Unwritten Beauty Talks

Your Ultimate Guide to Treating Hormonal Acne

• Katarina Forster • Season 2 • Episode 19

Share episode

Welcome back to Unwritten Beauty Talks, where we go beyond the surface and into the heart of what makes you feel radiant in your skin. In today’s episode, your host Katarina dives into one of the most frustrating and misunderstood skin concerns she sees constantly in the treatment room: hormonal acne.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • How your skin is a detox organ — and what it’s really trying to tell you
  • The role of your gut health, probiotics, and digestion in clearing acne
  • Why you should start your day with water, not caffeine
  • Cortisol, sleep, stress & their direct link to hormonal breakouts
  • Evening wind-down routines to balance your hormones (hint: red light therapy is a game-changer)
  • Why tools like the LumeBox and Shark Beauty LED mask are worth the hype
  • Product recommendations and a breakdown of what actually works for hormonal acne
  • The skincare myths that might be making your acne worse (cough hydrating cleanser only routines)
  • Why “perfect skin” isn’t the goal — but healthy, supported skin is

Katarina’s Holy Grail Products + Tools:

Tools + Lifestyle Shoutouts:

  • Tongue scraping, red light filters, cortisol regulation, and clean oral hygiene
  • Herbal teas (ginger, turmeric, peppermint, spearmint — loose-leaf only!)
  • Morning fruit and protein-rich breakfast ideas
  • Movement + lymphatic support to start your day
  • Adaptogenic coffees and mushroom alternatives
  • Why cutting out everything isn’t always the answer

A few favorite quotes:

“Your skin is just the messenger — not the problem.”“Don’t punish your skin with harsh actives. Support it.”“You’re not on a 24-hour clock, babe. You’re on a 28-day cycle. Act accordingly.”

Let’s Connect:

Have questions or want help personalizing your skin journey?

Katarina offers virtual skincare consultations — just mention you’re a podcast listener for an exclusive discount.

If this episode spoke to you…

Share it with a friend, tag us in your stories, or leave a quick review to keep these conversations going.

Because fuck hormonal acne — and we’re not doing this alone anymore.

Connect with Me:
Katarina's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/your.master.aesthetician/

Podcast Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/unwrittenbeautytalks/

