When clients first come to see me, it takes a while to clear their heads of all of the lies and misconceptions they have been brainwashed into believing about acne. Whether a client is starting our program with an in-person Consultation or our E-Course, we always start with a lesson on the cause of acne because I have never met a single person who actually knows what the cause of acne is. Most people blame their acne on puberty, hormones, stress, diet, lack of exercise, weather, pollution, gut imbalances, and the list goes on and on. Although all of those things can be contributing factors, the true root cause of acne is a genetic disease called Retention Hyperkeratosis (we just call it RH because it’s so much easier). The entire first lesson of our e-course breaks down the details of RH but here are a few tidbits:

We are born with RH in our DNA
We are either born or not born with a predisposition towards retention hyperkeratosis. Just like any gene, it doesn’t have to be passed down directly from our parents and we might have inherited it from a grandparent or great great grandparent. The gene also has dormant and active periods and usually requires a trigger to become activated. This is similar to how you might have a genetic predisposition towards an allergy that might not get triggered until you are in your 20s and you might have periods where your symptoms are not as active as other periods. The gene also tends to manifest in different ways in different family members so your Mom might have had mild non-inflamed acne that was primarily diet triggered only for a few years as a teenager but you can have severely inflamed acne that is hormonally triggered from the ages of 13 to 45.

RH is similar to diabetes
Our method is largely based on the research of Dr James Fulton and in his book, Acne RX, he compares acne to diabetes. Diabetics are born with a genetic predisposition that makes them unable to effectively process insulin and those of us with acne are born with a gene that makes it difficult for us to process skin cells effectively. Acne and diabetes are also both conditions we are born with that don’t usually show symptoms until later and they are both multifactorial diseases in that they are triggered and exacerbated by a multitude of internal and external factors including diet and lifestyle.

RH manifests in many different ways throughout our lives
Even though RH is the root cause of acne, there are many other internal factors (e.g. hormones, stress) and external factors (e.g. skincare products, household products) that play a role in determining how the condition manifests itself. So what type of acne we have at any given moment, what triggers our acne and in what amount, the location of the acne on our face or body, and the severity of our acne shifts throughout most of our lives. This is one of the many reasons why acne treatments still have such a low rate of success.

RH is a chronic disease but most of us reach a burnout stage at some point
For most of us, acne is a chronic condition that we will have to deal with for many years. Most of us reach a burnout stage at some point in our lives where the condition just goes dormant but nobody knows when or why that happens. For the lucky few, their acne gets triggered when they start puberty and it burns out when puberty ends which is why there is a misconception that acne is a teenage phase but many of us suffer with it well into our twenties, thirties, and forties although it might go through phases of being active and dormant throughout. I have had many clients who were initially triggered by puberty in their teens whose acne slowed down in their twenties, completely cleared in their forties, and then got retriggered in their fifties because of menopause.