I'd been dairy free for a year now and rarely if ever broke out. I also followed the treatment regimen below. This Thanksgiving I ate cheese several times and now have two bright red papules - one on my cheek and one on my chin. I follow a strict doctor prescribed allergy diet (gluten-free, sugar free, etc.) but dairy was supposedly okay to eat. I chose to avoid dairy because of the acne connection.
Eating cheese is the only thing I changed in the past month and whammo...2 big red zits!!! Can't get a better experiment than that to show how dairy can cause flare-ups.
Some people break out from it and some dont, if you dont have acne and you drink 1 liter milk will not give you acne next day. If you cut out dairy and you never break out again, yes dairy was the cause of YOUR acne. But if you cut out dairy, still break out but much less, dairy was aggravating your acne!
Added raw milk a week ago (grass fed cows) to my diet, and I'm probably drinking between 700 - 800 calories / day (started lifting), between raw cream, raw whole milk, and raw kefir (in skim milk).
No problems here; not a sign of anything worse.
However I do have problems with milk from hormone-injected cows feeding on Frito Lay's waste product that live in congested disease-infested dirt cells. As an added bonus, they heat the milk to a high temperature to make sure the good stuff is destroyed before selling it. Yum. That's the milk you see on the grocery shelves.
Yes, it's different for everyone and that's especially true with dairy. I just thought it very interesting how much dairy aggravated my acne and how quickly. I always thought there was a connection but never really believed so until this happened...avoiding it for a year, adding it back in for a couple of weeks and then whammo. The texture of my skin even changed...got more ruddy and oily. Was a pretty controlled "experiment" for me and just showed how much dairy was part of the problem!