Episode 116: Is Your Acne Hormonal - or Is Something Else Driving It? Part 2

Um, but today we thought we'd get back into part two of our acne series.

Mm.

Now, as you guys know, at the moment our Wellness Hub theme of the month is acne.

Something we treat in clinic all the time, and we have so many patients that come in with acne, and it is very, like, multifaceted.

And obviously today's part two is on, um, how it's not just your hormones driving your acne or- Mm.

Absolutely.

So I guess to recap from our part one, so if you haven't listened to it make sure you do, but we really explored how acne is more a chronic inflammatory condition- Mm-hmm ... and it's more of a sign of what is going on inside the body, and this is our role to investigate that.

So hormones are one element absolutely, but not for everyone.

Or even if it is hormonal driven, there are many im- factors that impact our hormones like our diet, like our stress response, obviously that, cortisol is a hormone, um, and our gut microbiome- Yeah ... as well.

So that's what we really kind of started to explore a bit last episode.

But to recap on that, oxidative stress is a really big element.

So we discussed factors like alcohol or vaping, smoking, obvious things that can kind of impact- Mm ... that oxidative stress.

But dietary factors can when we're looking into how well your liver is- Mm-hmm ... working in that phase one and phase two.

There's a lot of factors that can, I guess, more increase oxidative stress.

Mm.

We really need to look into that antioxidant status.

Dysbiosis within the gut is a massive one.

Yeah, big.

Um, and not only...

So dysbiosis essentially is just that imbalance with bacteria in the gut microbiome, but that can manifest and impact wider areas like your intestinal permeability, so leaky gut, and how this actually can really create a more systemic inflammatory picture.

Mm-hmm.

So this is a big, big w- big [laughs] one that we see in the clinic, and what we look through with stool testing.

Um, but also emotional stress.

We briefly touched on this last week, and Kirst will go through that a little bit more today, but it's just showing really how cortisol has that influence in the body.

Mm-hmm.