To this day, I can’t believe that the dairy industry is still in business. I’m not vegan, but I tried it once. This isn’t about my love of cows…This is all about the dairy and acne connection.

Dairy causes severe acne…Read on.

How Is Milk Produced?

Milk is produced by impregnating cows every year…And not the old-fashioned, romantic way either with a frisky bull. Oh nooooo….

The farmer puts on a glove reaching to their shoulder (basically an arm condom), and then put their whole arm in a cow’s butt, which is also the cow’s vagina…Where they release sperm. This is called artificial insemination, but it doesn’t sound fun.

It’s probably even less fun to get the sperm from a bull…

When a baby calf is born, they’re taken away from their mother. If it’s a boy, it gets fattened for beef or used for veal, if it’s a girl then it gets to live the same kind of life as its mother.

The mother is then hooked up to a milking machine…In order for her to produce more milk to fill all kinds of quotas, the farmers pump the cows with growth hormone and antibiotics.

After about 5 years of being milked, she just dies from exhaustion and gets turned into ground beef.

Hormones In Milk

Is your skin pimply AND oily? Dairy can be the reason.

The milk that you drink is produced by pregnant cows and contains HIGH levels of hormones that can throw your sebaceous glands into overdrive producing a TON of oil!

Milk is also full of hormones like progesterone and androgens that turn into DHT (dihydrotestosterone), and also IGF-1 (Insulin Growth Factor).

It is full of anabolic hormones, the same ones that help body builders build big, juicy muscles.

Essentially, this means that dairy boosts male sex hormones is both women and men. Dairy also increases insulin levels just as acne-causing foods that spike blood sugar like bread, cake, and pasta.

All these hormones are a recipe for a hormonal imbalance, and they stimulate your sebaceous glands resulting in explosive acne.

Nowadays, you might still find farmers using bovine growth hormones in their cows – but this practice has been banned in Canada and Europe.

There’s an average of 60+ hormones in a glass of milk. There’s no such thing as hormone-free milk – even organic milk is laden with hormones.

However the difficult life of a cow means that her udders get infected, so this means she needs antibiotics to survive. You end up getting to drink a nice hormone + antibiotic milk cocktail with the blood and pus filtered out. Yummy!

Drinking milk is bad news, and skim milk is EVEN worse for acne!

I grew up on milk. I ate it in my cereal, with pop tarts, with donuts, with cake, with cookies…I drank at least 1-2 glasses of milk a day. I also had a preference for skim milk, because as a kid I thought that full-fat milk would make me fat.

Lo and behold I had super inflamed acne as a teenager!!!

The Nurse’s Health Study examined the health habits of 47,000 nurses and found that those who drank more milk as teenagers had much higher rates of severe acne than those who had little or no milk as teenagers. I lived that.

As a parent, I would never give my kids milk. If you know someone suffering from teenage acne, then kindly direct them to this article.

But Don’t You Need Dairy For Calcium?

The dairy industry did a brilliant job brainwashing the masses and especially MOTHERS with their Got Milk? campaign. Everybody was convinced that the best way to get more calcium was through milk.

I had brittle nails that always broke, and endless split-ends as a kid. Ever since I stopped drinking milk, my skin improved and my hair and nails got stronger and more resilient. Nail breakage is a thing of the past, and I get haircuts once a year. Take that milk!

The problem with milk is that it’s acidic. When you ingest milk, your body actually needs to take calcium FROM YOUR BONES to neutralize the acidity. This results in weaker bones, weaker teeth, weaker nails, and weaker hair.

There’s a reason why the US has the highest rate of osteoporosis…

You get more calcium from nuts and vegetables than you do from milk. Even broccoli is a great source of calcium!

Are You Lactose Intolerant?

Another important thing to note is that about 70% of the population can’t properly digest lactose, the sugar found in milk. This causes all kind of issues like bloating, gas, digestive upset, stomach pain and others.

But if you grew up drinking milk, you might feel totally fine…Symptoms usually develop later on in teenage years.

Humans are incredibly resilient and can get used to the worst conditions – including dairy. I didn’t feel any stomach pain associated with dairy until I quit dairy. Only after introducing it a few times in the form of butter or cheese, I experienced major tummy issues.

For me personally, milk causes actual stomach pain from bloating and gas. TMI.

The same thing happened with gluten. I didn’t know I was intolerant of gluten until I eliminated it it for a couple of months, and then reintroduced it back. The symptoms hit me really hard then!

We get used to chronic fatigue and occasional pains and think they are NORMAL. But any kind of discomfort in the body is ABNORMAL. Pay attention to what your body is telling you!

Have you heard of anybody developing a broccoli intolerance? #teambroccoli

Why Dairy?

Milk has ONE purpose – to grow a baby cow. Just as your mother’s milk was meant to grow you before you could eat human food.

Dairy is extremely fattening. This was probably great back in the day when food was scarce, and our ancestors needed fat to protect them from the cold, and calories to run around looking for food. But times have changed.

We don’t need extra fat stores to keep us warm because we have jackets and shelters to keep us warm. We don’t need quick calories because we’re not running around hunting for food. We are privileged enough to walk into a grocery store and have our pick of healthy and even unhealthy options…

As far as I can see, there’s not a single reason to actually consume dairy.

I know some of you are extremely attached to your milk – especially the taste of milk. But does it make sense to consume something that does nothing for you?

What’s more is…Does it make sense to support an industry that isn’t at all concerned with your health?

It’s time to start looking at milk for what it really is – a business. Ask yourself, is the dairy industry an industry you want to support?

Dairy Alternatives

Quitting dairy is easier than ever with awesome tasting alternatives like almond milk, cashew milk, hemp milk, or my personal favorite, coconut milk!

I didn’t mention soy milk because the soy industry is another industry I don’t support for health reasons.

 

Final Thoughts

I’m not vegan, so this isn’t about me being obsessed with cows. But I am obsessed with my health and ethical business practices. I’m not going to support a company feeding me hormones and antibiotics.

I’m also not going to support barbaric farming practices that result in horrible quality, super-stressed meat either. We are what we eat, and I don’t want to eat a mother that was exhausted to death by horrible farming practices.

I think that ‘organic’ should apply to all food, and inorganic food should not be allowed to be sold at all…But I’m an idealist. However, every time we make a choice at the grocery store, we are casting our vote for or against the dairy industry. Your voice matters.

Ideally, all cows could roam free and only be used for meat at an old age…Wouldn’t that be nice?

Please reconsider dairy in your life, especially if you want clear skin and optimal health! Quitting dairy means clear skin that’s also less oily, better hair, and stronger nails. Winning!

Let me know which are your fave milk alternatives!

Love,
Olena

P.S. If you need help on your skin-clearing journey, sign up to get 28 of my BEST hacks for clear skin here!