Dealing with acne: phosphatase enzymes (part 2)

My thirteen year old daughter has been trying topical application of UHT milk--for its alkaline phosphatase enzymes--on her face twice a day for just over a month now. (I explain why in part one of this series.) At the one-month mark, I checked the acne-prone areas of her face and found that her acne looked about bad as it had at the experiment's start a month earlier. That was weird, for her skin had been doing better several days before that.

I went to the refrigerator and smelled her liter of UHT milk, and it was quite sour. She'd been using the same liter container for a whole month. I did check it around the 3-week mark and it was still sweet then, but it soured since without her realizing it.

When milk goes sour, its pH decreases, meaning it becomes more acidic. (https://thedairydish.com/is-milk-acidic/) Alkaline phosphatases are so named because they have optimal activity when the pH is alkaline. Skin itself is acidic. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18489300) My daughter's sour milk applications thus probably didn't result in much alkaline phosphatase activity.

She is using a fresh liter of UHT milk now, and her face is doing better, too. I need to find a source of small UHT milk containers so that she can use a fresh one every week or so without it costing so much. Not that $1/liter is expensive, but it can add up if one has to open a new milk container every week or two.

Because skin is acidic, I also want to try acid phosphatase, which is optimally active at acidic pH levels. One source of acid phosphatases is wheat germ. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14408027) I can spend a lot of money to get a small amount of pure enzyme from a research supply company, or if I'm willing to accept impure enzymes, I can soak some wheat germ in cold distilled water, mix it gently, and then centrifuge it, using the liquid on top afterward. (http://www.sjsu.edu/people/peter.nemes/courses/Chem131A/s1/Acid-Phosphatase-Protocol.pdf) Guess which option I'll pick? I don't have a centrifuge yet, but I can make a "Dremelfuge" out of my husband's Dremel. (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1483)

However, I feel like I should give the UHT milk alkaline phosphatases a week or two more of trial time before changing the type of phosphatase we use. It's not the milk's fault that I didn't notice it had gone sour. When I do switch to wheat germ acid phosphatase, one thing I need to remember is not to mix the acid phosphatase with alcohol; ethanol inhibits acid phosphatase. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15762484)