Katarina's Website: Code UNWRITTEN for 10% off https://www.yourhonestglow.com/

Interested in being a guest? Email:
honestglow.master.esthetician@gmail.com

Welcome to Unwritten Beauty Talks, your unfiltered beauty resource, where we talk about all things beauty related and aging well from the inside out. I'm your host, Katina, master esthetician, and integrative health practitioner. Thanks for joining us. Hey, loves welcome back to Unwritten Beauty Talks, where we go beyond the surface and dive into real conversations behind beauty, wellness, and just feeling good in your skin. I'm your host, Katina, and today we are diving into something many of us struggle with, and I see a lot of my clients struggle with in the treatment room hormonal. Acne. If you've ever felt like your breakouts are on schedule of your own routine, usually syncing up with your cycle, your stress levels, or even your sleep, then babe, this episode is your safe. Space, let's be honest. Dealing with hormonal acne can be frustrating. You can feel like you're doing all the right things, but those painful, deep pimples just keep showing up. Chin, jawline, cheeks, and even your back or chest. It's not just breakouts, it's also then the hyperpigmentation, the post-inflammatory erythema. The inflammation and then the mental toll of constantly trying to cover them up or heal them. But here's the truth. Hormonal acne isn't just a skin issue. It's a whole body signal, and it's treating. And it's more about than just adding in a good cleanser or a fancy serum, though I love those two. It's really about working on your body from the inside out, not against it. And that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today with some skincare golden nuggets in there as well. At the end of the day, I want to remind you that your skin is a detox organ, so it's going to show what is going on the inside and literally. Push it out through our skin. At the end of the day, our skin does not actually care about what's going on. It's really just a messenger there to tell us, Hey, this is what's going on with our internal organs. How can you help me? I'm inflamed, I'm angry. These are the things that are happening. So let's start with one of the most underrated pieces of the puzzle, which I feel like now we're finally started talking about more and more about, but it still isn't focused on enough. Your gut. Now, this is not the podcast where I'm gonna tell you to eliminate dairy. I'm gonna tell you eliminate alcohol, sugars, all the things, because first off. That's not true for everyone. We all have different inflammatory markers. We're all different. We all have different digestive enzymes. So my goal is to give you as much advice as possible that you could use and implement in your every day. Life. So your gut health played a major role in hormonal balance, inflammation, and how your skin behaves. If your gut is out of whack, it can lead to systemic inflammation and shows up on your face as redness, inflammation, acne, sensitivity, all the things we don't want. This is why I personally take. A probiotic. I feel like that makes a big difference for me. This one really helps with my gut. It really helps with my digestive health and my immune system. You'll be shocked at how much clearer your skin can be. When your gut is happy. Of course, fine. A probiotic that's best for you. I know I've talked about on the podcast before, but I personally love seed. It's my favorite. A lot of my clients are on it because it just works. Just thrive is another good one as well. I, again, will link everything in the show notes for you guys. I also swear by turmeric and ginger. You can do turmeric tea, you can do ginger tea. You can take it as a supplement. Of course, anything I recommend, please discuss with your physician before you just, add things in. Always make sure that you are safe and that this is okay for you. But turmeric and ginger are so special because they help support. Inflammation. They help support liver detoxification, and they also help calm your body from the inside out. So if you're dealing with red angry breakouts, this can be your quiet little superhero that will make a huge difference in your skin experiment. Tea is another one. Now, whenever we're talking about teas and stuff, something that I used to do that I didn't even think about it until a couple years ago, I eliminated it was I no longer do tea bags, so I do loose leaf tea. And the reason why is, if not, you're literally drinking microplastics, like thousands of them every single day. And if you're like me and would have a couple cups of tea a day, I was consuming so many microplastics and I could tell that it was causing me more inflammation, then it was helping me. And at first I thought it was the tea, but it wasn't the tea, it was the tea bags. Something for you to think about and consider is try to do a loose leaf tea. I actually recently just got this electric tea kettle that you can put your loose leaf tea in the middle and it brew it for you at the perfect temperature you can put whether it's white tea, green tea, black tea, and it's. So yummy the way that it bruised your tea. I just, I'm obsessed with it. Now let's talk about the way that we're starting our day. So you are super dehydrated when you wake up. You haven't drank any water. Nothing's free flowing at all. So make sure whenever you wake up, start your day off with a big thing of water. I don't care if it's warm lemon water. I don't care if it's normal water. We don't wanna do cool water'cause we don't wanna shock the body. Everything that you do in the morning, I want you to think you are creating the building blocks for the way your day is going to go with your cortisol. Okay? Everything is