Tag: DHT

Acne treatment therapies focus upon two aspects of acne: its prevention and management, and the removal of its more lasting effects.

Looking at the latter first, acne scars can be unsightly, and there are several methods currently used either to remove them or to hide them. Some of the more radical are surgical, while others involve modifications the surface of the skin by means of techniques akin to sandpapering, and also cosmetic techniques.

However, such therapies are needed only if the condition is permitted to have a significant effect on your skin. There are therapies that can be used to mitigate the condition if not remove it altogether. Before discussing these it will be necessary to consider what causes acne, because without that knowledge there can be no effective treatment.

Acne is cause by blockage of the sebaceous pores in the skin. That blockage is generally caused by a mixture of dead skin cells and skin oil, otherwise known as sebum. Why should this occur with acne sufferers and nobody else, when all of us have the ingredients of acne as normal components of our skin? The answer lies in our hormones.

The reason that acne is most prevalent in teenagers is that the generation of sebum is promoted by our hormones: specifically the male hormones known as androgens that both males and females begin to create in quantity during puberty. These cause the sebaceous pores to enlarge, and sebum to be produced in larger than normal quantities.

The hormones also tend to disrupt the usual desquamation rate, or shedding of dead skin cells. What happens is that the skin cells within the pores begin to shed in clumps, rather than singly, and when mixed with the excess skin oil form a plug that clogs up the pores. This plug of oils and skin cells then gets contaminated with bacteria that in time initiate the immune reaction, resulting in pus being formed through the action of macrophages on the bacteria.

The therapy needed to reduce the incidence of acne, then, can be either proactive or retroactive. Proactively, they can reduce the production of the sebum/skin cell plug. Gamma linolenic acid (GLA) as found in Omega-6 oil can block androgen receptors and so decrease the amount of dihydrotestosterone (DHT) produced. The less the amount of DHT, then the less will be the severity of your acne.

Evening primrose oil contains large quantities of GLA, and even applying this topically on your skin will dilute the sebum and reduce the likelihood of sebum and skin cells blocking your pores. This is an extreme simplification of what GLA does, but it does accurately represent the end result of its use. There are also medications you can take to reduce the rate of shedding of your skin cells, so that your pores have less chance of being blocked.

Retroactively, you can apply antibiotics to kill off the bacterial that act on the plug and that initiate the immune response responsible for the lesions. You can also give your skin a good wash with an effective skin cleanser, including a mild antibiotic to enhance the cleansing of the bacterial plug. However, there are alternative treatments, such as the proactive diet control, and the use of vitamins and appropriate herbs to control or even prevent the condition.

When you think of diet, don’t think chocolate. Acne is not caused by eating too much chocolate, or even by fatty foods. We have already discussed the causes of acne, and if we can find any components in our diet that can create these conditions, then by eliminating them we should be able to avoid the condition. As a corollary, if we can identify any substances that could prevent androgens from creating excess sebum, or even control the androgens themselves, or that could help the skin cells to shed more evenly, then we could include these in our diet.

In fact such substances do exist. By going deep into the science, we will find that the secretion of testosterone is promoted by a hormone known as IGF-1 and also by insulin. IGF-1 stands for Insulin-like Growth Factor 1, and is important in the growth of children. It also promotes acne! Insulin does the same, and what that infers that anything in the diet that promotes the production of insulin will also promote acne.

What promotes insulin? Sugars and carbohydrates! Therefore, if you eat a diet low in sugars and carbs then you should have less production of sebum, and hence less acne. What this is leading to is that if you have a tendency to get acne; then switch your diet from carbohydrates and sugary foods to vegetables, grains and seafood. The Japanese get very little acne, which supports this theory.

You should also take foods rich in zinc, since a zinc deficiency has been found to lead to acne. Nobody knows why yet, but use the information and either take a zinc supplement or eat zinc rich foods such as shellfish. Strangely, it is a deficiency of zinc that causes an increase in testosterone, not the surplus of zinc provided by eating oysters! These have another effect.

There are also herbal treatments that can be effectively used for acne. Most are topical, and tea tree oil is one the more recent such treatments used to treat acne. Among the chemical constituents of tea tree oil is terpinen-4-ol, with powerful antimicrobial properties. Little wonder then that it is effective in preventing the bacterial infection of the sebaceous gland pores. The oil helps to dry out the skin, again creating conditions alien to bacteria.

You could use tea tree oil by itself, though many people simply mix it with the acne creams they are currently using. That makes them much more effective. Another option goes back to the zinc again, but rather than take it as a supplement, use it topically. Chamomile and lavender are useful in calming skin that has been inflamed both by over-zealous use of skin scrubs and also the immune system’s inflammatory response to the infection of the pores.

