Ep 22. 4 Things I Would Do to Balance My Hormones & Clear My Acne in 2026

Hello everyone and welcome to 2026 the year of clear skin for you. Hi, if this is your first time here or welcome back, if it's not, I am your girl, your host, your fellow acne esthetician, so nutrition is term functional, diagnostic nutrition practitioner. I am Ashley and this is a good one. This is the first episode of 2026 and I'm so happy and I wanted to start this off with the bang and I wanted to start this year off just like I did last year with hitting y'all with what exactly you want. You want to know if you had to clear your skin this year, what exactly would a professional do to help you clear your skin because you're done guessing, you're done just cutting out dairy, cutting out eggs, you're done with the expensive skincare routine that actually has to be maintained with constant chemocopias, constant facials, constant treatment in order for it to semi look like what you wanted to and actually stop your skin from coming back. You've been told that this is normal, you've been told that like well, the only thing else I can offer you is either birth controls, brain and lactone, you could try maybe try acutane and you're done with those options too and you don't want to continue getting up an age and being like, okay, I'm in my 30s, you telling me that I'm gonna be in my 40s, still breaking out too, you're just like, no, that's not an option, that's not what my reality is going to look like. Then this episode is going to be a really special one because I want to speak from both sides of this journey, like I have been the woman who has dealt with acne from being confused to why it was happening to getting a diagnosis of PCOS and then being confused and be like, okay, well what does this mean, what do I need to do if birth control is off the table, if metformat is off the table, if spirana lags out, it's not on the table, if 1200 calorie diets is not on the table. One thing you're going to learn about me is that there are a lot of things that are not on the table because I don't believe in doing things by the extreme because I did the extreme, like I was frustrated, so I did keto. I was frustrated, so I had a $700 medical grades, can care routine. I was frustrated, so I was thinking about and contemplating, taking dairy. I was frustrated, so I got on trait knowing, like I was frustrated. I swore to you that I was doing everything that the people online swear was the thing that helped them clear their skin and I was not getting any wet air. I truly felt like I was doing too much, so my one requirement was that this shit, whatever I decided to do, has to be sustainable. It just has to be because what I was doing before was still somehow for some reason, not getting any results. Now that I'm on the other side of it, where I don't have breakouts, and if I occasionally have though one random one or two breakouts, because I tried some new skincare routine, where I was super stressed and I know how to get back on track. Now I am helping women clear their acne every single day. When I say I know what it takes, I don't mean in a trendy or dramatic or restrictive way to get you there. How do I get clear skin by tomorrow? That's not the type of methodology that I have because I've lived it until I know what works. I've seen what keeps other women's duct for years. I'm talking about having acne for three, five, 10 plus years. A lot of the women that I work with had honestly come to me and they just said, "I've had acne since I was in my teens, and I have not yet successfully been able to get it to go away for a long period of time without it coming back." And so they've had it longer than they should have after trying everything after seeing a whole bunch of different kind of professionals. And so if I was starting over today and I wanted to know exactly what younger Ashley should have done from the get go, here are four things that I would do to balance my hormones and clear my acne in 2026. But before we get into these steps, I want to make things, I want to make this very, very clear. You have to be willing to do something different. And I don't mean try a different retinal different. I don't mean try a different supplement different. I mean, you need a different approach. You need a different mindset. You need a different philosophy because if treating acne like a skincare problem, a spirit and a lactone deficiency, a wrong retinal issue or a dairy problem actually worked, your acne would already be gone. But it's not. And that's because skincare, I mean acne is not a skincare problem. It shows up on the skin, but it showed up on the skin because so many things has gone wrong in your body up into this point that it's manifesting on your skin. But it did not start. That pimple was not the start of the problem. And so when you've only been treating the end of the line kind of problem, you've missed steps one through nine and you're constantly treating step 10. And that's not going to work. It's never going to work. hormonal acne is not a surface level issue. It's not a food morality issue. It's not a this good food, this bad food is not a morality issue. And it's not something you fix by just removing stuff. And they're removing more and more and more until you are very limited in what you can do, what you can use, which can't eat, which that you can't touch your face that you got to sleep on certain kind of pillows that you got to use a certain kind of face wipe or you break out the next day. All that BS. hormonal acne is a systemic inflammation issue in your body. And trying to do a full body fix with just elimination diets, just facials, just prescriptions or constantly changing products will only manage your symptoms at best. But it will not help you clear your acne for good. So if you're already just like I'm willing to do something different, I know this isn't just skincare. I know there's something wrong going on with my body. There's