about balancing cortisol, so we want to start it off, not with a shock, not with our phone, not with the blue light, none of that. Which if you haven't switched or haven't seen any of my videos, I switched to a red light converter on my phone. It is. Amazing. And I did not realize how much it would make such a difference. It literally converts the blue light to red light. And I can tell a difference in my eyes. I can tell a difference in my stress. And then if I accidentally am like, oh no, did I set my alarm?'cause yes, I do have a hatch alarm clock, which is helpful, but I still feel like I need to set an alarm with my phone. I'm working through that. And with that being said, I can look at my phone and that blue light doesn't bug me as much, which is really nice. So anyway, so I can wake up, I'll put on my calm app. Usually I do a little meditation or a little soothing music. I'll get up or drink my water, brush my teeth. That's a big one. The reason why is your oral health is actually tied to your blood, which is tied to your skin. So the happier we can make our blood and the happier we make our oral health, the better your skin will be. So you wanna brush your teeth as soon as you wake up and tongue scrape. And the reason why is if you don't, the first thing that you eat, basically all those little derms that have been sitting on your teeth all night, you are going to feed them with whatever food you're gonna have, and they're essentially going to release this gas that over time is going to prematurely age and decay your teeth. Don't do that, and then tongue's scrape because we have all this bacteria and everything that's sitting on our tongue, and if not, you're going to consume it and you're just going to cause more inflammation. In your body, which is not worth it. Now, I am not a dentist. I am just sharing with you things with lots and lots of research and through my integrative health practitioner that I have learned, and also things that I have learned to implement as I've done a cleaner lifestyle and reset my body and trying more and more to just. Be more balanced and be more okay with not being perfect every single day and being more about living in the moment and enjoying my health for as long as I can, because I wanna keep it going until I'm like in my late eighties as much as I possibly can. So then in the morning after you consume maybe a piece of fruit, maybe something that's easy to digest, fruit is pretty easy to digest. So I personally with my body, I love to start myself off with something. I'm actually recording this podcast pretty early in the morning. This. Time. So I'm actually going to, I'm drinking my water right now, and then I'm going to have a mango, and then after I consume that mango, then I'm gonna start my coffee. I'm gonna make my yummy adaptogen coffee. I do the strong coffee. It has like mushrooms, all these yummy adaptogens in it, and it's so good. And then I froth a vanilla creamer. Yes, it's a coconut creamer. No, it doesn't have any extra sugars, but it definitely has some. I'm not perfect, I'm just being honest with you. You can, of course, if you don't wanna do like coffee or anything like that, you could do mud water. That one's really good. You could do a mushroom coffee, whatever works best for you. Just don't start your coffee on MD stomach. Please eat something first. And. Make sure that you drink a good amount of water and you will be amazed at how much this will actually help your hormonal acne. It is crazy. And then if you can try to move your body a little bit, especially since you've been sitting, you have this lymph that's just been hanging out. So if you can move around, do a vibration plate, do some gardening, go say hi to your neighbor. I don't care what you do, try to move your body a little bit and then you can eat your breakfast and whatever that entails. This morning I am going to probably make some sourdough croissants and then I'm feeling like maybe we should have some bison sausage. I get mine from force of nature. It is delicious and so good'cause I personally need like a lot of protein as much as possible'cause I do not eat enough during the work week. We're working on these things. I work for corporate. It's not the funnest situation. So yeah, the amount of people I see in a day as much as I love them, tenable people is not my sweet spot anyways. So it's all about creating balance, right? Which is what this podcast is all about. And I know there's the urge to reach for the coffee the moment you open your eyes. But if you're struggling with hormonal acne, I want you to try something. Start your day with water, just six to. Eight. Just eight to 16 ounces of room temperature water before caffeine or your warm water with lemon. It supports your metabolism, your digestion, your adrenal glands, and it gently signals your body that it's time to wake up without spiking your cortisol, which is the key. Because here's the thing, stress and cortisol, they play major roles in hormonal breakouts. When your stress levels rise, your body produces more cortisol, which can throw off your entire hormonal system. This leads to you, you guessed it, having more breakouts, especially around your cycle time. So a lot of people think, oh, you know what I did this week that's affecting my skin and that's what's going to cause my breakouts. No, sweetie, we are women. So if you're a woman, we run on a 28 day, 24, 32. It's around there. I'm just gonna say 28.'cause that's mine. We run on a 28 day cycle. We are not a 24 hour clock. That is a man. We do not do that. So whatever you did that was super stressful in the beginning of your cycle is going to affect your hormonal acne towards the end of your cycle. It is just the way it goes. Is it