I was taking the Optimum Nutrition Gold protein powder for a few years and struggled with painful cystic acne. No amount of antibiotics and pimple meds would make them go away. It took me a while to relate the two. I have switched to a Vegan Protein and no longer have pimples. yay! but I would like to go back to a whey based protein for the uptake efficiency.
Would a whey isolate causer the acne reaction? Would switching to a different brand help? Or should I just stay with the vegan protein?
While I don’t think that you need to worry about “uptake efficiency”, as a plant-based protein is almost certainly fine for hitting your protein goals, I don’t know that I’d relate a quality whey protein (see here ) to your acne. Sometimes things come and go and we try to make sense of them the best we can.
I get terrible skin rashes, itching, and horrible cystic acne from dairy. I discovered this when my family stopped using dairy after our baby was born. All of a sudden 15 years of acne vanished. I have replicated it dozens of times. Milkshakes are the very worst!
I’ve found that whey protein isolate does not cause this problem. I think it’s some casein that makes it into concentrate. Barbell Medicine sells an isolate. I personally use Dymatize Isolate because I think the flavors are absolutely delicious.
Yea, a dairy protein allergy can manifest in a number of different ways and may not be consistent from whole dairy to whey.
Just to throw in a little validation on all sides here: In my teens and 20s, I had terrible acne in the U.S. that would vanish in Europe. I eventually traced it to something about U.S. milk & corn products - I could make the acne rise or decline, depending on how much of them I regularly ate. I never learned the exact problem and today, decades older and consuming smaller amounts, U.S. milk & corn products do not bother me.