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 very simple, very cheap solution: eliminate milk and ice cream from your diet.

In December, I was experiencing uncommon, cystic breakouts around my jawline. I went to a reputable dermatologist here in NYC who asked, "Do you consume a lot of dairy?" I was surprised by his question because he isn’t a holistic doc. "Yes," I told him. "Milk on cereal almost every morning and a couple servings of ice cream a week." Also, I had started working at a new company, whose brand of milk stocked in the fridges (which I have on my cereal every morning while reading e-mail) was different than that 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, milk is loaded with hormones—some brands more than others—and those hormones are broken down in the human body into dihydrotestosterone (DHT). DHT stimulates the sebaceous glands, increasing sebum production. (It’s also responsible for male and female pattern baldness.) I also learned that hormonal acne typically occurs around the jawline—exactly where my zits were popping up.

I traded in my regular milk for organic soy milk and quit the ice cream. And I was stunned. Within just a few days the zits were gone and no new ones were in their place. Even better, my face was significantly less shiny at day's end, and my skincare products seemed to be working better (probably because they weren’t competing with umpteen layers of oil under my skin)! 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 won't keep zits away because all cow milk contains hormones. Hormone-free just means that the cows weren't given hormones.