fair? Absolutely not. Is it okay? Not really. But you knowing that and having the tools in your toolbox to know that. Is going to make a big difference. So then you can try to show up for yourself every single day. I'm not saying to be perfect, but we can try to do the best that we can. So how do we manage all of these things? Let's talk about some evening rituals that you can do that I have found that have really made a difference for me. So your cortisol. You wanna start calming your body down, start calming everything down and try to avoid any blue light. I'll have super bright lights. I dim all the lights in my house and I do that at 8:00 PM And the reason why is that's when you wanna start signaling to your body that it's starting to get ready for rest. I turn on these little salt. Lava lamps. They're pink Himalayan salt. I love them. I have them all over my house. I have the little plugins. I'll turn those on. I also turn on my loom box. I'll even hold that whenever we watch tv. I'll hold it on my thyroid because I have been dealing with some thyroid stuff, but it's getting a lot better, so yay for that. And that really helps. You can also do it on your stomach if you're dealing with some ovulation pain. Or if you are having some period cramps, whatever you need to do. I love the loom box because it's super strong. Super potent. It's red light, it's infrared. I'm not sponsored by them or anything like that. I do have a discount code that I believe takes 260 something dollars off, which is pretty cool and it is portable, so I really do love that light. And I got my husband one and he does it too, which is really cute. And then if we're going to watch tv, watch a show together, we just wear the like. Orange glasses. So instead of wearing blue light glasses, we do the orange once, and it makes such a difference in your sleep at nighttime. I can't even explain it. Try to avoid any alcohol. If you are going to consume alcohol, you need to consume it before 8:00 PM. Yes, I'm being honest with you. The reason why is if not, your body is still digesting all that alcohol, AKA poison, which I'm not judging. Listen, I love me some good wine, especially some good Italian wine, some Dom Peron, okay? I love some champagne, but I'm just being honest with you. These are not good for you. They slow down your metabolism. If you worked out that day, that's what you're hydrating your muscles with. So you're basically halting your results. You're making your body more sore. So if you can try to avoid alcohol as much as possible, especially if you're dealing with hormonal acne. Now, there's only so many things we can give up if that's your thing. I understand. I'm just here to, spread the word, give you some awareness so then you know, hey, if you had some extra breakouts or you didn't sleep well, it was probably due to your alcohol consumption or lack of sleep because of it. Now, back to red light therapy. I personally use the Loom box. It's a staple in my nighttime wind down routine because it reduces inflammation, boosts collagen production, helps support skin's healing, but it also calms my nervous system. Wherever I dim all the lights, I turn on my red light, I maybe sip some of my herbal teas, some ginger, some turmeric, peppermint, spearmint, and I just take a few minutes to breathe. I don't have any phone time or stimulation. I'm just trying to let my skin and my spirit reset, which is so crucial to just try to zen out for a little bit. Just give yourself a couple minutes. I used to come home and reply to all of my clients and. Stay up the whole night and basically reply reply, and I realized I was going to have to change that because if not, my brain was not stopping, and then I was literally dreaming about the text that I was sending, and it just wasn't ideal. You can also consider maybe taking a bath, taking a warm shower. I like to do all of my cooler things in the morning with my skin and then do the warmer things at nighttime. That's my personal preference. You can do whatever you find is best for you, but I find if I'm going to ice my face and do my nice, like cool. Chilling sheet mask and things like that. I love to do those in the morning. Like I love the epic cutest lipid recovery face mask. Oh my gosh, you put that in the fridge. It is delicious. It will make your skin look so good. And then because you had it in the fridge, it's really going to help calm down any inflammation and help with any hormonal breakouts, which is Chef's Kiss. And then at nighttime I'll do my shark. Beauty. I have the LED red light and blue light mask. I really love this. This is a newer fine for me. It has a nice little chilling tip. It cools the skin so you don't have to worry about causing more inflammation. It's nice. And it also has settings to help kill any of the P bacteria that causes acne. So that will really help. And then red light is going to help restore the skin, help with cellular turnover, and help reduce inflammation. Adding in these little tools, if you can, are essential to really help managing hormonal acne. You don't have to have them, but I just want to give you all the little golden nuggets and all the tools in your toolbox, so then you have them. Now if you're breaking out around your period, try prepping your skin the week before with a gentle benzoyl peroxide, a sulfur based treatment. They have Lymed Plus has the, I believe it's called the Astringent. It's like number two number. Five, and that one's really great. That has salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide. Or you can do even sulfur. I love sulfur mass. They have the GLY Plus has the sulfur mattifying mass. That one's a beautiful product. Osmosis has this charcoal spot treatment, which I've really