidative stress faster than most other people. And that's usually a genetic thing. And we can play with that and we can um, you know, just kind of supplement very, very intelligent to override some of these genetic polymorphisms, but you know, we need to understand what's going on in order to do that. But, you know, if we're not detoxing properly, estrogen isn't cleared properly, which means we have this buildup of estrogen in the body, and that is going to reduce the effectiveness of progesterone. The ratio between estrogen and progesterone is going to widen, which means we're running into the same problem where we don't have enough progesterone signaling to have clear skin. So detox is incredibly important when it comes to hormonal acne. So if your body can't process hormones efficiently, your skin becomes the outlet. Your skin starts to detoxify. And we see this over and over again. The skin is the body's largest organ of detoxification. If the liver, if the kidneys, if the bowels are not doing their job, toxins are going to be eliminated through the skin. So I know you, if some of you out there, you may get breakouts during ovulation right in the middle of your cycle, and you may be wondering, well, what is this all about? Why am I breaking out when my skin should be looking the best? And this is because ovulation, it comes with a temporary rise in estrogen and testosterone. And if your body's sensitive to that surge, your skin may flare. Now, I mentioned earlier, one of the things that can cause androgen receptors to become especially sensitive is inflammation in the body, infections. And when we have a rise in estrogen, we automatically get a rise in testosterone because they interconvert to one another. So if we're seeing, you know, ovulatory acne, there's something that's inflaming the body. And often insulin dysregulation is one of the things that I see. I see this again and again and again. So this is that's just a brief overview of why your hormonal acne is happening. And you're probably asking, okay, that's great. You know, I'm maybe you're interested in the details, maybe you're not. You just want to know what you do about your hormonal acne. So I'm gonna give you five steps you can start today. Then I'm gonna tell you what you need to do long term. So five things. Number one, stabilize your blood sugar. I see instable blood sugar triggering hormonal acne all the time. Eat three meals a day. Do not skip meals. Ensure that your meals contain enough program, protein. And if you really want to go the next, you know, the extra step, cut out sugar. Dairy and gluten as well. Those are those can really trigger inflammation. But timing of your meals is so key. Do not do intermittent fasting and miss your breakfast, please. You can do a 12-hour fast. This is incredibly effective from like 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. You won't even notice your fasting. That can be very helpful, but do not prolong that window because there is research showing us that when the female body trigger um registers hunger on a continual basis, these hunger signals can actually inhibit ovulation. And what that does is that just reduces progesterone. We want optimal ovulation because that is what is going to give you the progesterone that is going to reduce hormonal acne. The second thing you can do is prioritize sleep, especially in your luteal phase. But really, your entire cycle, you need to prioritize sleep because when you don't sleep well, your cortisol levels immediately rise. And this creates inflammation, it increases oil production, and it just, you know, exacerbates this cycle that's going to lead to inefficient ovulation, and it's just going to continue to drive your progesterone levels down. We can't have that. We need to encourage your body to ovulate optimally. This is this is, you know, the key to everything is optimal ovulation. The third thing, support daily bowel movements. No matter what, I want you to have a bowel movement every single day because this way we are eliminating excess estrogen. And this is part of the formula to you know reduce the ratio, reduce the difference between estrogen and progesterone. We don't want to have high estrogen levels and low progesterone levels. That equals PMS acne. We want to reduce estrogen levels to a very normal, nice level, and then we want to boost progesterone. Again, the only way to do this properly is by ovulating optimally. All right, and we have to have daily bowel movements in order to do that. All right, and then the next one is to reduce inflammatory triggers. So when you have hormonal acne, your body is inflamed. And in the first thing that we can do to start reducing inflammation in the body is to cut out inflammatory triggers. Doing this via diet is the easiest way to do it. Getting rid of inflammatory foods right away, that's sugar, that's dairy, that's gluten. Cut those three three foods out for a period of time, you will notice a dramatic decrease in your inflammation. When that happens, your body starts to recalibrate. You're going to give your body an ability to start to ovulate optimally. I mean, that's there's more to it than that, but that's the first step. That is absolutely the first step. And when we reduce this inflammation, that's when we're able to really start the healing process. It's like if there's a huge fire raise raging somewhere and we're continually adding fuel to the fire, it's impossible to put the fire out. And that's what we want to do when acne is present. We want to put the fire out. So we don't want to feed the fire. We want to starve the fire. We want to give the fire things that are going to put it out. And that's a whole foods diet. Um, and then the last thing is we want to low lower stress reactivity. And I know I just gave you a huge spiel about if your progesterone is low, you're gonna naturally feel more stressed. And that's true. You're gonna have a higher stress level, but we still need to support how you react to stress. You still need to have tools in your toolbox so that when you're confronted with a stressful situation, you're able to manage yourself and not get caught up in a vortex of stress and anxiety and overwhelm. And I can say this because I've been caught up in that vortex more times than I would like to admit, and probably even more recently than I would like to admit. But, you know, we're all on this journey. We're on this journey together. One of my biggest tips is to get into a state of flow two times a day. And this is a fun thing. This is something that you should look forward to, not another to-do on your list of things that you have to accomplish for the day. Getting into flow is doing something that you love. 20 minutes two times a day, and you love it so much that you lose time. You feel like you've been doing the activity for 10 minutes when really 30 minutes has gone by. That's what I'm looking for. And it's going to be different for everybody. Maybe it's playing with a pet, maybe it's going for a walk, maybe it's coloring with your kids, maybe it's making a delicious meal, maybe it's dancing in your living