Well, it turns out that a very significant percentage of women with PCOS deal with acne. And this is what we call recalcitrant or super stubborn, difficult to heal, difficult to treat acne that we call often hormonal acne. It involves deep cysts along the jawline. Sometimes it can also be on the chest and on the back. And some women with PCOS also get a different sort of like cousin of acne called Hidradenitis suppurativa, which can involve the groin and the exelis under the arms. These are really incredibly inflammatory processes in the skin and they really haven’t been properly addressed even by the dermatology world. They have predominantly treated it as similar to like teenage acne, but it’s really a different creature. And what I’m going to talk about is some of the really key issues that differentiate this type of acne, the hormonal acne of women with PCOS from teen acne. And of course, I’ll touch on the classic therapeutics that dermatologists typically use, which include things like Accutane. I’ll tell you about the pros and cons, and the pitfalls because women with PCOS tend to have the most flares and recurrences even after the use of Accutane. And there are now dermatologists that are using Accutane permanently. They just keep it going in women with PCOS. But just be aware that and I’ll talk more about it there are some of course collateral issues. There’s no drug, there just isn’t any drug that doesn’t actually have some collateral problems. I want you to know one key takeaway about skin, something that you can access right this minute before you even take my course because I’m going to deal in the course in so much depth about issues with hair and skin that women with PCOS face.

Okay, so here’s the tip of this day. Okay? It’s zinc. So it turns out that zinc is a critical mineral for skin healing. In fact, they use zinc in conventional wound healing clinics. I’m sure you know that many people have diabetes and they get old as well and they have vascular disease and they develop wounds. Sometimes they’re like pressure sores or they could be from trauma, but they get wounds that simply don’t heal non-healing wounds. And those wound care clinics are actually giving those patients, male and female, fairly high doses of zinc. Now, I don’t want you to take a high dose of zinc, very high doses of zinc, which we’ll call 50 milligrams a day or more, actually deplete your body of copper. And I feel that those should be only given under the supervision of a physician, but smaller doses of zinc, we’re talking about no more than 30 milligrams a day. You can access it on your own. Okay. Now, I am a big fan of micronutrient testing because I love data, I love knowing instead of guessing, but it’s you’re not going to have any harm if you take 15 or 30 milligrams. But look at what’s in your multivitamin too if you’re taking one, I don’t want you to go above 30 milligrams a day of zinc to keep it safe, because I don’t want to take a chance that you have an interaction with your copper.

Okay. So you know, please, I hope you all have physicians and you can discuss this with them. Okay? But a small amount of zinc every day is really very helpful in helping heal skin. So think of cystic acne as wounds in the skin that can really benefit from taking zinc. Now, is that all you need to do? Well, I’m sure you know, the answer is no. It’s just one part of the whole picture of how to heal PCOS and skin and acne in particular. But I didn’t want you to leave without one tip of the day. But please, if you really care about learning what I have to give because I know you’ve learned so much from the PCOS SOS summit, but most of that isn’t just about all of it was coming from my amazing guess, not directly from me. And as I said, I’m the expert. I literally wrote the book and I hope that you will come and join me and let me have a chance to tell you all about my approach to dealing with all of these issues with PCOS and skin and hair is big one that we will do a deep dive into and I will share all of my secrets, so please join me for my course on PCOS. Thank you.

Symptom Spotlight: Skin & Hair

Felice Gersh, MD

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Felice Gersh, MD