Acne being caused by an overload of sebum being produced makes perfect sense, but I’ve never understood why this is all caused by hormones. Why do the sebaceous glands freak out due to hormones and androgens when the body isn’t benefiting from, rather being harmed by large amounts of sebum?
In: Biology
Sebum production increase actually does help the body. The increase helps to keep the skin healthy and retain moisture, and has other uses as well. Having low sebum (dry skin) actually causes problems such as irritation and acne also, as well as potential for cracked skin. Acne is just a possible side effect from the increase in sebum and androgens, and often has other factors, such as what cleansers are being used, what type of acne it is, genetics, environment, exercising, etc. Sebum is regulated by your androgens. They are called the male hormones (but females have them as well, in smaller numbers). When androgens increase, sebum increases, that’s just how it goes. Hormones are regulated by the pituitary gland. When you hit puberty, your hormones increase and change levels frequently. This is natural as your body is adjusting. This hormonal imbalance causes your sebum levels to change as well. If the body is producing a large amount of testosterone, your sebum will increase and your chances for acne will increase. This is in puberty though, when your hormones are at much different levels then when you become an adult. As an adult, your hormones and as such sebum production should begin to balance out. As such, your skin should only produce its normal amount, and not change as often as puberty. Increases in testosterone at any age can increase sebum production, though. As you get older, your body will produce less androgens and less sebum will be produced. This results in dry and damaged skin, this shows that sebum production is important, it’s just acne takes advantage of the times when oil production is high. Think of how when people get older, the skin begins to seem more damaged. But acne can happen anytime really, just keep to a good skin care routine! Interestingly, progesterone might cause skin problems at higher levels also, despite not being an androgen. Balancing the levels of progesterone might help as well
I’m sure others can explain it better but think of it like alergies. Allergies are your body having a strong immune response to something non threatening. Your body missidentifies for example peanuts as a threat. But the immune response is an integral part of your body.
Same with hormonal imbalances. Different parts of your body regulate or react to hormones as a normal part of your healthy functioning body. But they arn’t equipped to read handle sudden or extrem fluctuations of hormones thus they ‘do their job’ but this time it’s completely overboard. Kind of like someone cooking and the recepy has a typo saying ‘leave in the oven 20 hours’ and he just does what he is told even if this is clearly a terrible idea simply because they learned to always trust the recepie 😅
So the function is not useless. the functiuion is very important. It’s just the handling of extreme circumstances that’s not optimal.
It depends where the acne shows up. If you get it along the jaw line it could be a lymphatic/detoxification issue, if it shows up in the T-zone you are dealing with hormones etc. No matter how you slice it, it is going to involve your body pushing toxins outward. A good solution which should clear up acne in days is 15-50 my Zinc Picolate, 19-20,000 iu Vitamin A, 2 mg Copper.
The other posters have explained it well, but one other thing to keep in mind when considering why this happens is that evolution doesn’t optimize a species’ development across all dimensions and doesn’t operate on the subjective well-being of the organism; it operates on mutations and variations within individual species that increase survival rates of offspring (really genes) overall. There are a ton of features of the human body that are far from ideal and that no bio-engineer would ever design that way from scratch; they’re byproducts of the trajectory that species has evolved into over time. As noted sebum production is very beneficial to the skin in moderation, and humans evolved to go through a hormonal transition around 12/13 years of age or so which ultimately increased the survivability of the species as a whole. The fact that puberty brings with it very awkward and uncomfortable physical changes including acne is just a byproduct of that.
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