Menopause has some very interesting symptoms. Women can experience
insomnia, hot flashes, extreme night sweats, irritability, anxiety,
headaches, achy joints, mood swings, trouble concentrating, and even
acne. Some women never experience the last one, but for at least ten
percent of all menopause patients, pimples and blemishes are a real
problem. Some women haven't had a zit since their teen years, and
suddenly their faces are full of them. The truth is, though, those
teens and the women going through menopause have a number of things in
common. Acne is typically caused by hormone swings, which occurs on an
extensive basis during both puberty and menopause. It is hard for most
women to regress back to their teen years of worrying about a pimple in
the mirror when they're struggling to deal with all of the other
symptoms of menopause.
Acne during menopause occurs for much the
same reason that acne occurs during any other portion of life. The skin
has a number of sebaceous glands. These glands produce skin oil,
scientifically known as sebum. Skin cells are consistently regenerated.
Old ones die, and they are quickly replaced with new ones. When the
body's hormones rage, hormones that include estrogen, progesterone,
testosterone, and DHEA, the sebaceous glands become sensitive and
started producing more sebum than they need to. More skin cells begin
to die. As a result, not only do you have more facial oil than you
need, you also have more dead skin cells than you need. Your body
cannot keep up, and it cannot get rid of the unwanted materials fast
enough. The hair follicles on the face get clogged with the oil and the
dead cells. The sebum production increases again, and your teenage acne
flairs up anew.
Those terrible white heads occur because all skin
has bacteria that live off of the sebum. Then the sebum builds up under
the skin, as occurs with too much sebum production, the bacteria and
the oil combine. An inflamed area builds up with white puss underneath.
Blackheads also occur when the bacteria and oil combine under the skin,
but with a blackhead, air leaks in. As a result, the material that is
caught in the pore turns black. Menopause acne isn't entirely like all
other acne, though. Both the sebaceous glands and the hair follicles on
the face contain an enzyme. This particular enzyme is able to turn
estrogen into androgen testosterone. This can cause more oil production
than all other sources combine. This means more breakouts than you
probably had in your teen years.
The acne you experience during
menopause can be overly frustrating. You, however, do have some ways to
try to clear it up. Your first step is to examine your diet. You need
to be eating foods that are high in calcium and fiber. Also, be sure
you cut back on your fat and the carbohydrates you eat. Carbohydrates
can take your body's insulin and turn it into androgens. As we talked
about before, androgen can increase the sebum production in the skin.
One other change you might want to make in your diet is to be sure that
you are drinking eight to ten glasses of water each day.
In
addition to making some dietary changes, you might want to consider
adding some supplements to your life. There are so many vitamins,
herbs, and minerals widely available that can help you get rid of the
oil production in your body. Most studies suggest that you should add
Vitamin B and Vitamin C to your diet. Your diet and supplement things
aren't the only things you should consider, though, you should also
clean your skin at least twice each day. You should exfoliate on a
regular basis, as this can help get rid of those dead skin cells. Also,
be sure to use a toner to close up those open pores that are so famous
for collecting the things that create acne.
Jonathan Gracey is CEO of a new web portal called http://www.canyoutellme.com
which is focused on providing information to researchers about a
variety of topics, not here-to-fore available on the major search
engines.
