Isn’t it frustrating when your skin breaks out before your periods? Sometimes, like clockwork.
Working with women with hormonal acne, a common hormonal imbalance I see that worsens skin breakouts during this time is LOW PROGESTERONE.
In this blog, I talk about the benefits of Progesterone and how it’s one of my favourite hormones for calm, clear, and happy skin.
Benefits of Progesterone
- Calms the skin by reducing androgens by inhibiting the enzyme 5-alpha reductase. The result is faster-growing hair, less skin oil, and fewer skin breakouts.
- It also acts as a natural antidepressant, enhancing mood and relieving anxiety. It has a calming effect on the brain. It stimulates the brain’s GABA receptors, the feel-good, calming neurotransmitters which help with maintaining sleep.
Causes of Low Progesterone
- Anovulation – cycles where you don’t ovulate. You may still have a period or you may lose your period. Progesterone is released when you ovulate.
- Low quality ovulation – the corpus luteum which normally produces progesterone is not healthy enough so it doesn’t produce enough.
- Irregular ovulation – where you ovulate some cycles and some don’t.
What causes this?
- Ongoing or excess stress that your body doesn’t feel safe to ovulate
- Inflammation
- Obesity
- Over-exercise
- Being underweight
- Perimenopause
- Thyroid problems
- PCOS
- Mitochondria problems (energy production)
Synthetic progesterone found in the mini-pill or hormone coil is NOT the same as natural progesterone.
Synthetic Progesterone: Progestin or Levornorgestrel
It can trigger or worsen breakouts because they are androgenic, stimulating androgen release, causing increase production of sebum, resulting in oilier skin, clogged pores and increase breakouts.
