What Acne Says About your Gut Health

We may associate acne most with a pubescent teenager with a face pocked with whiteheads and red spots, but acne that persists into adulthood is common, and highly associated with your gut health. If your gut-skin axis is thrown off balance, you’ll often see a few deep, long-lasting blemishes around your mouth or on your chin or cheeks that no amount of face-washing or products can prevent. Read on to discover why. 

Acne May be Caused by Leaky Gut

The standard Western diet is high in grains, dairy and processed foods, which can damage your digestive system and lead to food intolerances, nutrient deficiencies and the breakdown of the connections between your intestinal cells. This allows food particles, microorganisms and other substances in your intestines to get through your intestinal lining and into your body (Suzuki, 2020). Your immune system senses these invaders and releases inflammatory chemicals meant to defend against them, but at the same time further damages your delicate layer of intestinal cells, making leaky gut worse. Over time, the excess burden that these invading substances put on your body, plus the increased circulating inflammatory chemicals and decreased nutrient absorption through your damaged intestines, can lead to acne in several ways (Mahmud et al., 2022).

Acne is Seen with Nutrient Deficiencies

Low vitamin A is associated with a key step in acne formation: cells within the pore producing too much keratin. If you have bumps on the back of your arms, this is most likely from keratin buildup due to low vitamin A. Vitamin A is one of the fat-soluble vitamins, which are absorbed from the intestines through a relatively complex process that is easily inhibited by poor gut health. Zinc is needed to help transport the retinol from vitamin A through the bloodstream. So even if you have adequate vitamin A, you may still get acne if you don’t have enough zinc to transport it to your skin. Diets high in refined carbohydrates deplete zinc. Vitamin E, another fat-soluble vitamin, also helps maintain adequate vitamin A, and it along with selenium are important antioxidants that help reduce inflammation seen in acne (Murray & Pizzorno, 2012).

Acne is Tied to Gut Inflammation

The inflammatory chemicals produced from leaky gut get into your bloodstream, making their way to your skin and exacerbating inflammation there. The inside of your intestines is actually considered to be outside of the body, so the cells lining your intestines and those of your skin are the same type of cells, called epithelial cells. What affects the intestines is likely to affect the skin. Research shows that the skin of those who suffer from acne, even when they don’t have an active pimple, has higher levels of inflammatory cells and chemicals than those who don’t have acne. In acne sufferers, the skin is always slightly inflamed, and these inflammatory chemicals play a role in developing a pimple (Kircik, 2016). 

Acne May be Triggered When Gut Issues Throw off Your Hormones

Substances leaking from your intestines flow into your portal vein, which drains into your liver. This toxic burden overwhelms your liver’s capacity to efficiently filter out waste products from your bloodstream, including hormones like estrogen that may trigger acne (Zaman, et al., 2022). The inflammation caused by a leaky gut also causes your body to increase cortisol levels, as cortisol is a strong anti-inflammatory. High cortisol reduces your progesterone, the hormone that balances the effects of estrogen. With lowered progesterone, your estrogen becomes too powerful, a condition called estrogen dominance, which can lead to acne, mood changes, irregular menstruation and PMS, among other symptoms (Plechner, 2004). 

If you have stubborn acne, addressing your gut health is a good idea. Alimental’s Restoring the Gut-Skin Axis: 6 Steps to Better Skin Health program walks you through how to improve your gut health and alleviate skin symptoms like acne, eczema and rosacea. Check it out here.

References

Kircik L. H. (2016). Advances in the understanding of the pathogenesis of

inflammatory acne. Journal of Drugs in Dermatology : JDD, 15(1 Suppl 1), s7–s10.

Mahmud, M. R., Akter, S., Tamanna, S. K., Mazumder, L., Esti, I. Z., Banerjee,

S., Akter, S., Hasan, M. R., Acharjee, M., Hossain, M. S., & Pirttilä, A. M. (2022). Impact of gut microbiome on skin health: Gut-skin axis observed through the lenses of therapeutics and skin diseases. Gut Microbes, 14(1), 2096995. https://doi.org/10.1080/19490976.2022.2096995

Plechner A. J. (2004). Cortisol abnormality as a cause of elevated estrogen

and immune destabilization: Insights for human medicine from a veterinary perspective. Medical Hypotheses, 62(4), 575–581. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2003.12.005

Suzuki T. (2020). Regulation of the intestinal barrier by nutrients: The role

of tight junctions. Animal Science Journal = Nihon Chikusan Gakkaiho, 91(1), e13357. https://doi.org/10.1111/asj.13357

Zaman, C. F., Sultana, J., Dey, P., Dutta, J., Mustarin, S., Tamanna, N., Roy, A.,

Bhowmick, N., Khanam, M., Sultana, S., Chowdhury, S., Khanam, F., Sakibuzzaman, M., & Dutta, P. (2022). A multidisciplinary approach and current perspective of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease: A systematic review. Cureus, 14(9), e29657. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.29657