It is often said that acne (pimples) is caused by endocrine disorders. This is one of the most widely circulated and representative misconceptions.
The thyroid, pancreas (diabetes, etc.), adrenal glands, gonads and other systems with endocrine functions are collectively referred to as endocrine. From a medical point of view (Western medicine), the occurrence of acne is closely related to endocrine disorders, but acne is not caused by “endocrine disorders”.
On the contrary, the levels of various sex hormones in most acne patients are not different from those of normal people, and there is no endocrine disorder at all. Therefore, many people mistakenly believe that they have an endocrine disorder and carry a heavy psychological burden as a result, and thus constantly seek ways to regulate endocrine treatment. Modern medicine has found that acne patients may have abnormalities in the sex hormone receptors in the skin, which is reflected in a higher than normal affinity for the receptors, and therefore overreact to the “normal” fluctuations in hormone levels in the body, causing pathological changes in acne.
This is why we can see that children are prone to acne when they enter puberty, when sex hormone levels rise physiologically due to the body’s normal growth needs. Some female patients also experience an increase in acne before menstruation, which is also related to fluctuations in sex hormone levels in the body. However, this does not mean that there is an endocrine disorder, but that our skin does not “adapt” well to the normal physiological hormone fluctuations. Only a very small number of acne patients may have what is called an “endocrine disorder”.
For example, if a woman is too old to have acne, or if acne is significantly worse before menstruation, her sex hormone levels may be significantly higher than normal. There is a drug called Daine-35, which is very effective in treating female acne. Many people mistakenly believe that it is an endocrine regulator, but it is not. Of course, there are a small number of cases that are very resistant to treatment that have real endocrine disease problems, mainly in the form of sex hormone abnormalities (such as polycystic ovary syndrome, etc.), but this is only a minority of people after all.