Just Say Soy: The Dairy-Acne Connection

If you've been battling acne around your jawline and chin that just won't go away, try this simple, very cheap solution: eliminate dairy from your diet.

In December, out of nowhere, I started getting cystic breakouts around my jawline. After my mom commented on them while I was home at Christmas, I booked an appointment with a reputable dermatologist here in NYC.  In the middle of our session, he asked, "Do you consume a lot of dairy?" I was surprised by his question because he isn’t a holistic doc.

"Yes," I said. "Milk on cereal almost every morning and a couple servings of ice cream a week."  (Dang you, Ben & Jerry's!)  I also told him that I had started working at a new publishing company, whose brand of milk in the fridges (which I have on my cereal while reading email every a.m.) was different than at my former company. Would that matter? What’s dairy got to do with it anyway?

To summarize his explanation and subsequent research I did later, since milk is from lactating cows it is loaded with hormones.  Our bodies break down these hormones into dihydrotestosterone (DHT).  DHT stimulates the skin's sebaceous glands, increasing oil production.  (Excessive DHT is also responsible for male and female pattern baldness.)  I also learned that hormonal acne typically occurs around the jawline—exactly where my zits were.

I traded in my regular milk for organic soy milk and (painfully) quit ice cream. I was stunned.  Within just three days, the cysts were gone and no new ones were in their place. Even better, my face was significantly less shiny at day's end.

It’s now been two months since I quit milk and ice cream (can't part with cheese), and the jawline breakouts are completely gone.

**By the way, drinking hormone-free milk likely won't keep zits away because all cow milk contains hormones. Hormone-free just means that the cows weren't given extra, synthetic hormones.