Originally Posted by
buffedude
The etiology of acne production still remains somewhat controversial. We intuitively think that high testoterone levels cause acne (but teenage females, with much less testosterone, get as much acne as males do during puberty; also many people on a testosterone cycles don't get acne until after the end of the cycle). There is no real link in the literature between the actual testosterone (or estrogen for that matter) levels and acne fromation(ie. males with severe acne can have serum androgen levels that are quite high or low).
It may be the case that it is not the acutal level of these hormones but rather the PROCESS of making/secreting them the leads to acne foration. If the body is in the process of making or trying to make sex hormones (which happens AFTER a cycle, during puberty, ...) then the building blocks (especially Coenzyme-A which is the essential in cholesterol and hence sex hormone production) will be depleted and this may lead to acne formation.
So more than likely the process of making sex hormones rather than the actual hormones themselves result in formation of acne. when the level of these precursors falls below a certain threshold acne formation can be trigerred. Those with higher levels of the precursors (ie Coenzyme-A) to begin with will be less prone to acne formation. This is probably not the whole story but a big chapter of what leads to acne formation...
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