birth control and acne

Yes you must have heard or read about this one; contraceptive pills can help acne.

It’s true but before you start buying some, you need to know which ones to look for.

Most birth control pills contain both estrogen and progestin (synthetic progesterone).

Progestins can act either as androgens (that is, they can act like male hormones) or as anti-androgens (which means that they block male hormones); androgens trigger oil glands to produce sebum, thus worsening acne. That’s why birth control pills work for acne management, due to their anti-androgenic makeup.

SO if you’re looking for pills that could help with acne as well, you can look at the labels for brands that contain progestins with less androgenic activity such as norgestimate, norethindrone, desogestrel, ethynodiol, or levonorgestrel.

Ortho Tri-Cyclen, Estrostep, and Yaz are all approved pills you can consider. Another option, Yasmin, is similar to Yaz (they both contain drospirenone, another anti-androgen) but not specifically approved for the treatment of acne.

Not everyone may necessarily like the idea of using birth control pills to control oil production and improve acne, while I think it’s perfectly fine, I also like to think that there are other more elegant methods to treat such as retinol, alpha hydroxy acids, and salicylic acid, for example, are also important treatment tools.

Besides,  where birth control pills are concerned, they typically take three to six months to really start working and not many people with more serious acne would like to wait for such an extended period – another reason that you’ll want to use other approaches simultaneously.

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