Acne, Hormones & Milk

Acne is so common an affliction, especially among teenagers, that some authorities regard it as an unavoidable side effect of hormonal changes during puberty. As a result, general medical textbooks either ignore the problem or dismiss it in a sentence. But there is far more to acne than that, California's Dr. Jerome K. Fisher told the American Dermatological Association. And much of the trouble can be traced to what goes into the victim's stomach. From a study of 1,088 patients seen in ten years of Pasadena practice, Dermatologist Fisher has concluded that a principal villain is milk.

Sugar & Fat. Some of his teen-age patients drank as much as four quarts of milk a day, Dr. Fisher found, and their acne tapered off as soon as he tapered off their milk. His acne patients drank up to four times as much milk as the general population. Cow's milk contains 3 1/2 times as much salt as human milk, Dr. Fisher noted, along with generous amounts of butterfat and milk sugar. And Dr. Fisher accuses sugars as well as fats of aggravating acne. More to the point, male hormones (androgens) have long been recognized as a major triggering factor in acne, and Dr. Fisher suggested that female hormones of the progesterone type (unlike the estrogens) work the same way. Which makes it particularly significant that "about 80% of the cows that are giving milk are pregnant and are throwing off hormones continuously."

Progesterone breaks down into androgens, Dr. Fisher pointed out, and these stimulate the production of sebum, the waxy substance secreted by the sebaceous glands of the upper trunk and head. These myriad, tiny glands are easily blocked by hardened sebum, which creates a blackhead. In its efforts to get rid of this plug, the body starts the inflammatory process, causing a pimple. Inside the pimple are blood and lymph fluids in which bacteria thrive, creating a pustule similar to a small boil. At the edges of big pustules, bacterial poisons kill skin cells and leave disfiguring scars.

Diet & Stress. In treating acne, Dr. Fisher prescribes antibiotics to keep down the bacteria, and drains the pustules. He condemns the acne victim's bathroom ritual of pimple-squeezing as dangerous and likely to spread the infection. Dr. Fisher prescribes drying lotions to reduce the skin's oiliness, and he preaches the importance of soap-and-water cleanliness, plus germicides.

But a major element in his acne treatment is diet, a prescription that is not so simple as it sounds. Mothers complain that grown boys and girls keep on drinking milk, as in childhood, "because they don't like to chew meat or any food that takes time to eat--they're in too much of a rush." When Dr. Fisher advises teen-agers to cut down on foods rich in both fats and sweets--fried foods, ice cream, peanut butter, whole-milk cheeses (as distinct from cottage cheese), nuts and pastries, many of them set up an anguished wail: "Why, that's everything I live on." Dr. Fisher has another, admittedly impractical, prescription for his pimply patients: relax. Their acne, he notes, almost always flares up at such times of stress as high school exams, and two-thirds of them "look better after a carefree summer vacation.

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