TALKING BEAUTY Hannah Gay navigates the Australian professional beauty industry, one burgeoning trend at a time.
78
|
Second
A
OPINION
ADULT ACNE - I’ve been dealing with it for the better part of two months. Despite hiding it under a blanket of concealer, it’s been a tough bullet to bite; no matter how diligently I take care of my skin, the acne will manage to rear its tough red head. It’s not the first time I’ve succumbed to it. A few years back, I found myself in a high stress job that kept my brain switched ‘on’ 24/7. Cystic, or adult acne had appeared and reappeared along my cheeks and chin for countless months, dominating my skincare repertoire and causing me to question every ingredient under the sun. Working as a beauty journalist had me believe stripping back my routine entirely was the way to go, but to little avail. It wasn’t until I left the role that my skin finally cleared up and suddenly, the solution was staring me in the face. Stress and I did not play well together, and I vowed to never again place myself in a position where my emotions would hold such a tight grip on my health. Fast-forward four years, and here we are. A new role combined with a hyperactive one year-old spelt the end of my clear skin streak. But this time, I sought help, strapped with knowledge and an army of professionals at my fingertips. Confusion mounted, however, on where to start and who to see. Naturally, visiting a trained beauty therapist would be my first point of call, but was curious to know what the referral system looked like between therapists and other specialists, given the complexity of the issue I faced. Instead, I opted to start from the inside-out, and reached out to naturopath and founder of GlowSo, Natalie McGrath for guidance. Straight off the bat, Natalie confirmed my self-diagnosis: that cystic acne was present and likely caused by a shift in hormones, compounded by stress. “Straight away, from the acne’s positioning that you’ve told me and the characteristics of that acne, it sounds like testosterone,” Natalie explained over zoom. “Stress will actually boost cortisol, and cortisol will boost testosterone.”
WWW.PROFESSIONALBEAUTY.COM.AU
Natalie’s line of enquiry focused heavily on my hormones, with questions varying from the date of my first period right through to the current health of my thyroid. Due to the recent birth of my son, Natalie pressed me on the nature of my pregnancy, breastfeeding routine and the ease with which I conceived. She explained that the body can take up to two years to recover nutritionally post-birth, and that even that can take its toll on the state of my skin. That aside, Natalie geared the conversation back to stress. “It definitely impacts all systems of the body. It’s trying to save you; we go back to the caveman days when we’re stressed. We’re essentially fighting with sabre-toothed tigers - in that moment, our body’s very clever at shutting down systems and so shuts down parts of the immune system, your gut, certain hormones, and it shuts down serotonin as well. If you’re fighting sabre-toothed tigers, it’s not a time to be happy, so it just kind of prioritises things. Now, we’re not actually fighting sabre-toothed tigers. It’s work, it’s just living in Sydney, in floods, and COVID, and World War Three; it’s all this stress, so things are chronically shut down for a while.” I caught up with the always brilliant Madona El Machar at Kaelon for her input in an attempt to better understand my situation through the lens of an aesthetician. Unsurprisingly, Madona’s feedback wasn’t dissimilar to that of Natalie. “It could be
