I’m starting this blog post with a huge disclaimer – this is just my experience, I’m not a doctor or a skincare specialist, and what has got rid of hormonal acne for me may not work for you.

After changing to a different contraceptive pill early last year due to crippling headaches and risk of stroke (no big deal that I’ve been on it for half my life…) I quickly noticed a change in my skin. Male contraceptive pill when?

Below is my skin in summer 2023 – freckled and uneven, sure, but not at all spotty.

I’d had pretty easy skin throughout my 30s so far – the odd hormonal spot on my jawline at my time of the month, generally pretty oily with random occasional dry patches in the winter, but otherwise very uneventful – but I was transported back to my angry teenage skin within days of taking my new contraceptive pill.

Along my jawline I had cystic acne – large, painful spots that were deep under the surface and stuck around for ages, with new ones appearing what felt like daily.

It made me feel really gross. When I see other people with spots I think it’s no big deal, we all get spots, it doesn’t change how cute someone is. But when it came to my own skin, I felt really embarrassed. It affected my confidence hugely.

Some of the spots were so swollen they changed the shape of my jawline, and made me feel so ugly. So I wore more make-up – using concealer to try and hide my acne – which I absolutely hated, but felt like I had to do.

Wearing heavy make-up is not something I enjoy the sensation of, and I’m positive that it doesn’t help skin to heal, but I felt really self-conscious without it.

And it wasn’t just the appearance thing, like I said, those hormonal acne spots were so painful. A deep, achy pain, paired with a hot irritated feeling.

While I look back on my before photos and think, it doesn’t actually look that bad, I can remember how incredibly uncomfortable the physical sensation was.

Here are a couple of photos from October 2024, before trying anything, and much paler than the previous summer shot 😅 I think I am actually wearing make up in these, so I’m not sure you can see the full extent, but you get an idea.

After at least 6 months of struggling on with it, I asked my good pal and talented tattoo artist Olivia (aka @lobita.pokes) for some advice. I’m not too clued up on skincare, but I knew she was, and that she’d been on her own problem skin journey in recent years.

She recommended a few things to me, and I tried them along with a few other things, and here’s how I got on.

1. I tried the Skin + Me Daily Doser to fix my adult acne

This is the first thing I tried to get rid of my cystic acne, using Olivia’s discount code to get my first Daily Doser for £3.50 – it was so affordable that it was worth a try.

You start by answering questions about your skin issues, and they prescribe a solution for you, which they call the Daily Doser. The amount of active ingredients in the Daily Doser starts off low, so as to not irritate your skin too much, which can also mean it can take a while to see a difference.

By month 3, the active ingredients had increased enough that I was starting to see a slight difference, but the main change happened when I tried the next acne fix – read on for that.

I also got a free face wash, moisturiser, and sun cream in the first pack that I got sent, and the sun cream is still going strong and seeing me through these very sunny months we’ve been having. The Skin + Me Sunscreen is SPF50 and doesn’t feel greasy at all – a miracle!

Different things work for different people, so if you’d like to try Skin + Me, you can get your first and fifth Daily Doser for just £3.50 (RRP £24.99) by clicking that link or with my code LYZIU5F9M, and to be totally transparent, I will get £10 credit too.

2. I started taking supplements specifically for cystic acne

This was by far the thing that made the biggest difference to my adult acne, and I’m so grateful that Olivia told me about it, so I had to share it with you too. This is no way an ad, I don’t have an affiliate link, and I get no money for talking about this – I genuinely think it’s life-changing!

Within about a week of taking Advanced Nutrition Programme Skin Accumax supplements, I started to feel a difference in my hormonal acne – my pimples were much less painful. It was honestly such a relief, and I don’t think I realised quite how sore and irritated my face was until that sensation was gone.

I didn’t start to see a difference in my acne until a week or two later. It was very gradual, and I still got the occasional spot here and there. I think acne spots take quite a while to fully heal and fade, as they’re so deep, and I think I’m left with some light scarring that will hopefully go over time, but omg.

