i healed my melasma with MORE SUN, not less.
a holistic & practical synthesis on melasma.
*NOT MEDICAL ADVICE* // this write-up is a collection of my thoughts, theories, and ah-ha moments related to my experience healing my own melasma.
i first realized that my skin was darkening in specific spots on my face when i was only 2-3 months into taking hormonal birth control for the first time.
i unconsciously followed the classic mainstream program of needing to be on the pill when getting married, “or else you’ll end up with a honeymoon baby.”
this decision ended up being one of my greatest gifts, because the regression of my health that shortly followed catalyzed my path forward towards understanding the whole picture of the female body.
WHAT I FIRST EXPERIMENTED WITH & EXPERIENCED //
getting off of birth control
wearing daily spf
adding a layer of tinted spf to hide the darkening
the start of excruciating & heavy menstrual cycles
bleaching creams, even prescription ones
working in a cave-like environment with barely any sun exposure during the week & heavy blue light exposure
retinols
while the bleaching creams temporarily fixed the solution, everything kept getting darker when in the sun & heat, just as i was told.
so what did i do? i blocked the sun more. & more.
at this time, we moved out of houston to the sunshine state of florida. sun was everywhere, and i wore hats / zinc / kept up with my 10-step skin routine, and all the while my menstrual cycles were getting worse.
fast-forward to my healing journey with endometriosis, i realized there was a direct connection between my melasma and my menstrual cycle symptoms.
estrogen & iron overload.
THE SUN, HEAT, & MELASMA CONNECTION.
high estrogen & high iron go hand in hand, as they essentially amplify the effects of one another. now, estrogen & iron are not “bad” things, of course. we just have quite the abundance of them in our industrialized food supply, pharmaceuticals, & even beauty / skincare products.
& where can you especially find these? in HORMONAL BIRTH CONTROL PILLS.
once i made this connection, i realized why the heat + sun can “trigger” melasma— have you guys seen what happens when iron gets hot?
my opinion is that when estrogen & iron are being stored into the tissues and not recycling out of the body (we’ll get there later), the sun is illuminating it. high estrogen is known to age the skin, and then add iron to the mix, and you’re left with these grey-ish, brown-ish spots on the skin that look like they’re coming from the inside-out, not the outside-in. y’all know exactly what i’m talking about if you’ve dealt with melasma.
in fact, i recently just experimented with some dermaplaning to my skin from one of my favorite holistic spots on kauai. i remembered back when i had melasma, i read on several sites that women had attempted to “derma” and saw that the spots were even darker beneath the exfoliation. explain that.
the call is coming from inside the house.
by forever hiding from the sun, you’re just suppressing the EXPOSURE of what’s being stored in your tissues.
therefore, that’s why mine got worse & worse over time. even when i had looked like a corpse with my heavy zinc & hat on, the heat would still darken the spots more & more.
let’s get practical.
if it’s possible that melasma is being driven by an overload of estrogen & iron, what supports the balance of those?
1) THE iron RECYCLING SYSTEM
iron needs to be recycled through the body, and what is a woman’s natural way of eliminating and recycling iron? her menstrual cycle. is it making sense to you already why pregnant women struggle more with melasma while not bleeding and offloading iron every month? is it also making sense to you why my periods got very heavy during the time of melasma appearing, so my body could intelligently offload the excess of iron i had taken in from birth control & other sources? there’s your ah-ha moment!
back in the day, my podcast co-host & i interviewed morley robbins and we did an entire podcast episode about this topic, which you can find here.
what i’ve learned is that i need much more of quality animal products, vitamin A from retinol, vitamin C, & copper. these have been easily added to my diet through the regular consumption of foods like liver, oysters, eggs, full-fat dairy, seafood, local citrus, and cod liver oil if needed. keep in mind that you need a well-functioning thyroid & system to handle large amounts of vitamin A, so it’s one to experiment with.
the other interesting thing was the yellow tone that my skin had as well, which is also a classic sign of iron overload / a lack of resources to support the iron recycling system.
2) ELIMINATING excess estrogen
you can find many resources, posts, & podcast episodes in my spaces where i have discussed the symptoms related to excess estrogen & just how prevalent it is today (contrary to what the hormone replacement industry will feed you). you can also read ray peat’s work on this topic on raypeat.com. some practical lifestyle shifts i have made to support my estrogen:progesterone balance—
THE DAILY RAW CARROT SALAD
VITAMIN E // CODE IS KORI
ADEQUATE CHOLESTEROL INTAKE
ADEQUATE PROTEIN INTAKE
INCREASING MY METABOLIC RATE
DECREASING UNSATURATED FATS & INCREASING SATURATED FATS
GREATLY DECREASING POLYUNSATURATED FATTY ACIDS
MAGNESIUM // MAGNESIUM BICARBONATE // CODE IS REWILD OR KORI
GOING TO SLEEP BY 10PM TO MANAGE CORTISOL LEVELS
FINDING JOY & PLEASURE IN LIFE AND MANAGING STRESS LOADS
WHAT WE GOT WRONG ABOUT sunlight & melasma.
like i said earlier, sunlight seems to expose what we need exposed. take this as a lesson in the connection between symptoms & the psyche that perhaps if we are hiding our skin, we are hiding our true selves. after all, the skin on your face quite literally represents your sense of self. while making practical lifestyle shifts, i’d also encourage you to reflect on the symbolism of “hiding” and see where that’s also tracking in your life. there is no separation between symptoms & the psyche!
now back to the mecca illuminator of what’s being hidden— THE SUN.
jack kruse has been speaking for years that melasma is a sun deficiency & overdoing blue light problem, and that dosing direct morning sunlight is what is going to move the needle. this is exactly what i did!
i stopped covering myself with zinc + skin tints (which by the way… tinting in makeup is made from… IRON OXIDES), and i started with sunrise light on my eyes and skin, and then the hour after sunrise, and then i gradually kept increasing my exposure to the sun.
i of course wear a hat in the more intense times of the day, but every day i prioritize getting my bare eyes & skin in the healing sun and out of artificial blue lights. i also wear my ra optics blue-light blockers (code is KORI) anytime i’m exposed to artificial blue light.
we also turn off all overhead lights at night.
SO TO RUN IT BACK—
i started exposing my bare skin to morning sunlight
i eliminated artificial blue lights from my home
we turn off all overhead lights (technically we don’t use these at all in our home) at night
i installed circadian & blue light-free bulbs in my home // code is KORI
i wear blue light blockers anytime i’m using a screen // code is KORI
i cancelled my blue light-lit gym membership & started working out in natural light
i started living in sync with my circadian rhythm & appropriately exposing my skin to natural light
with time, THINGS SHIFTED COMPLETELY.
this is the part that we all need to come to terms with, is that melasma is something that is built over time, so its going to take time to shift the internal state of the body. it did take time for me to see shifts, and i’ll 10/10 times choose the sustainable route than the short-term gratification.
A NOTE ON skincare.
when i drastically decreased PUFA from my nutrition & focused on saturated fats instead, this also included my skincare. i knew that polyunsaturated fatty acid-heavy skincare is cheap to make, easy to find, and what is present in even your luxury brands today.
i switched it up to family-owned & operated saturated-heavy skincare.
a few of those favorite brands (code is KORI for all of these) are—
FATSKN (the owner also healed her melasma herself)
KOSSMA (i believe you can get 10% off with the code KOSSMA10 with them)
for some extra encouragement, here is a highlight from women in my spaces who have healed their melasma as well!
the sun is healing, my friends!
-KORI MELOY