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Posted by JD in StrongLifts.com Forum
“I have used ON 100% Gold Standard Whey and some acne developed on me. During training days I take 5 scoops of it: 1 scoop in the morning, 2 scoops one hour before workout and 2 scoops after workout. During non-training days same number of scoops: 1 scoop per meal.”
Food Allergies. There are many theories on food allergies. Some say they’re caused by excessive hygiene in today’s society. Others say vaccines are to blame. And others say it’s lack of breastfeeding. Whatever.
Whey is a dairy product: it’s a byproduct of cheese. Allergic reactions to dairy are common. Lactose intolerance is one example. Acne another. Food allergies are a personal thing. What gives you an allergy, might not give me one.
Quark & Acne. I used to eat 1kg quark cheese daily. That’s +80g protein for less than 1€. 250g quark with berries at breakfast, 250g with apples as snack & 500g 2 hours before going to bed (quark digests slowly).
I often woke up with a red pimple on my forehead, throat or chest. One day I realized this didn’t happen when my quark intake was low. Stop eating quark for a week while keeping the rest of my diet the same confirmed this.
How to Avoid Acne from Whey. You only need more than 3 scoops daily if you want 3g/kg daily protein. Whole food is better than supplements. Alternate your protein sources: ground round, chicken breast, tuna cans, eggs, etc.
Trial & error works best to know what causes the food allegies. Start with 1-2 scoops whey daily for a week. Keep the rest of your diet the same. If you’re ok: try 3 scoops daily.
- Track Food Intake. Keep a journal of what you eat for two weeks. Fitday will help you track your food intake.
- Track Allergies. Mark the days on a calender where you get & don’t get skin reactions like acne.
What Your Skin Says About You. Your skin is the largest organ of your body. Skin problems say a lot about your health, which is influenced by your diet. Besides dairy, eggs, seafood, wheat and many more can cause allergies.
Unfortunately food allergies can not always be detected by laboratory tests. The only way to get to know your body is through by removing what triggers reactions. Topic of a future article. Stay tuned.
As far as i know, the increased level of growth hormone (stimulated by anaerob activity, like heavy weight lifting) also can cause acne.
You’re correct Simca. Increased testosterone also influences acne. You can easily spot steroid users by the acne on their face & back.
Not to mention the fact that the amount of sweating you do while training heavily can also affect your complexion.
3g/lb protein intake? I shudder to think of that one. I love me some protein and all but I weigh 235lbs; I can’t imagine trying to take in that much protein! I usually shoot for about 1.5-2g/lb of lean body mass. Even that is sometimes tough to make.
I’d be inclined to blame lactose intolerance. If it’s not Whey Protein *Isolate*, it probably has a pretty sizable load of lactose in it.
Simca makes a great point, that increased testosterone levels can lead to more acne. What can lead to having higher testosterone levels? A number of factors, including doing heavy, compound, anaerobic exercises in the gym. People who do these types of exercises often consume high levels of… Whey protein.
I wonder to what extent the increased acne is related to extra testosterone that comes from exercise and muscle mass as opposed to being from whey protein. Certainly the answer could be a combination of the two, depending on the person involved and their own tolerance for dairy products.
I’d be interested to hear if others have had similar reactions to dairy products.
A lot of whey protein products today don’t contain any lactose. They try and remove that now.
And I don’t think it’s the whey anyway, I remember before I started heavily breaking out, I was drinking whey from Max Muscle. Then I decided to upgrade to Max Muscles’ High-5 Protein which has whey protein concentrate, potassium caseinate, egg albumin, soy isolate and whey isolate. And that’s when I noticed breakouts appearing. Of course it could be from the hormones and lifting as well, as I was only 16 haha. But still, I still think it was the egg albumin (since the rest I drank before and drink now, except for the pot. case.) that caused it.
On a sidenote, dairy has been known to cause acne, so yeah maybe the lactose.
@ Jason. Best would be to test it through trial & error. Remove all whey. Continue lifting heavy. Got something or not? My example in the article: I get 1 or 2 red pimples on my shoulders/chest/forehead whenever I eat huge amounts of quark. Chocolate & junk food in general also cause it. Eat clean for a week while training hard: nothing. But again: this is personal, best is to test it so you get to know yourself.
I think you mean g. of protein per kg. of lean body mass, not g. per pound. All the studies are done in g. per kg., and the highest I’ve seen with any claims to positive effects was 2g./kg. (& that was done on new trainees). The classic studies are in the 1.4-2g/kg range. Dr. John Berardi suggests a bit more than this based on some theories (some seem v. reasonable to me), but again this is in g./kg., and I haven’t seen him back up these claims with much evidence (he also profits from selling protein powder- he designed Biotest’s Surge). 3 g. per pound would be 3 times the high end of what I’ve seen claimed based on even slim support from scientific studies at that level of consumption. There are studies that also contradict these, suggesting much lower protein needs, especially for trained athletes rather than newbies. If anyone has seen a well-designed study that shows benefits at the 5-7 g./kg. range I’d love to see it (I’d like to see them in the > 2 g./kg. range, for that matter).
I’m not saying that extra protein is bad or unnecessary, just pointing out that the units used in these discussions are kilograms not pounds, and that using the same numbers but changing the units means mistakenly inflating the protein intake by 2.2 times (# of pounds in a kg.), and that this isn’t supported by the scientific literature I’ve seen.
Alright i under acne. As an athlete i get a little. I rarely get large amounts or break outs. I work out and am going through puberty. Try cetaphil products they are great and work for me. I use the liquid wash. Don’t worry about acne though. It will go away but stress will cause colds sores and you tend to live longer if you don’t worry so be happy.
daveM. You’re right, I fixed it. Thanks a lot. Working with lbs & kg get confusing. It’s 2.2g/lbs or 1g/kg protein at least. Everyone should experiment with higher protein intakes & see what it does.
Thanks for reminding me about Quark. I used to buy it for sandwich spreads etc, but I bought the 40% fat variety. At Aldi today bought 1kg of 0,2% fat quark, 120g of which is protein only 1,50€.
You’re welcome John. I get the one from Aldi too, high protein & cheap. Cool website you have btw.
I know this is late, but rice protein is an alternative. I was reading about allergies and whey protein on Dr. John Berardi’s blog on his Precision Nutrition forum, and he suggests rice protein as an alternative to whey if one has a reaction to whey (which is a possible cause of acne).