I started taking the Skin Accumax supplements in early December, so it’s been about 6 months at the time of writing this. They recommend starting with 4 capsules a day and taking them for at least 4 months, before assessing your progress and lowering the dosage.

I now take one a day, if that – I often forget because my skin isn’t constantly uncomfortable.

Reading the reviews, some people have unfortunately found that taking Skin Accumax supplements trigger migraines – funnily enough, migraines and headaches were the main reason to change my contraceptive pill a year ago, but I haven’t had any migraines while taking the supplements.

Other people have simply found that it doesn’t work for them, so it’s worth noting that this isn’t the one holy grail solution to cystic or hormonal acne, but it has worked for me, and based on the 4.4/5 score from 403 reviews on their website, it has worked for many others too.

At £48 for 60 capsules, it is quite an expensive thing to try when you don’t know for sure that it’ll work for you, but I think it is worth trialling it for at least a month or two to see if your acne changes, because it has helped me so so much.

3. Simplifying my skincare routine to heal my hormonal acne

Ok, maybe that heading is slightly misleading, as I don’t think this made the biggest difference to my skin, but, I decided to keep things as simple as possible in this area, so that I wouldn’t irritate my skin any further.

In the morning, I wash my face with water only, unless I’m feeling particularly grimy, or have got conditioner on my face because it’s one of the 2 days a week that I wash my hair.

If I’ve been wearing make up, I always use The Body Shop Camomile Cleansing Butter to remove make up – it’s the best thing I’ve found so far for melting my stubborn waterproof mascara away, yet so gentle. And no, I will never go back to non-waterproof mascara, because a) I’m stubborn too, and b) I always have wet eyes.

After that, I like to use a foaming cleanser to get my skin squeaky clean. I generally use one for sensitive skin, whether it’s the Tea Tree Skin Clearing Facial Wash from The Body Shop, or La Roche-Posay Effaclar Purifying Gel, which is for oily, blemish-prone skin. Followed by moisturiser, and that’s it.

4. Finding the right moisturiser for my acne-prone skin

Over the past year-and-a-bit of suffering with hormonal acne, I’ve tried a bunch of different moisturisers – some were great, some somehow made my skin drier, and some smelled really weird.

I found there were a few that seemed to exacerbate my acne, while others didn’t make it any worse. None of them made it any better, but I don’t think that’s the job of a moisturiser – correct me if I’m wrong.

One of my favourite moisturisers I’ve used recently is Weleda Skin Food Light – the normal formula is way too thick for my already-oily skin, and the light formula is still highly moisturising (great for my winter skin) meaning it can be used sparingly. I usually use this at night time.

I also really rate the Botanics Clarifying Gel Moisturiser from Boots – it smells fantastic and isn’t too heavy on my skin. I use this every morning and it works really well for me.

Ones I really did not like were: Skin Saints Youthful Daily Cream (too heavy, made my skin unhappier) and their Hyaluronic Acid Serum (felt nice, but smells very weird).

Getting rid of hormonal acne – the results

So here I am now, just over a year on from when hormonal acne blighted my skin and my life – not to be dramatic. I’m so pleased with the progress so far.

My skin is by no means perfect – it never has been, and probably never will be. I’ve always had freckles, marks and uneven areas, and I have some scarring from previous spots around my jawline, but no active spots at all, which feels incredible.

And, as you can probably tell, I haven’t got a scrap of make up on in these photos, and no editing has taken place either. This is exactly what my skin looks like on a bright but overcast June 2025 morning.

I feel like I have my reliably-ok skin back, and I’m so happy to be bare-faced again this summer.

I really hope you’ve found this blog post helpful, as I know what a pain (literally and figuratively) hormonal acne can be.

I’ve posted about this on Instagram too, so if you found this helpful let me know on my grid post here, or drop me a DM if you simply want to complain about how annoying having skin/a human body/a brain is. You can find me on Instagram @lyziunwin 🙂

If you like this tried-and-tested style of beauty blog post, you might like my previous blog post, 5 eyebrow products I bought from Instagram ads – my honest review.