Breakouts come with an endless number of descriptors: hormonal breakouts, cystic breakouts, comedonal breakouts, inflammatory breakouts, stress breakouts, hairline breakouts, soul-sucking-misery-causing breakouts. The list goes on.
But despite the variety in naming, they all have the same common root causes. A cocktail of: bacterial growth, biofilm matrix, hormonal dysregulation, compromised barrier, and unchecked inflammation. And it can feel like a lot to tackle (and it is)! That's why DIM is such a big breakthrough – it impacts all five of the core drivers of chronic breakouts.
Here's your breakdown on the most promising new ingredient for breakout-prone skin.
What's on the agenda:
What is DIM?
It's broccoli. Anticlimactic, but DIM comes to be when your body digests cruciferous vegetables. Broccoli, kale, cabbage, cauliflower, brussel sprouts - all the things your mom told you to eat!
The fun part is that brassicas don't actually contain DIM. They contain a precursor called indole-3-carbinol, and when that hits the acid in your stomach, two molecules of it fuse into one molecule of DIM. Your own body manufactures it!
SCIENTIFIC NAME
3'3 diindolymethane
WHERE IT COMES FROM
Your body's own chemical process when digesting vegetables.
MOST STUDIED FOR
Its anti-cancer benefits, anti-inflammatory power, and its beneficial effect on how your body metabolizes "bad" forms of estrogen.
That's the whole origin. It wasn't invented in a lab. It isn't a peptide with a trademark and a marine-sounding name. It's a non-toxic, natural compound that has been sitting in the scientific literature for nearly fifty years, with thousands of published papers on it.
DIM History 101: From Ancient Rome to Amazon Bestseller
Around 160 BC, a Roman statesman named Cato the Elder wrote a farming manual, and inside it he devoted roughly two thousand words to cabbage. Not to growing it. To prescribing it.
Cato's cabbage cured headaches, failing eyesight, and digestive trouble. When crushed into a paste, he wrote, it healed wounds, bruises, sores, and dislocations — painlessly. His summary: “it will cure all the internal organs which are suffering.” A century and a half later Pliny the Elder was still quoting him, opening his own section on the vegetable with the wonderfully weary line, “It would be a lengthy task to list the good points of the cabbage.”
The Romans put crushed brassica directly onto skin. But they were the last people to try it for about twenty-one centuries.
CATO'S DE AGRI CULTURA
1978: Somebody Finally Catches Up
The compound gets its name in modern literature in 1978, when Lee Wattenberg and Larry Loub at the University of Minnesota tested three indoles found in edible cruciferous vegetables. Two of the three did something measurable. One of them was DIM.
That's the beginning of the modern research, and for the next four decades it goes in one direction: consuming DIM. DIM gets studied for hormone metabolism, for estrogen pathways, for cancer prevention. Hundreds of papers, thousands eventually, and almost all of them about a compound you swallow.
Late 1990's: The "How Do We Bottle This" Problem Gets Solved
The reason DIM has spent forty years as something you take with a glass of water is that it barely dissolves, and it doesn't like to stay stable when exposed to air and light. This made DIM a promising molecule that couldn't get anywhere useful.
That got solved in the late 1990s — a patented microencapsulation system that finally made oral DIM absorbable. The thing is, once the supplement industry had a version that worked, there was no money-making reason for anyone to go looking for any other forms to use it in...
...Which Is How You End Up Here, Today.
Nowadays, DIM is a fixture of the supplement aisle. It's a staple in the PCOS and hormone-balance world, and it's the #1 doctor-recommended supplement for hormonal acne.
But more exciting is that DIM is now being accepted as a scientifically-backed approach for acne right where it matters – the skin. Head-to-head studies against benzoyl peroxide show that DIM is 12.5 times more potent against C. acnes bacteria and related biofilms.
And in 2018, we patented the use of DIM (a.k.a. our Heart to Heart Complex®) in cosmetics and have been getting this magical compound into everyone's skincare routines since!
The 5 Root Causes of Breakouts (and Why DIM Beats Big Beauty's Ingredients)
Five things are happening in a breakout. Your routine was built for one and a half of them.
Every breakout you've ever had — with whichever descriptor in front of it — runs on the same five mechanisms. Here they are, and here's where the current beauty aisle, OTC, and even Rx's fall short:
1. Bacterial Overgrowth
C. acnes lives on everybody's face, including everybody with clear skin. It isn't an infection and a sterile face was never the goal. The problem is overgrowth, and specifically overgrowth of the strains that turn destructive.