something going on with my hormones. And I just cannot pinpoint what it is. Tell me what it is because I'm tired of feeling stuck and having to do the extreme to get the bare minimum than this episode is for you. So let's get right on into it. Step number one, the very first thing that I would do is I would get functional testing done and I would get it done faster because the longer you play the guessing game, the longer it's going to take you to clear your skin. Well stop you don't actually know what's causing your acne. You think you know, you think it's the dairy, you think it's the wrong retina, you think it's the fact that it's that retina, you think it's the fact that you were having eggs for breakfast, you think, but you don't know. And so this is why we start with functional tests. And I want to be very clear about what I mean because this is where so many women get mislead. I do not mean standard blood work that you get at your doctor's office where you get it, you get it back at doctor says everything look normal. And now you're still back at square one, even after all this time, that is not what I mean. Those labs are designed to look for disease. They are looking for your numbers to either be so sky high or so bottomed out low that you are at risk of having some kind of deeper issue disease going on in your body. If you fall somewhere in between that right, those two ranges, that's normal for them. That that means that something isn't seriously wrong. That's what they're good at. That's what doctors are for to look for when things go seriously wrong so they can get you back on the path of whatever they associate with normal. And so that's why you end up with prescriptions and needing to see a specialist or whatever that next step is. But if you are not at that point, that's why you hear everything looks normal. But you don't feel normal. Your skin isn't normal. That's because normal does not mean optimal. And it definitely doesn't mean that your body is functioning in the way that it should in order to have you get clear skin functional labs. The labs that I'm talking about, they ask a different question. They ask how is your body actually functioning on a day-to-day basis with your liver, with your hormones, with your gut, with your immune system, with your minerals, with your thyroid, with your stress levels. Those are the questions that functional testing is actually asking. And so if I were starting over, these are the lab tests that I would run. And these are the lab tests that I run in my actual 101 program, the hormonal acne reset method because I want you to have answers. So one is deeper blood work for acne. So I don't just mean looking for your vitamin D levels, looking for your iron levels and a regular CBC kind of panel. I mean, we're going to look for different kinds of markers that's going to give me some insights into what the root causes of your acne could possibly be. The next thing that I want to run is a GI map because in order to clear your skin, you have to look at what's going on in your gut. And the internet has supremely simplified what that means. They think healing your gut means cutting out dairy and gluten and taking a probiotic and possibly taking some all over reginal. And I'm here to tell you wrong, wrong. There's so much that goes on in your gut that we want to look at. I'm talking everything from inflammation to bacteria to yeast to how your digesting food to good bacteria, bad bacteria, your immune system, your liver enzyme levels. There are so much that goes on in your gut that if you take a probiotic and changes are you probably taking one, it's not doing or making any difference. Maybe it's helping you poop a little better. And that's always a good thing. But it's not actually clearing your acne because something else has gone wrong with the inflammation, your immune system, your bacteria levels, your yeast, your digesting, maybe some parasites. And that is why I run a GI map because I want to see what's going on in your gut that is specifically connected to acne. And then the last one is a hair tissue mineral analysis test because in order for you to have balanced hormones, step one to balance hormones is minerals. And so if your mineral levels are off, they're too high, they're too depleted, you have toxic elements going on in your body. That is going to give us so much insight into why your hormones are messed up. It's going to help us understand mineral patterns, your stress response, your metabolic function, how you're digesting your food, the kind of food that you need to eat more of the kind of foods you need to eat less of and all that good stuff about that centered around food, but not around just cutting foods out because guessing is exhausting at this point. Okay, like you don't have to tell me elimination diets are exhausting. Coming from a girl who never, ever, ever do another diet again in my life. Keto has severely ruined me against every kind of disease. But trying supplements based on Instagram advice based off what you your TikTok favorite influencer is recommending is exhausting. Testing gives you direction. This is especially true for my type A need to see on paper planner kind of girls where you want to see on paper and read or green. This is going good. This is going bad. This is where I need to focus my attention on so that you actually know what you need to do. What supplements you need to take what foods you need to eat. How you actually live your life so that you can fix the problem so that you can feel yourself getting better month one versus month two versus month three. Testing gives you that kind of direction and this is exactly where I see women go wrong. They know that they need root cause answers but instead of testing and instead of investing in that they go to the extremes. They start cutting foods out. They start doing protocols from other people that they don't really understand. They try to do these weird detox regimens. They