room, maybe it's having a conversation with somebody you really love. So these are the things that that get you into the state of flow. And this is the first step to really managing stress because this allows your nervous system to transition from a state of survival into a state of relaxation. And it's a fun way to do it. It's a feel-good way to do it. So, you know, doing something like that is a really, you know, it's a really great way to start, you know, managing your stress and healing your nervous system. So these are the steps that help lower the volume of hormonal acne. They do not fix the wiring. This is not going to solve hormonal acne forever unless your hormonal acne is quite mild. And then these are this could be all the tips you need, and you could be fine. But, you know, in my experience, I've been doing this for 20 years now. Most women that have had hormonal acne for any period of time, there's something deeper going on below the surface. And, you know, this is one of the reasons why I love healing the skin, because the skin is a mirror to what's going on in the body. The skin is our longevity organ. It tells us exactly what's going on. So when there's something going on with the skin, it's not about the skin. It's about deeper things that are happening. And this is why I love the skin so much. And this is why when we heal the skin, we're basically healing everything else in the body because we cannot heal the skin without addressing internal imbalances. And this is just so, this is so cool. That's why the skin, in my humble opinion, is the coolest organ in the body. So, how are we going to, how are we going to really heal your hormonal acne? How are we going to understand what's going on in your body to create the inflammation, to create the insulin dysregulation, to prevent your body from ovulating optimally? What's going on? And, you know, we need to understand what's causing the insulin dysregulation, the androgen sensitivity, and it usually comes down to things like infections, mold exposure, elevated oxidative stress due to these genetic polymorphisms, nervous system dysregulation. We need to understand deeply what's going on so that we can heal your body at its very root. And that's why guessing, guessing doesn't work. You know, sometimes you might get lucky for sure. But for most of the women that I work with, they've been doing this far too long to want to guess anymore. They like, oh my God, I've tried the diet, it helped, it did not solve everything. I've tried a million different supplements, helped, did not solve. I've tried the skincare, I've been on the medications, and when I came off the medications, my acne came back worse. Like, what is going on? They just want to solve their issues. And that's why in my practice, in my one-on-one clear skin program, I'm so passionate about testing. And it's because I want to understand what's going on in your organ systems. The gut is an essential place to look. I always do a GI mapping test. Um, an organic acid test. This gives me insight into so many different organ systems and what's going on at a cellular level, which is important. And I've also been doing, you know, oxidative stress testing lately as well. And this is cool because it gives me a look at, you know, different genetic polymorphisms that are usually, you know, leading us to experience higher levels of oxidative stress than people that don't have skin issues. And I'm finding that that's at the root, root, root is this oxidative stress picture that just, you know, throws everything else out of balance and also poor detoxification, which is related to the oxidative stress piece. But these are the things that we need to know, and we can only find them out through testing. So that's what we do in my one-on-one clear skin program. This is a program for people that are ready to just figure out what's going on with their acne and solve it for good. And then I also have my seven-week clear skin program. This is for the woman that really has mild to moderate acne, has not been dealing with it that long, needs a really effective step-by-step strategy to clear her acne. This is a program. It is simple, it's effective, it has a 90% success rate. And, you know, this is a program I really truly believe every single woman should go through to optimize her health. Because you will never feel worse doing this program. You will only feel better. Your skin will only start to glow. This is like the foundational beauty program out there. And for those women that have been dealing with acne for a longer period of time, the one-on-one clear skin program is the investment program. It's where we do the testing, it's where we figure out the patterns of health that are disrupting your skin, disrupting your ovulation, causing your hormonal acne. And the really cool thing is once we understand these patterns and you learn how to heal your body, you are basically set for life. You know, you know, where your body, where the weak parts are in your body, you know what parts of your body you need to support. Once you understand that, your body can be healed and you can experience decades and decades and decades of hormonal balance, optimal health, optimal beauty, and optimal energy. And that's what this is about. And that's why I love the skin so much, because when you heal the skin, you heal everything. When you heal your hormonal acne, you heal everything. But you have to do the healing right. You have to do the healing at the right level. And that's what I'm so passionate about. So hopefully this podcast has given you an aha moment. It's given you some insight into how you need to heal when your skin is raging. And, you know, I I did this podcast specifically to talk about hormonal acne. But, you know, it's really any skin condition. You know, if even if it's acne that you're experiencing all the time, you know, it's not cyclical, it's every single damn day. You know, if it's eczema, if it's psoriasis, if it's hives, if it's, you know, rosacea, whatever your skin is experiencing, it's a window and it's telling us there's something deep that's going on that needs to be investigated and healed. So I'm gonna leave you on that note. I hope that there's Been some inspiration here that there's been an aha moment for you because I just I can't help but be passionate about this. So if you're interested in learning more about working with me and my team, go to the show notes. There's a link there to book a call if you have any questions about the program at all. If the seven-week clear skin program sounds intriguing to you, there's a link to sign up for that. And in fact, if this podcast has, you know, benefited you, if it's given you an aha moment and you are ready to leave a review. If you leave a positive review, you will get the first module of the seven-week clear skin program for free. If you want to know how to do that, check out the show notes. The directions are there. But, anyways, have a beautiful, beautiful day. Thank you so much for joining me on this podcast. I'm sending you so I will see you in the next podcast. Have a beautiful day.