What Big Beauty does about it: Benzoyl peroxide, which oxidises everything it touches and hopes it does enough literal free-radical damage that the overgrowth stops.
What DIM does instead: It is shown to inhibit C. acnes growth outright. It also turns down the genes the bacteria use to be destructive in the first place, meaning turning down the volume on the enzymes that let a colony damage the tissue around it.
2. Biofilm Matrix
This is the big one that almost nothing on the shelf accounts for. Bacteria in your pores don't float around loose; they secrete a matrix around themselves (a biofilm) that seals the colony in and seals your skincare out. Bacteria inside one can be up to 1,000 times harder to get rid of than the same bacteria without one.
What Big Beauty does about it: A whole lot of nothing. Biofilm disrupters don't really exist in beauty.
What DIM does instead: It gets through the biofilm and stops the next one being built.
Against C. acnes and the biofilm it hides in, DIM tested 12.5 times more potent than benzoyl peroxide. It doesn't just penetrate the matrix; it inhibits the matrix from forming.
3. Hormonal Dysregulation
Your skin is not a passive surface that hormones happen to. It's a steroidogenic organ — your sebaceous glands carry the same enzymes your ovaries do, and they convert precursors into active androgens, testosterone and DHT, locally, right inside your pores. Which is why your bloodwork can come back completely normal while your jawline stages a hormonal coup!
What Big Beauty does about it: Nothing, mostly. Topical products don't engage with this at all, and the only options that do are systemic prescriptions with their own significant tradeoffs.
What DIM does instead: It engages androgen receptors. Spironolactone (the drug prescribed off-label for hormonal breakouts) works by blocking androgen receptors. So does DIM. It was identified as the first pure androgen receptor blocker ever found in a plant, a strong competitive inhibitor of DHT binding.
4. A Compromised Barrier
Most people know this one nowadays! The actives that "work" on acne — salicylic acid, benzoyl peroxide, retinoids — all harm the skin's barrier that is supposed to be keeping irritants out and water in. So the treatment damages the defense → the weakened defense lets more through → your skin reacts with inflammation.
What Big Beauty does about it: Sells you the stripping product and the repair product separately.
What DIM does instead: It flips the barrier-repair switch. Your skin cells carry a receptor called AhR that governs whether the barrier rebuilds itself. Activate it and your skin produces more of the structural proteins it's actually built from — filaggrin, loricrin and involucrin. DIM is a well-known AhR agonist.
5. Unchecked Inflammation
Inflammation is what turns a fairly-benign clogged pore into something that hurts, something that takes forever to go away, and something that leaves a mark for months.
What Big Beauty does about it: Treats it as a color problem. Something to correct with concealer or fade with brightening serums, rather than a process in your skin that's worth addressing while it's happening.
What DIM does instead: It calms the inflammation, rather than covering it.
DIM has been shown to turn down the immune signals that drive inflammatory skin — the Th2 and Th17 pathways, IL-17A, TSLP. In our own consumer trial, 88% reported less inflammation.
The failure that isn't your fault
Three of those five (biofilm, local hormone production, and the barrier's role in the cycle) have only really been understood in the last couple of decades.
The last genuinely new acne approach for acne reached consumers in 1996. Not reformulated. Not relaunched in a nicer bottle by a brand with better typography. But an actually novel molecule.
Everything in your bathroom cabinet is the same few molecules, at different concentrations, again and again. And it has been for decades.
So when the third product in a row stopped working, you assumed the problem was you.
But the problem is actually the fifty-year-old acne shelf at CVS.
Frequently Asked Questions About DIM in Skincare
You're not the only one wondering! Here are the answers to your burning questions.
Q: I've heard of DIM as a hormone wellness supplement - is that a problem when using it on my skin?
A: No, because "hormonal" means something different on your face than it does in a capsule.Your skin makes its own hormones. The oil gland attached to every pore builds testosterone and DHT locally, which is why two people with identical bloodwork can have completely different skin. That's where topical DIM works. It isn't a capsule's dose, and its job stops at your skin.
Q: So is this the same as the DIM supplement I can buy?
A: Yep, same compound, just with a completely different job. Oral DIM travels through your whole system, and whatever reaches your face arrives last and diluted. Ours goes into your skin and stays there, right where your breakouts are.