start piling on supplements when you need clarity first. You can't fix what you don't know. That is my motto. That's why I have when clients first come in. That's why the first thing we start with is one expectations because your expectations are probably off and two is getting a better understanding of what symptoms you're dealing with. You can't fix something that you don't know and nine times out of ten is not just acne that you're suffering with. There's a whole host of other symptoms that are all connected that we need to pull out and piece out so that we can understand where the root cause is happening. At the end three we need to look at how you're eating, how you're living, the supplements you're taking and really do an evaluation of what's working and what's not because you can't fix what you do not know. And quick note here if you've ever wanted someone to actually look at your symptoms, look at your history, look at that supplement list you have going on look at your labs together and tell you what makes sense for you. This is exactly what we do in my program and I can walk you through what that means and what that would look like for you based off your symptoms and what you tried and what you haven't tried and so that's what we do on my clear scan call. It's a free no pressure call where we talk through what testing would actually move the needle and how I would actually guide you to clear scan based off what you've already tried and what I think the missing piece is that you actually need. And so I'll mention it again later but I did want to just hook that out there right now. Step number two is you need to do something about the stress that you're under. Hmm, I'm gonna let that sit because this is a step that everybody wants to skip. I can always tell when you skip this step you and clients are like I can always tell. It's like a superpower because supplements feel productive because it's like okay I wake up, this is what I need to do, this is something I can check off the list, doesn't require too much effort. I can go do it go about my day. Swapping foods out feels productive. It gives you that nice feeling of being like oh my god, look at my anti-inflammatory meal. I'm so hashtag healthy. It makes you feel good. Buying the next product makes you feel productive. Okay, I'm actively doing something about it. This product's where that it works. I'm going to invest in it. I'm going to try it. I'm going to be consistent with it every single day. It feels it's easy to do and check off your to-do list, but that nervous system regulation that requires effort and it requires effort every single day. It requires changing your behaviors. It requires setting boundaries with yourself because people always swear they need to set boundaries with other people, but the real problem is the man in the mirror and she's asking you to change your ways. Yes, she is. The problem is the boundaries that you won't set with yourself. That's leaving you exhausted. That's leaving you burnt out. That's making you say yes when you really want to say no. That's making you exhausted by the middle of the day. That's making you feel like you don't have the energy for the things that you love, for the people you actually want to be around. Because you won't set the boundaries with yourself. Here's the truth. If your nervous system is stuck in a fight or flight, your body does not feel safe enough to heal. I don't care what product you use, what hormone balance and T supplement you drink. Nothing will outdo the feeling of your body feeling like it's at war with you every single day. This is why we also put on things like retinal and the really deep skin healing treatments at night because this is the time where our body is supposed to relax where our cell turnover happens because your body is winding down and it makes space for it. But if you're always stuck in fight or flight and let me be clear, your body cannot differentiate the stress that you chose because you won't put your phone down and go to sleep and the stress of running from a saber to tiger. It's since both of those as stressors and so it's fighting against both of those things. And so while when it should be relaxing and winding down, now it's like no, we're still in the fight of our life. Until she goes to sleep, it's the fight of our life. And even then, you're waking up in the middle of night and it's throwing off your room sleep. So your body is just like, we, I don't know how to catch a break and healing will never happen if your body can't catch a break. And I see this constantly in women with hormonal acne because you're rushing through your mornings, you're skipping breakfast, you're eating on the go, you're relying on caffeine to function and give you energy, you're constantly go, go, go. You feel validation from having a checklist to do list, feeling busy, never fully exhaling and feeling like you can sleep when you're dead. Never like actually having time to wind down and biologically, this matters because it is changing your gut microbiome. So that probiotic that you think you think you're taking every single morning. Yeah, the stress that you're under every single day all day long is undoing any good benefit because while you're putting in good bacteria in your body, that stress is depleted, everything that you just put in. It also contributes to gut permeability. This is where leaky gut comes in. And so this is where all those things start to leak into your bloodstream and trigger inflammation. So you think dairy is inflammatory. Let me tell you something. Your lifestyle is more inflammatory than that dairy ever will be. It keeps your cortisol levels elevated. And guess what that does? It raises your IGF one levels. And so that just increases oil production in your skin. Okay. Your body priorities has a survival over skin healing because our bodies are smart. It wants you to live. It wants you to have as long of a life as possible. But guess what? It can't