been loving. That one's really nice and just be really consistent with your active products. Don't fall off. I find that so many people, whenever they start to experience hormonal acne, they get rid of. All their actives, but get rid of everything. I'm, I know I'm gonna call a lot of us out here, but here it goes. Usually whenever someone comes to see me and they're fed up with their skin, they're fed up with their hormonal acne, it's always where they're like, yeah, I'm using the CeraVe Hydrating Cleanser, I'm using the Vanny cream, and then I use the La Roche Jose Sunscreen, and I don't understand why I'm breaking out. I'm gonna tell you first off, your hydrating cleanser is doing nothing for you. It's not deep cleansing your skin. It's not removing any sea bum. It's not removing any dead skin cells. It's just hanging. You're just basically smothering your skin with a hydrating lotion. I. And calling it a cleanser. We don't love that vanning cream. I'm gonna get some flack for this, but it's a moisturizer like at the end of the day, a moisturizer is not made to transform your skin. It's made to occlude and hold in all the yummy serums and tonics that we put on our face. And so if you're only doing a moisturizer, as soon as you wash your face, that's coming off. So all you did was create this layer and this barrier, and you have nothing underneath it that's transforming your skin. Blah. Not a fan of that. Then the thoro sunscreen, that's fine. Listen, I am a big believer if you are wearing a sunscreen, I am happy. Please wear a sunscreen. If you are not wearing a sunscreen and you have hormonal acne, please just find a sunscreen that works for you. I don't even care which one, but it's going to be so crucial because your skin is inflamed. And so if not, you're going to cause more inflammation from the sun that's going to be aging you. And then you're also going to have more post-inflammatory erythema. Those are the red marks from your breakouts or post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, which are those dark spots from your breakout. So we don't wanna increase any scar tissue or pigmentation. Wear your sunscreen, find one that works for you. So some little tips and tricks. And this is something that I don't necessarily love doing. I do virtual consultation. So if any of you wanna reach out, just also tell me you're a podcast listener. I'll give you a good discount. And I'd be more than happy to help you with your skincare routine. Obviously, in a perfect world, it would be great if I could see you in person because I love to look and see the skin. Feel the skin if I can, if we're in person, I do a lot of virtual consultations, so I've been able to do it virtually, obviously in person, so Nice.'cause I can extract it and burn it and do whatever I want. I'm just kidding where I say burn it, I mean like a chemical peel. But in a perfect world, these are some of the ingredients I reach for. And I know that they don't work for everybody, just so you have a little something that you can reach for. Because I feel like all these tiktoks and influencers and bloggers will tell you, oh, you should use this. Oh, you should use that. And then US professionals aren't saying anything because we customize and personalize everything so much to each client. That we're not speaking out, and so we need to do this. We need to talk about things. So one of the game changing products that I'm obsessed with is Fulvic Elixir from Glide Men. Plus, if you're one of my clients, you probably already know this, you probably already have an obsession with this. We probably already have two or three backups. And the reason why is Fulvic Elixir, it's antibacterial, antimicrobial, antifungal. It's a higher antioxidant than vitamin C. It helps with redness, inflammation, it helps basically rebuild the skin. I have always loved this product for rosacea, hormonal acne, cystic acne, because it actually helps fight acne and scar tissue without drying it out and healing it. Boom. We have needed a product like that for so long, and Glim Plus did it for$64. I'm just saying that they honestly, with how amazing that product is, they could charge more, but they don't, and I appreciate that. My clients appreciate that. So that one is one. I would say if you could use it twice a day, it's beautiful. Yes. You can use it with retinol. Yes, you can use it with glycolic and lactic acid. Yes, you can use it with basically anything, anyone, because it is fantastic and it is an antioxidant and it's so beautiful, so love, love that product. I had all my physicians and my nurses during Covid on it because it helped them with mask knee. That's how special this product is. Another one is Mandelic acid. If you are too nervous to get into the glycolics, lactic acids, all the things which I wouldn't recommend, just like totally jumping into those. If you are not ready and you don't have a guide, find a skincare specialist to help you because there is a right and a wrong way to do it. Mandelic acid radiant serum from Lyman plus Chef's Kiss. It's 1% is derived from almonds. It's gonna lightly exfoliate the skin, which most people that have hormonal acne have an excessive amount of dead skin cells and sibu production due to stress, inflammation. Lifestyle choices, genetics. There's so many things. PCOS, endometriosis, a pregnancy loss postpartum. Do you know that it actually takes your body two years to get your hormones back to itself? Originally, post baby, post nursing. What that means is if you nursed for six months. Your postpartum journey doesn't start until you stop nursing. So it's going to take you two years to get your hormones back to normal the way it was before a baby. Is that not insane? We are superhero women. I'm