Is Dairy Good or Bad For Acne?
It used to be that any correlation between acne and diet was pooh-poohed by medical professionals. But new research showing that there just may be more truth to the acne and diet theory, has doctors and patients reexamining their data. Observational studies and clinical trials performed in the last few years have shown that those people with a diet higher in sugar and carbohydrates had more acne. Dairy is also a huge culprit in acne, as it boosts the male sex hormones (testosterone and androgens) and increases insulin levels, which leads to acne breakouts.
The benefits of dairy consumption has been up for debate for many years by those working in the field of nutrition. Milk is good for babies and young children, as it aids in growth. But do healthy adults really need to drink milk? You see, milk is naturally full of hormones, so even if you’re buying organic or raw milk, you’re still getting the naturally occurring hormones found in milk. Do we really need to be adding more hormones to our bodies? Probably not.
There was a well known Nurse’s Health Study that looked at the health habits of 47,000 nurses, it found that the women who drank more milk as teenagers had much higher rates of severe acne than those who had little or no milk as teenagers. Other studies conducted of 10,000 boys and girls from ages 9 to 15 years old found a direct link between the amount of milk consumed and the severity of acne. So what action can you take? Try swapping your regular milk for almond milk and cut your overall dairy intake in half.
