Last Updated on September 5th, 2020
By Dr. Jaggi Rao, MD, FRCPC, Double board-certified dermatologist
When it comes to lactoferrin and acne, most people can’t easily make the connection between the two. How are they related? Well, skin health can sometimes be a fragile thing. There are so many ways it can go wrong and result in acne or other skin problems, even when we try to do all the right things. 🔎👀 Sometimes we may overlook some other important, and lesser-known, factors that make a huge difference to our skin health. One of those things is lactoferrin.
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Lactoferrin is a natural protein that the body creates. 🤱 It’s one of the first things that newborns get in their mother’s colostrum (the yellow, creamy pre-milk before the flow of regular breast milk) because it is absolutely necessary to live. It’s also found in all of the body’s natural secretions, including our tears, saliva, bile, white blood cells and other secretions from our orifices, such as our nose and genitals.
Its purpose is to eliminate toxins, waste cells, pathogens, and other unwanted or mutated cells and particles that are a threat to the body. Lactoferrin actually has anti-parasitic, antiviral, anti-allergenic, anti-cancer, antibacterial, and antifungal properties that assist the immune system in keeping the body healthy. That’s why it’s found in our secretions; our body needs lactoferrin to escort these unwanted cells and organisms out of the body. It’s also a chelating agent for iron, meaning that it attaches itself to iron molecules and takes them where they need to be.
This is important to note because iron is a magnet for pathogens, 🦠🦠🧲 which use it to thrive and reproduce in your body. When your body has excess iron, it is at risk of pathogens having enough fuel to live and multiply inside of you, putting your health at risk.
Lactoferrin plays an important role in eliminating those excess iron molecules once your body has absorbed all that it needs.
Without the excess iron, these pathogens have less room to feed and reproduce in your body.
Despite the fact that your body needs sufficient iron to function and produce hemoglobin (the protein that carries oxygen to your red blood cells), too much of it can create a problem for your body. While iron deficiency leads to anemia, iron overload leads to hemochromatosis. Normally, people often worry about the health problems that come with having too little iron and, in third-world countries, that is a valid concern. But in the developed world full of abundance, 👨🏿🦱👩🏻🦳👦🏽🧕🧔🏼👧🏾👨🦰 people are at risk of having too much iron, and it is suspected that there may be up to 1.7 million undiagnosed cases of iron overload amongst the general American population.
Iron overload can lead to a host of detrimental problems, destroying vital organs like the pancreas, liver, gut, brain, heart, nervous system and sex organs. In fact, iron overload may be responsible for the development of some of the deadliest diseases in the world, since pathogens need iron to thrive. Getting your iron levels right, therefore, is integral to optimal health.
Iron overload poses some serious health concerns and risks, even more than iron deficiency:
Lactoferrin’s job of getting rid of excess iron is absolutely crucial to regulating your iron levels and preserving the health of your organs and natural functions. Without it, your body will suffer from an imbalance that could actually kill you.
Since lactoferrin gets rid of iron, the very thing that feeds the pathogens in your body, ✅ it’s safe to say that lactoferrin helps to starve out the pathogenic bacteria that cause acne, known as p. acnes. This alone is a huge win for your skin, but p. acnes isn’t the only thing responsible for acne, and lactoferrin actually poses other huge benefits for healing your acne-prone skin.
As mentioned earlier, lactoferrin has antioxidant properties that ⚔️ fight off free radicals in the blood. Free radicals can cause oxidative stress that is considered to be one of the main driving factors behind acne-prone skin.
Lactoferrin also has anti-inflammatory properties that help to prevent skin inflammation, plus it can help with wound healing.
It stimulates the connective tissue (fibroblasts) in the skin and epidermal cells (keratinocytes) to regenerate your skin cells and help the synthesis of complex proteins, ultimately healing acne lesions. Speaking of wound healing, excess iron in the body has been proven to inhibit wound healing. 🩹 By removing this excess, lactoferrin gives your skin a fair chance to recover.