just saying that is pretty incredible. But anyways, that radiant serum. Amazing. You can use it Morning and night. Safe for pregnancy. Safe for nursing. Amazing. Rescue Serum from Osmosis is such a underrated product that I am obsessed with. I used it for years, fell off the BA bandwagon because I have too much skincare. I know. Woes me. And I recently got back into it maybe six months ago, and I cannot explain to you how amazing this product did. It has reduced the inflammation. It has strengthened my skin barrier. It has reduced any acne triggers from environmental factors and external factors, and my pore size has 100% shrunk from using this product. I am obsessed and it's hydrating clearing serum from skin better. Now, this does have a little bit of slic acid, 18% lactic acid, tiny bit of a retinol. This is a next level serum. If you are looking for something to really transform the skin, I just love it. It makes such a difference. You can use it every single night. It's a pretty gentle retinol. If you're worried about it, you can do it every other night for a little bit. It can dry you out just a tiny bit, but. That one packs a really big punch. Also, of course, like I said, I love the shark beauty, the LED face mats. It's an incredible at-home tool. You can use the red and blue light. It targets acne causing bacteria and boosts cellular health, which is great. I also love the current body and the omnilux. The shark beauty is just like my newest little thing, and I love it because it's cooling and I love it because it's a red and blue light. Versus the omnilux in the current body are only red light. So if you feel like you only need the red light, just do those. But I love the shark beauty because you have the option for both. So this is how we treat skin internally with formulas, tools, respect or barrier. Reduce inflammation and support long term healing. Let's not forget the inside out part of skincare because food is skincare too. I'm not about harsh eliminations or fear-based full food rules, but I am about being mindful about what nourishes is. Okay, let's redo that. I'm not about harsh elimination or fear-based food rules. I hate when someone's oh, eliminate dairy. Your acne's gonna go away. No, that's not the way this works. We all have different digestive enzymes. We all have different inflammatory markers. Me telling you to eliminate dairy is a rude, disrespectful, and that's not always the case for everybody. And yeah don't listen to anyone that's cis there and is you need to not eat this. And that's what's causing your acne. Be like, did you do a hair scan in, in organic acids chest? Do you see my inflammatory markers? Have you done my blood work? Do you know what's actually causing my acne? No, you don't. Please step aside, don't tell me what to do. That's exactly how I feel. So we want to be mindful about what is nourishing us, like anti-inflammatory. Mega rich foods are always going to be a good one for most people. Okay? Just putting it out there for most people, salmon is amazing for your skin. If you can consume it, please get the wild caught. It's so good for you and truly does make a difference. Don't get the farm raised stuff. It's not good for you. Avocado, chia seeds, walnuts, even though I'm allergic to those. You can do Brazil nuts, which are really good at balancing your thyroid and your cortisol levels, which is great. All of these help regulate your oil production, reduce congestion, and keep your skin resilient and glowy. I call these my internal poor lubricants because they just make everything flow better. Here's a gentle reminder. This is a process. There is no perfect skin. Lord knows I would've found it by now, and this is what I do for a living, and I promise you, I still get hormonal breakouts. I still get congestion because I'm acne prone, and part of that is just my genetic and the way my body chooses to respond to inflammation. But there is real healing when you choose to work on your body and not against it. That might mean choosing water over coffee in the morning, taking a probiotic, saying no to people, or things that spike your stress levels, slowing down with your loom box at nighttime using skincare that supports your healing, not punishing your skin with like using a 1% Tretinoin every single night and wondering why it keeps getting more and more inflamed. This is the new beauty standard. It's not this one thing is going to fix it all, and that's it. Everything starts from within. You deserve to feel good in your skin, and if you're in the middle of your journey, I see you. I've been there, and I'm here to walk this journey with you. Please reach out to me. That is literally what I am here for. That is what God called me on this earth to do. It is to help people feel more beautiful and confident in their own skin, and I am very passionate about it. Thank you for listening to Unwritten Beauty Talks. If this episode spoke to you, please share it with a friend. Drop a review and come back next week for more skin loving and cell nourishing conversations, and I have to say it. Fuck hormonal acne. Thank you for joining me on today's episode of Unwritten Beauty Talks. If you enjoyed the conversation and found it helpful, I'd be so grateful if you could take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Your feedback not only helps this podcast grow, but it also helps more beauty lovers discover these unwritten beauty truths. Don't forget to subscribe. So you never miss a episode and follow me on social media at your master aesthetician for more skin tips and behind the scene moments. Until next time, keep glowing and I'll see you in the next episode.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Katarina Forster

Host