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
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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