prioritize surviving and healing at the same time. Those are two opposite ends of the spectrum. They cannot be done at the same time. And so I've seen borderline like I don't want to call it miracles, but I've seen miracles happen when clients fully lean into this part of the healing. And if you don't have to be perfect, you don't have to quit your job. You don't have to live like a month. You don't have to do meditation retreats or none of that. But with daily nervous system support that actually fits into your life, small habits that you can do every single day. And I know this part can feel frustrating because it doesn't feel as concrete as eat this food, take this supplement. But I'll say this gently. And I'll say this honestly, you cannot out supplement, a stressed nervous system. You just can't. And it doesn't mean just with acne. It's with PCOS. It's with infertility. It's with weight loss. It's with whatever health goal that you have coming up in this new year. Stress cannot outdo any of those things. So let's move on to step number three. You have to support your digestion, not just cut foods out. This is another massive mindset shift that I want to stress over and over and over. You can be eating the cleanest diet in the world. You can be the healthiest friend of the bunch. Have you ever went to dinner with your friends? God bless them. You love them. But in your mind, you're secretly like, I eat better than every single person that is table and get all of their skin. Looks better than mine. What the heck is going on? One. And I'm here to tell you, if you're not digestion and properly absorbing your food, your body can't even use the good nutrients from the foods that you're eating to repair your skin cells to make hormones to regulate inflammation, inflammation to support energy because you're not digestion and absorbing the food that you're eating. So here's what happens when you don't digest the food and your digestion isn't working as well as it should. Food starts to sit in your stomach. And what happens is it firmens, it rocks and it replenishes your good bacteria. It feeds the bad bacteria and yeast that they and lead to acne. And then you add on the fact that if your bowel movements aren't regular, I mean bowel movements one to three times a day, every single day not skipping a day. That waste is sitting longer than it should. And that waste contains these toxins, these bacteria, these yeast, these excess estrogen. And while you're having all these period-related symptoms, yeah, all of that can be resorbed back into the bloodstream causing inflammation. And then now your liver has to reprocess it again. That is just putting extra strain on your liver. It's increasing inflammation and it disrupts your hormonal balance. And what do women do in this situation? They think let me take a probiotic and let me cut out dairy and gluten and sugar. And that's not the whole process because food isn't the problem. Your digestion is. And when you get better digestion, you start to slowly realize how these food-related symptoms start to go away. Because if you decide to go to food route, I promise you, it's going to start with dairy, it's going to start with gluten, it's going to start with sugar, then it's going to be beans, then it's going to be cruciferous vegetables, then it's going to be certain kind of carbs, then it's going to be certain kinds of fats. You can't eat avocado, then before you know it, you will have about seven foods that don't bother you and that's the only thing you can eat. It's always going to keep manifesting because when you do these food sensitivity tests, all that is is telling you is that, hey, this is what your immune system is responding to. It never tells you that, hey, your immune system is actually so low that it isn't responding well to anything well. And so you think it's the food problem. When it's really you have excess bacteria, you have this inflammation going on, you have this kind of yeast going on and it's actually throwing off your gut microbiome causing a whole much inflammation and that's why you're responding to those foods. But no one ever tells you until I do it. You're welcome. And so this is why I focus so heavily on gut support in my work. A lot of what we do is focus in on healing your gut because once your digestion improves, food becomes the easiest part of your life again. Food becomes an ally. It's not something that you have to fear. It's not some extreme diet that you have to do where your whole life is just centered around what you can and cannot eat. That's not a way to live. That's not fun. And so that's why you need to focus on healing your gut. And one of the first things you can do is pay attention to how you're chewing and digesting your food. A lot of the times when we're busy and so we're multitasking when we eat stopping that and actually focus in on how much you're chewing your food because a lot of the times we're just like, oh my god, I ate that super fast. You blink and I your food gone because you was so hungry. So I want you to eat less distracted to your food more and stop drinking water when you eat. That's that's the only thing I want you to focus on right now. All right. Step number four is to balance your blood sugar. This is the hormone that no one talks about to my friend. Most people will typically talk to you about your estrogen, your progesterone or your testosterone when it comes to acne. Okay. Particularly estrogen and particularly testosterone. But insulin is the hormone that is often the missing piece. Here's what happens when your blood sugar spikes. It leads to insulin surges. That means your body is pumping it out as much as it can. And so now that insulin, the excess insulin increases that IGF one hormone that I talked about earlier, which tells your sublacias glands to produce more oil to produce more sebum. And we know too much oil too much sebum, bad bacteria on your skin creates a ground, a breeding ground actually