Milk May Trigger Acne, Says New Study
9 May 2007If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
A new study by the Harvard School of Public Health reignites an old debate over the links between milk and acne. A team of researchers surveyed a group of more than 47,000 women asking them about their diet as teens and whether they had ever been diagnosed with severe acne. There appears to be a correlation between women who drank a lot of milk and ultimately had acne. Scientists believe that the hormones in the milk are the culprits.
“What most dermatologists usually agree on is that the male hormone testosterone (also found in women), changes to dihy-drotestosterone (DHT) in the sebaceous glands, the oil-producing glands in the skin.”
It is this hormone that causes the skin to overproduce cells that ultimately stick together and form the telltale skin-clogging plug of acne.
“The milk most of us drink is produced by cows for their calves. To ensure maximum milk yields cows are inseminated days after giving birth to their calves, which are taken away. A dairy cow will spend most of its life being milked and being pregnant at the same time.
So milk is full of hormones: not only ones intended to help the calf grow, but also those produced by the placenta to aid the cow’s pregnancy. They include DHT, and other hormones that are the pre-cursors to DHT.”
Essentially a growing teen is getting a double whammy of hormones - from their own growth surge and the pregnant cow’s milk. And when the cow is given recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to further stimulate milk production, this can kick up the hormone brew quite a few notches. Drinking organic milk doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. Genuine organic milk does not use rGBH in its production, but impregnating cows for max production appears to be standard practice on organic farms as well. Interestingly enough, skimmed milk consumption appears to cause the highest incidence of acne; with two eight-ounce glasses raising acne risks by 44%. Researchers theorize that the practice of adding whey, which gives the nonfat milk a creamier texture, is making the hormones in the milk more reactive.
Another study is currently in the works to further examine the link between milk and acne. Stay tuned…
Spot The Culprit - Belfast Telegraph
May 21st, 2007 at 6:34 pm