For the last few months, my skin has been clearer than it has in the last 2 years. I thought maybe I was just allergic to Scott (ha ha ha) because it was after he deployed that I really noticed it. Then, 2 weeks after Easter, I went to Culver's, bought a few pints of frozen custard, and enjoyed an embarrassing amount of it over a 2 day period. That was Sunday and Monday. By Wednesday, I had a cluster of pimples on my cheek. By cluster, I mean 4 large-ish pimples that needed to be popped in order to get them to heal and go away. I haven't seen pimples like that since...January? Maybe before? I don't know. They were the kind of pimples I had plaguing me last spring.
These pimples lasted for about 5 days.
Then I thought about something: I'd given up ice cream for Lent. Lent had, coincidentally, started around the time Scott deployed. I hadn't had any ice cream for at least 8 weeks.
Then I started thinking about dairy...I don't eat much dairy. I don't drink milk, except for the occasional splashes of cream in coffee. Most days, I use the preservative-laden non-dairy creamer. I also, more or less, stopped drinking lattes within the last year because they didn't do much for me, caffeine-wise (I have a high tolerance). I always sort of had this theory that lattes were causing breakouts, but I never really put it to the test. There's so many variables and the most likely cause has always been hormones.
Moving on...I don't eat yogurt. I never got the appeal. I do like plain Greek yogurt mixed with cereal but it bothers my stomach so awhile ago I decided it wasn't worth it. I only really eat cheese on pizza. Occasionally a quesadilla.
So, I didn't eat dairy for a week after the ice cream feast and the pimples went away and no more popped up. That was always my biggest issue: I wouldn't get one pimple. I would get 15 at once and they would never go away. But these went away and that was it. Aside from cheese once or twice a week, I haven't had dairy since then. And I haven't had anymore issues.
Which leads me to believe that large, concentrated amounts of dairy aren't good for me. Like the large concentrated amounts found in ice cream.
I would really really hope that I'm wrong. Like, this is awful. But honestly, nothing is worth bad skin. Not even ice cream. I've learned that over the last year for sure. However, the only way to test for an allergy is to take away a food and then reintroduce it. So, I'll probably just avoid it for the time being. Of course, I do wonder about the psychological effect of this. Will I expect ice cream to cause problems in the future? Will it be some kind of backwards placebo effect? I don't know. This is terrible.
This is the card that came with my ice cream necklace a few years ago...it shows how deep my devotion runs.