Q: I looked up DIM and one of the studies calls it a "hormone disrupter." What gives?
A: In a lab, that phrase means one very specific thing: that DIM interacts with hormone receptors. But that doesn't make it inherently dangerous. There is no known toxic effect, like there is with phthalates, BPA, and synthetic chemicals that interfere with your hormones in ways nobody wanted. DIM is a broccoli compound and isn't on those lists. Talking to a receptor on purpose isn't the same as a plastic byproduct doing it by accident!
Q: Will it make me purge?
A: No. Retinoids make you look worse before you look better. DIM can help support cell turnover without the aggressive, negative phase.
Q: Can I use it alongside my retinol? What about a prescription?
A: Retinol, yes — though a lot of people find they stop wanting to use it. If you're on a prescription, keep taking it and talk to whoever prescribed it. "Stop your medication" is not a sentence we're going to write :)
Q: What about the good bacteria on my face?
A: A sterile face was never the goal! C. acnes bacteria lives on everybody, including everybody with totally clear skin. The problem is overgrowth that ends up behind a biofilm. DIM works on the biofilm itself, and turns down the genes that make the bacteria destructive! Less collateral, not more.
Q: My breakouts are hormonal / cystic / PCOS-related. Is it different for me?
A: The descriptor changes, but the five root causes don't! What changes is that the hormonal intensity is higher in local androgen receptors. DIM is a great match for your breakout type!
Q: I have sensitive skin. Is this going to sting?
A: It shouldn't! Most of what stings in an acne routine stings because the mechanism *is* the sting — acids exfoliate, benzoyl peroxide oxidizes, retinoids force turnover.
DIM doesn't do any of that :) Patch test just to be safe if you are concerned!
Where To Get DIM in Skincare
Right here at L'AMARUE is the only place you can find DIM in skincare. Our patented Heart to Heart Complex® is the only DIM molecule on the market in beauty!
For breakout-prone skin of all kinds, we recommend our Clarify & Control Protocol. It's safe for sensitive skin, all ages, and is a breeze to use.
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We so hope this info has been valuable, and that we can help you (or a loved one!) feel great in your skin again! Pass this article along to anyone you think might find it interesting :)
If you have any questions whatsoever about DIM, our products, or why the sky is blue, please reach out! We'd love to chat - send us an email at team@shoplamarue.com
References
Wattenberg LW, Loub WD. Inhibition of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon-induced neoplasia by naturally occurring indoles. Cancer Research, 1978.
DIM FIRST IDENTIFIED AS ACTIVE
Kim S, Lee Y, Park S, Lee J. Antibiofilm and antivirulence activities of 3,3′-diindolylmethane against Cutibacterium acnes. Microbiology Spectrum, 2022. doi:10.1128/spectrum.02056-21
THE 12.5×; GROWTH + BIOFILM INHIBITION; VIRULENCE GENESChen W, Yang C-C, Liao C-Y, et al. Expression of sex-determining genes in human sebaceous glands. JEADV, 2006. doi:10.1111/j.1468-3083.2006.01663.x
SEBACEOUS GLAND AS A STEROIDOGENIC ORGANSlominski A, et al. Steroidogenesis in the skin. J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol, 2013. doi:10.1016/j.jsbmb.2013.02.006
LOCAL TESTOSTERONE AND DHT PRODUCTIONLe HT, Schaldach CM, Firestone GL, Bjeldanes LF. Plant-derived 3,3′-diindolylmethane is a strong androgen antagonist. J Biol Chem, 2003. doi:10.1074/jbc.M300588200
FIRST PURE PLANT ANDROGEN RECEPTOR ANTAGONIST
Furue M, Hashimoto-Hachiya A, Tsuji G. Aryl hydrocarbon receptor in atopic dermatitis and psoriasis. Int J Mol Sci, 2019. doi:10.3390/ijms20215424
AHR, FILAGGRIN, TAPINAROFWu Z, et al. DIM alleviates acute atopic dermatitis by regulating T cell differentiation in a mouse model. Mol Immunol, 2020;130:104–112. doi:10.1016/j.molimm.2020.11.013
TH2/TH17, TSLP
Wu Z, et al. DIM alleviates acute atopic dermatitis by regulating T cell differentiation in a mouse model. Mol Immunol, 2020;130:104–112. doi:10.1016/j.molimm.2020.11.013
TH2/TH17, TSLP