for acne. And so more oil increases the likelihood of clogged pores in those breakout. So I'm talking about everything from the cystic ones to the ones where it's just like, you know, you have the pimples that are underneath your skin and it just looks like a bunch of congestion. It can lead to both of those things. And so blood sugar swings also increase inflammation in the skin, which makes blood sugar worse. And so when I talk about blood sugar swings, that typically means where you're the type of person who will skip meals because you're busy, skip breakfast because you're not a breakfast person or you don't get hungry in the morning. And you can't see me, but I'm putting all those things in quotation marks because that's not true. You've actually just messed up your hunger hormones. And so your hunger hormone cues are off. That's what that really is. You rely on coffee only in the morning. You're under eating during the day. You're skipping meals. You're afraid of carbs. You're eating clean, but you're not eating enough. You're not eating enough minerals in your diet. You're just focused in on eating as few calories as possible. And so this is where we then have to go in and feel in those gaps. I say the best diet for clear skin is a blood sugar balance diet. The best diet for fertility, the best diet for easier periods, the best diet for losing weight, the best diet for clearing your acne, I'd insert whatever is you're trying to do here. Best diet for more energy is a blood sugar balanced diet. But in order to get to that point, you need to stop fearing carbs. You need to stop fearing whatever it is. And you need to make sure that when you sit down and you put together a plate, you need to make sure that you have at least 30 grams of protein. You need to make sure that you're having some kind of fat, whether it's an added fat or a fatier type of protein or just cooking your food in healthy fats. You need to make sure that you have some kind of fiber. I like to think of it as some kind of color. It can be color from a fruit. It can be color from a vegetable. It can be color from both. And then having some type of healthy car in that carb can be the fruit or the vegetable or it can be something else because blood sugar balance doesn't mean perfection. It doesn't mean you can't eat out. Imagine being able to know how to plate your food. You can eat at your house, you can eat at your mom's house, you can eat at your favorite restaurant when you know the foundations and how to put together a plate. But sugar balance and really just means consistency. You have to be consistent. You have to be consistent when you want to. You have to be consistent when you don't want to. You have to be consistent when it's out of your control. That's it. And so when your blood sugar is supported, guess what? Your hormones calm down across the board. All right. Those are really the first main things. Get the proper test and get it done faster so you can stop guessing. Step two was to do something about the stress that you're under and not ignoring it. Three is supporting your digestion and not just cutting foods out. Four is balancing your blood sugar and focusing on the real hormone that's causing chaos in your body. And so if you listen to this and thinking, okay, I know I need a better approach. I just don't want to do anything extreme and I actually want some real answers. But tell me how I can do that. That makes sense. Everything I walk you through is exactly what we do inside the hormonal acne reset method. This is where we run the proper testing so that you can get direct answers. This is where I teach you how to calm your nervous system without doing anything extreme. This is little practices that you can add into your day. Five minutes here. Three minutes there. Something you add into your hormonal routine or your night routine there. How to actually support your digestion and what that means based off the results that you get from your GI map. How to balance your blood sugar so that you know how to eat to clear your skin based off the result of your HTMA test and whatever your other goals are and to address acne as the full body issue that it actually is and not just treating your skin. Your skin is a part of it. Yes, and I can help you with that. But I want to help you clear the acne that you have for three, five, 10 plus years after rounds of different kinds of antibiotics, spirulolactyl, so birth controls are or acutane. I want to fix the damage that all of those things did so that your acne stops coming back in a way that actually fits your real life. So if you want to talk through whether or not that is the right step with you, this is where we start with that clear skin call that I was talking about. We look at what you tried, what's missing and then whether my program is the right fit for you or not. So if you want to get an overview of my process and how this all works and everything that's included, the link to that will be in the show notes below. So I actually have a video where I explain and walk everything through there with you so that you can actually see what's going on and then that feels right for you then you'll be able to book your call, fill out your application because you don't need to do more, you just need to do the right things in the right order. So if this is the year that you're coming in for clear skin, these are the things that you need to focus on. I've made it super easy. How we can get all of those things done with the minimal amount of things that you need to do, but actually target the real freaking problem while you have acne. And if you have a friend or you have a sister or coworker or whatever that you know is also dealing with acne and you talked about how this is going to be the year that you do something different. Telefriends or TeleFram be a good community member and I hopefully I'll talk to you soon, but if not, I will talk to you in the next one. Bye bye and happy new year!