When it comes to gut health and acne, the two are extremely closely related. In fact, poor gut health inevitably leads to frustrating and debilitating skin conditions, including acne. Lactoferrin helps by starving out bad bacteria in your gut flora, like E. coli and salmonella, while promoting the growth of your healthy bacteria. It also enhances your gut’s muscle barrier, which is designed to prevent pathogens and particles from entering your bloodstream and making its way to the rest of your body, a condition known as leaky gut.
Lactoferrin also stimulates intestinal absorptive capacity and intestinal cell proliferation. Furthermore, 🔬📝 a study conducted in 2013 on Japanese women showed that lactoferrin actually helped improve the growth of bifidobacteria in their guts; in other words, lactoferrin helped increase their good gut bacteria.
A double-blind study conducted in 2010 placed some young adults, aged 18-30, into two groups. One group was given fermented milk with a 200mg dose of lactoferrin to drink every day for twelve weeks. 🥛📅 The other “placebo” group was given milk without lactoferrin to drink daily for the same period. At the end of the period, the lactoferrin group experienced a decrease in inflammatory lesions by almost 39%, their total lesion count had decreased by just over 23% and they experienced a reduction in sebum of just over 31% when compared to the group who drank the non-lactoferrin milk.
A similar study was conducted in 2011 using a lactoferrin tablet that was chewable and taken twice daily for eight weeks. 💊 The subjects of that study experienced a reduction in their inflammatory lesions of over 20% and a reduction in their total lesions of almost 23%.
Now that you’ve read all of that, you’re probably ready to begin boosting your lactoferrin levels and getting your body’s iron levels straight. The most common way to get lactoferrin is actually through milk. 🐄🐐 However, milk may be a problematic option for many people, as milk comes infused with other hormones that aren’t helpful to the body (to say the least).
Cow’s milk, though the most common, doesn’t have much lactoferrin in it, especially if it isn’t raw. Goat’s milk is a better option, as its enzymes and hormones more closely resemble human milk, but again, if you’re choosing the milk option, raw is the best way to go. The very best form of milk to drink for optimal lactoferrin levels is human milk, but that option is hardly available to the general public. Besides, it might be a little weird for the average person to consciously consume.
The other common way to get lactoferrin is through whey, but again, this doesn’t have much lactoferrin in it. Plus, it also poses other risks to your health that probably aren’t worth facing just to get the little lactoferrin that it has. The next popular source of lactoferrin is soy, but again, there are issues with hormones there that aren’t worth messing with. 📌 With all of the previously mentioned options, you have to really weigh the pros and cons and decide what is best for you. But maybe none of these options are worth taking.
The safest way to get more lactoferrin is through pill supplements, although this option poses its own risks as well. There is no real study that explores taking lactoferrin supplements as a long-term solution. Plus, lactoferrin supplements still come from a dairy-based source and contain whey in the mix. If you have an allergy to whey, this could be a problem. However, it’s a nearly-insignificant amount, so it may not pose a risk at all, at least to most.
The other thing to be careful of when taking these lactoferrin supplements is how much you consume. There are problems associated with lactoferrin overdose, including diarrhea or constipation, chills, loss of appetite, fatigue and skin rash.
Finally, lactoferrin supplements will give you the best results if you add probiotics to the mix.
After all, lactoferrin is good for the gut and the gut needs good bacteria to be healthy. Adding both to your regimen will give you optimal results. These results include:
If you think it might be too tricky to increase your lactoferrin intake, there are other ways to reduce iron overload. Luckily, there are a few things that you can do to help your body out.
The most important takeaway here is that your body needs lactoferrin to thrive. It’s one of the first things your mother’s milk gives you because it is imperative to eliminating toxins, pathogens, mutated cells and excess molecules in the body, especially iron. Iron, though necessary for healthy red blood cells and bodily strength, can be detrimental to the body in excess amounts.
Lactoferrin is responsible for regulating your iron levels.
By regulating your iron levels, you eliminate room for pathogens to thrive and harm your system. Lactoferrin not only eliminates these harmful substances; it also promotes the growth of healthy bacteria in your body for optimal gut health. Remember, a healthy gut will give you healthy skin.
Finally, lactoferrin isn’t the easiest thing to get in your diet, but with careful intake of a broad range of minerals and nutrients, 👌 your body will be able to function normally and produce its own lactoferrin.
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