**I know this is a long post but please read if you are an adult and suffer from cystic acne and are at your wit's end!**
Hello everyone!
I have been on and off this site since I was in highschool (I am now 24) and have been dealing with persistent acne ever since I was about 15-16 years old. I'm prone to hard, painful, cystic pimples and would sometimes have 5 or 6 of them pop up on my face in one day! Within the last 2 years, I started noticing my acne getting worse, and taking longer to heal and although I've never been prone to bad scarring, this past year I've started to notice the cystic acne causing permanant damage.
I've tried nearly every product, as many of you have as well I'm sure. Every dermatologist prescribed topical imaginable, as well as numerous antibiotics, and even different birth control pills (Accutane is the only antibiotic I've refused to take). I've spent countless hours wandering the aisles of drug stores hoping to find an over the counter miracle in a bottle but alas my search always ended up with me standing in front of my bathroom mirror with red spots all over my face. I've even tried a variety of all natural products and natural oils. While some have helped reduce the size of pimples, nothing seemed to prevent the acne from forming in the first place. I have had mild success with Sodium Sulfacetamide (it kept my skin almost flawless for about a year while in college) but as you all know, topicals are a temporary solution since your skin is quick to form an immunity to most products.
Well, I'm here to tell you today that if you suffer from similar acne as myself and especially are in your mid to late twenties or even older, you may want to consider cutting dairy out of your diet. I read an article about dairy and acne about a month ago and decided, what did I have to lose by trying it out? I took a long hard look into my cabinets and fridge and started realizing that I not only eat a lot of cheese but have yogurt for breakfast nearly everyday. I started slowly weening myself off of dairy and finding great substitutes for my favorite foods (Daiya cheese is the best tasting non dairy cheese I've found and coconut milk yogurt is delicious) and low and behold my acne stopped dead in its tracks! No more painful, hard, cystic pimples wrecking havoc on my poor face. I even went camping and wasn't able to wash my face twice a day and hardly broke out because I stuck to a dairy free diet.
Then I did a test, I ate some goat cheese and a half of donut at a work related party and almost 24 hours later I had a flare up and 4 new cystic pimples came to greet me. Since the breakout, I've stopped eating dairy again and no new breakouts! My skin seems to be calming down drastically and my prexisting scars have started to get a chance to heal because new pimples haven't popped up over them (we all know how terrible that is). Thinking back, no wonder none of those antibiotics or topicals really helped, because I was still happily eating all the dairy in the world which counteracted the medications.
I know this is a wordy post, and thanks for reading. If you feel like your story sounds similar to mine, please consider cutting diary out of your diet, even for 2 weeks! Look at yourself as a scientist testing out a hypothesis! I know this seems nearly impossible, especially if you're a New Yorker like myself and live on a daily pizza diet. However, everytime you reach for the dairy, envision a huge, red cyst forming and how that 30 minutes of pleasing your tastebuds, will cause your face a month's worth of trouble aka it's just not worth it! Swap that ice cream for the sorbet pronto!
couldn't agree more, gluten and dairy were the culprits for my cystic acne...and I suffered for years
it's not easy to do, but for me, it was the 'cure'
it won't work for everyone as all causes are unique in each individual, but why wouldn't you at least try it! that's what I always recommend first
congrats to you, now stick with it!
Preaching to the choir! My acne was never cystic, but I would get rash-like bumps punctuated by larger pustules that seemed to be never-ending. It didn't get better until I cut out milk, sugar, and refined carbohydrates. I am also sensitive to large amounts of iodine so I can't have foods that use iodized salt or eat things with spirulina or kelp in them. If I stick to the plan, my skin looks great. If I stray, I am reminded of my condition within 24 hours in the form of painful bumps. I also juice vegetables, and have found carrot and beet juice in particular of great benefit. I also add gelatin to my soups and stocks. I suppose that my diet would be considered largely paleo, but I still cook with butter (it's mostly fat, so I feel like it's fine) and occasionally have goat's cheeses (rarely, though), and also still eat some grains, though I keep them to a minimum. I'm not about to go eat toast with breakfast followed by a sandwich for lunch. Most people eat far too much carbohydrate, and I don't think anyone should drink milk at all.