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On TikTok, more and more young people are posting videos in which they praise the benefits of apricot kernels on acne. A practice which is not without danger for health since these small almonds contain a substance which is transformed into cyanide once ingested.
The videos have been viewed millions of times on TikTok. Which means millions of people could be tempted to eat the almonds in apricot kernels to reduce their acne. This new beauty trend is encouraging teens with acne to use cyanide to prevent or reduce the appearance of pimples on their face!
A substance that is also found in cherry pits and apple seeds
As a reminder, apricot seeds, apple pips, cherry pits and walnut shells contain amygdalin, a substance that turns into cyanide once ingested. Problem, cyanide is a toxic substance for humans when consumed in large quantities. “Cyanide poisoning can cause coma, low or high blood pressure, loss of consciousness, lung damage, seizures, and death in the most severe cases.”, Dr Neel Patel told the Daily Mail. According to the European Food Safety Authority, apricot kernels pose a risk of cyanide poisoning.
Five apricot kernels a day
On one of the videos, which has been viewed more than 473,000 times and has been liked 80,0000 times, we see the tiktoker Graceattakk explaining that if her skin is so beautiful, it’s probably because she used to to eat the almonds contained in the kernels of apricots when she was a child. The young woman says that she ate at least five almonds of apricot kernels a day when she was little and still lived in China. It wasn’t until a few years later, when she came to live in the United States, that she learned that what she was eating was actually poison.
This is why she decided to warn Internet users about the dangers of this practice in her video.
Benefits that have not been scientifically proven
Unfortunately, other users are not as responsible and continue to promote this practice without mentioning the dangers it entails. Thus, some users of the social network do not hesitate to say that their skin is more beautiful since they eat apricot kernels.
The tiktoker queenseedadrianne goes even further by declaring that she has increased her daily consumption of almonds from apricot kernels to ten a day to obtain results on her skin more quickly. She even brags about putting it in her boyfriend’s food without telling him.
Beyond the obvious danger, it has never been scientifically proven that this practice could have any effect on the skin.