5: Understanding & Fixing The Root Cause of Acne | Colleen Clesen
Hormone Healing RD
Amanda Montalvo
5 • 831 Ratings
🗓️ 13 October 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Work 1:1 with Colleen to heal your acne here.
What if your acne isn’t really about your skin at all?
In this episode, I’m joined by Colleen Clesen, an aesthetician with a background in nutrition and dietetics. After struggling with her own breakouts and realizing how limited both dermatology and standard aesthetics training were, she went back to school to fill in the missing piece. Now she helps women connect the dots between acne, hormones, gut health, and daily skincare.
We get into why gut health is usually the first place to look, what stool tests actually reveal, and how inflammation in the body shows up on your face. We also talk about the mistakes most people make with their skincare routines, why supporting the skin barrier matters as much as internal work, and how the liver and bile clearance play a critical role in clearing acne. It’s an honest look at what really drives breakouts and what can actually help.
You’ll Learn:
[00:00] Introduction
[01:00] The real reason Colleen became an aesthetician
[04:00] Why acne isn’t just a skin issue but a red flag of internal imbalance
[05:00] Gut-first: the surprising reason location of breakouts doesn’t matter
[07:00] Stool test markers that reveal hidden inflammation, estrogen problems, and acne triggers
[14:00] Scalp flare-ups as a signal your gut and immune system are exhausted
[17:00] The one simple thing Colleen has clients add to their diet that quickly improves skin and hormones
[21:00] Why most acne products wreck the skin barrier and what to do instead
[32:00] The truth about beef tallow on acne-prone skin
[47:00] How sluggish liver detox and bile flow recirculate hormones and fuel breakouts
[59:00] The first step Colleen recommends if you can only change one thing
Resources Mentioned:
Psyllium Husk Powder | Website
Kossma Squalane Oil | Website
Kossma Cleansing Gel | Website
Red Light Face Mask | Website
Green Envee Firm Collagen Gel Masque | Website
Green Envee Rejuvenate Brightening Enzyme Masque | Website
Clearstem Aloe Based Moisturizer, Hydraglow | Website
CeraVe | Website
NuDerma Professional High Frequency Wand | Website
Cosmo Cleansing Gel | Website
Lymphatic Course for Head & Neck | Website
Hormone Healing podcast episode on Intro to Lymph Flow with Leah | Website
Work 1:1 with Colleen to heal your acne here.
Get Instant access to the FREE Functional Thyroid Series here.
Find more from Amanda:
Hormone Healing RD | Instagram
Hormone Healing RD | Website
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Hormone Healing RD | YouTube
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Acne is not driven by dirty skin. It's driven by inflammation internally. We need to focus on calming things down to calm down inflammation. Stop washing your face. That's the first thing I say and people freak out. Sweat is a natural exfoliant. You can just rinse out with water. You don't have to scrub your sweat off your face. The insulin peas, the androgen, estrogen, progesterone, and the stress hormones. It's all going to be impacted by gut health. You can't ignore your gut microbiome when it comes to your skin. If you do it the right way, then you can get rid of acne forever. If you're not eating McDonald's every day and wearing makeup, you're taking care of yourself. Nothing's moving the needle on your acne. Then we probably need to take a look at the liver a little bit closer. |
| 0:38.6 | If someone were coming to you and they're like, I'm really struggling with my acne, what's the first thing you would have someone do? |
| 0:44.1 | And for talking like budget friendly, I would just... |
| 0:51.3 | Welcome to the hormone healing RD podcast where you'll get clear practical guidance for your healing journey. |
| 0:59.1 | I'm Amanda Montalvo, women's health dietitian mineral expert. |
| 1:02.5 | After helping thousands of women in navigating my own healing, I know how overwhelming the wellness world can be. |
| 1:08.9 | This show cuts through the noise with simple research-backed |
| 1:11.5 | insights on hormones, minerals, and what your body truly needs to heal. And in this particular |
| 1:16.8 | episode, I'm actually talking to my 101 nutritionist Colleen. She's on my hormone-ealing |
| 1:23.3 | RD nutrition team. She's amazing. She has a really, really, I would just say, interesting and crazy health history and |
| 1:32.2 | journey that brought her here. |
| 1:34.2 | We're focusing on her acne journey and how she became, how she came to be a holistic |
| 1:39.6 | ascetician in this episode. |
| 1:41.0 | But she also, you know, she's a mom. |
| 1:43.9 | She's got two little girls, identical |
| 1:46.7 | twin girls, and a four-year-old boy. They're adorable. And she went to college for nutrition |
| 1:53.4 | and dietetics and then just spent all of her time really digging into acne, gut, healing research. She also had cancer. And so that's like a huge part of her time really digging into acne gut healing research. She also had cancer. And so that's like a |
| 2:04.1 | huge part of her health history as well. But she's so smart. I mean, if I could download her brain, |
| 2:10.7 | I absolutely would. We covered so much in this episode. And really the major goal is that we wanted |
| 2:16.9 | to get into is to simplify acne. I think it's |
| 2:20.3 | one of those things where like you see like the acne face mapping. You hear people talk about, |
| 2:24.7 | oh, I have hormonal acne. Oh, no, it's like stress related acne. It's blood sugar, insulin resistance |
... |
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