There are many healthy options to the severe pharmaceutical treatments offered by your physician. These can be used in place of, but preferably as supplements to, the treatment recommended by your doctor. Each of the natural treatments has a sound scientific basis, and if you suffer from acne can be well worth trying.

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology in 2005, there is a connection between milk and severe acne.

Does milk cause acne? For decades scientists have searched for the causes of acne. A study has identified one of the key triggers: milk. Researchers claim to have found a correlation between milk intake and the incidence of acne. Teenagers who drink a pint or more of milk a day are almost 50 per cent more likely to develop spots and pimples than those who rarely or never drink milk.

This supports the results of previous studies, researchers began by asking people to recall what they ate. One such study asked 47,355 women to remember what they ate in high school 9 years prior. Another study asked teenage boys to recall what they ate and to determine the severity of their acne. After analyzing the foods eaten, researchers concluded that girls that consumed three or more servings of milk each day were 22% more likely to suffer from severe acne.

Studies investigating a link between acne and milk have not given clear results. At the moment the research does not support a strong link between acne and milk. This study also found that People who regularly drank skimmed milk, with two half-pint glasses a day raising the risk develop acne by 44 per cent. Those who drank a pint of whole milk a day were 12 per cent more likely to develop acne, while semi-skimmed milk increased the risk by 16 per cent. Overall, those who regularly drank milk were 22 per cent more likely to have suffered from acne than those who rarely or never drank the white stuff.

These studies had limitations. Trying to accurately recall what you ate years ago or even days ago can be difficult, so the collected data cannot be considered entirely reliable. So why drinking milk can cause acne? Some think its the hormones found in milk. Milk contains progesterone and other hormones that are known precursors to DHT, the primary acne-producing hormone in humans.

Cow milk also contains Iodine, the amount of hormones gets increased when farmers inject their cows with more hormones. This is done to increase the productivity of milk by a given cow. These injections increase the amount of IGF – 1 present in milk. It must be noted that it is IGF -1 that woks along with testosterone and DHT to cause acne.

But Skim milk was associated with higher IGF-1 levels than whole milk. The processing of skim milk may explain why it is linked to acne severity more often than whole milk. Whey proteins are added to give skim milk a creamier consistency. Some speculate that these proteins impact acne development.

So, does this imply that you should stop drinking milk altogether to get rid of acne? Not really. Try to opt for a no milk and no dairy diet for about a week. If you experience improvement in your acne condition, you might as well give up milk. However, if your acne does not improve you can continue drinking milk and not deprive yourself of the essential nutrients present in it.

Recent studies have shown that acne affects around 85 percent of the population. It may manifest itself during puberty, but that doesn’t keep it from attacking men in women during their adulthood.

Hormonal acne is considered one of the most common types of acne. This type of acne is caused when hormonal levels fluctuate, especially during a woman’s menstrual cycle.

In most women, hormonal acne appears because women’s estrogen levels are high at mid-cycle. The high levels of hormones stimulate the sebaceous glands, causing extra sebum and, consequently, acne breakouts.

Pregnancy is also a time in which hormonal fluctuations can lead to acne breakouts. During the third trimester of pregnancy a woman’s body will go through hormonal fluctuations as her levels of testosterone increase and her levels of estrogen decrease. This hormonal rollercoaster can lead to acne breakouts.

This type of acne usually presents itself on the face but can also appear on the chest and back. Hormonal acne is usually mild and not prone to leaving behind acne scars. More than likely it will only produce papules, small nodules, and comedones.

Because hormonal acne is caused by internal factors, the best acne treatment isn’t necessarily an acne cream. There’s no doubt that these products can treat the symptoms, however, if you want to treat the root cause of acne, you’ll need something for effective. This why I want to talk to you about DHT inhibitors.

DHT stands for dihydrotestosterone, which is an androgen that derives from testosterone. This steroid hormone has been used to suppress tumors in cancer victims, but also plays an important role in preventing male pattern baldness.

But what does that have to do with acne? DHT is known to stimulate the production of sebum which can lead to clogged pores. For this reason, it plays an important role in the development of acne.

To counteract these effects, it is important to neutralize the DHT in your system. As a matter of fact, there are several dermatologist treatments that include DHT inhibitors to help control hormonal acne.

Medications including finastride and dutasteride are used to treat problems stemming from DHT. The problem with these medications is that they are mostly created to treat male pattern baldness and other types of alopecia, but not acne problems. So before deciding that you can treat your acne with any one of these medications, consult your doctor. The long term effects are still unknown.

While the hormonal therapy takes effect, it is a good idea to rely on natural skin care products to address any active acne. Natural skin care products are safe and can be effectively used on any skin type without causing negative side-effects.