According to the National Dairy Council, milk does not cause acne. However, the Harvard Nurse’s Health Study found that the more milk the nurses drank, the more acne they had. In fact, the nurses that drank skim milk were found to have worse acne.
How does milk cause acne? Milk comes from pregnant cows and contains hormones* that are designed to make a small calf grow quickly to several hundred pounds. It was not intended for human babies. We already know that teen acne correlates with the amount of hormones in a teen’s body. When we drink milk, we are consuming hormones that were not meant for teens or adults. They were meant for babies, baby cows.
Normally, a pregnant mother’s body makes milk for its developing baby. After the baby is born, the baby drinks that milk. Then, the mother weans the baby off the milk, and her body stops making milk. Because, after being weaned, the baby is not meant to drink milk ever again. When humans drink a pregnant cow’s milk, we are doing something unnatural. It is unnatural to drink milk after you have already been weaned from your own mother’s milk. It is even more unnatural to drink the milk of another animal.
All milk bought from stores was found to contain as many as 15 sex hormones, and skim milk was found to have the most. Even organic milk has these hormones. Specifically, skim milk contains high amounts of estrogen. Estrogen is the primary female sex hormone. These findings are not unexpected because as mentioned before, cow’s milk is the perfect food to make a baby cow grow to a very large size. Clearly, humans were not meant to grow to such large sizes. In fact, unrestricted growth is known to lead to many diseases.
According to the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, “It should surprise no one that milk contains such a heavy complement of growth-enhancing hormones. Milk is, after all, specifically designed to make things grow.”
What are some solutions? The simpler option is to cut back or eliminate the consumption of milk and milk products. There are many dairy alternatives that can be substituted. A more difficult option is to create a milk that does not have these adverse effects. At this time, there is no such milk. In any case, these options will not only reduce acne, but will also reduce chances for diseases like cancer, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
-Hanna G.
*Hormone: a substance produced by an organism that is transported through its body in the blood to signal specific parts of the body to do specific things; a signaling molecule.
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