Milk, Hormones and Acne

It started as just a small red dot or two, but quickly spread to my daughter’s chin, nose and a little on her forehead too.  And, of course, this was two weeks before school pictures.  I normally would just write this off as part of hormonal adolescence…only my daughter is seven, not seventeen.  So why the heck was she getting acne?

We had her stop using soap on her face and instead just use water, which helped reduce the redness a little, but didn’t get rid of the pimples.  Since I started learning about clean eating I’ve come to the opinion that many common ailments are both caused and cured by food, so I began to look at what my daughter was eating.

Lots and lots of milk.  Hmmm.

I remembered that last year I reviewed a book called The 8-week Healthy Skin Diet by Karen Fischer, so I pulled it out to see what she had to say.  She writes, “Milk and other dairy products are associated with acne outbreaks.  Researchers from one particular study said that dairy consumption increased the risk of acne and this may have been due to the animal hormones and bioactive molecules found in milk products.”

That made me wonder about hormones in milk.  Did you know that regular milk not only has normal hormones you’d find from a nursing cow, but some brands actually have added even more hormones?  Why would this be?

Apparently in 1993 the FDA allowed dairy farmers to inject their cows with bovine growth hormone (bGh) to make them grow up faster and produce more milk.  That made the price of milk cheaper, but it wasn’t so good for the cows.  When they got sick, cows with the injected hormone needed higher doses of antibiotics to cure them.  These antibiotics get passed through the milk and into your child.  (Source: BabyCenter.com – Bovine growth hormone and milk: What you need to know)

Recently I saw the documentary Resistance, which chronicled the rise of  super bacteria, resistant to most forms of antibiotics.  One of the reasons for this is that farm animals are given antibiotics daily, even when they are healthy, so they can be kept in crowded conditions.  The film said it would be like sprinkling antibiotics on your corn flakes every morning for breakfast; the medicine is overused and therefore becomes less effective, meaning that sometimes people die if their strand of bacteria is resistant to the medicine we have available.

In the movie, they mentioned that hog farmers in Denmark decided, on their own to stop using antibiotics preemptively.  At first, a few pigs did get sick, but within a short amount of time bacteria resistance among the human population decreased and the profits from pig sales actually increased.  Largely based on this data, the EU decided to ban growth promoters in 2006.  (Source:  Environmental Health Perspectives – Reduced Antibiotic Use In Livestock – How Denmark Tackled Resistance)

But back to cows and milk.  I don’t live in Denmark, so I had to start reading labels here in Texas.  It’s kind of tricky because the FDA has resisted putting “bGh added” on the label.  They also don’t want milk manufacturers to write “bGh-free” on the carton.  This is really frustrating because I thought the FDA was supposed to protect us.  Why don’t they want us to know when manufacturers are adding hormones that we feed to our kids?

To be safe, I purchased some organic pasteurized milk, which was kind of expensive.  My friend, Regina, said there is milk at HEB that is not organic but pretty much regular milk minus the hormones.  It cost about the same as the regular milk sitting next to it.  This is what the label looks like:

The third milk we tried, called Mootopia, was actually suggested by the nutritionist I took my mom to after she was diagnosed with cancer.  It is lactose free, hormone free and has 12 grams of protein.  It contains about 120 calories (compared to about 100 calories for the other milk) but as neither my mother nor my daughter are watching their weight, it seemed to be a good choice.  It is more expensive than standard milk, but also has more benefits.

I’m happy to report that after switching to hormone free milk, my daughter’s acne went away within a week.  Milk was the only dietary change we made.

I’m not naïve enough to think that the American farming industry would be willing to ban antibiotics or bGh (like Europe and Canada did) just because it is healthy or, you know, moral.  But I do think that the American food industry does listen to the loud voice of profits.  Look at the recent trend of gluten-free products.  The market was able to meet the need of gluten intolerant consumers and make money as well.  Perhaps if we collectively started purchasing hormone free and antibiotic free milk, they’d get the hint that we just want our kids to drink safe, healthy milk.

What do you think about hormones and antibiotics added to our food?

Lisa 

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