Lactose or Dairy Intolerance

Orphia

My sisters and our kids and I recently discovered our whole family is lactose or dairy intolerant!

My older sister and her daughter knew about themselves, and my younger sister knew about herself and some cousins.

My son has been diagnosed with IBS which hopefully is just due to lactose/dairy which he always knew about. He's a bit freaked out and thinks he needs to avoid all sorts of things, and I need to keep reminding him to get the dairy eliminated first. It's hard finding enough calories from the right food some days!

I'd given up dairy milk in my coffee earlier this year due to being sick of the taste, and had had some improvement, so when I started putting the threads of the story together, I did an elimination diet for a week.

After a week eating no dairy products, and feeling good, I then had a bit of cheesecake and icecream and yep, ugh, ugh, ugh!! I finally realised that it was dairy that had been causing almost daily problems all my life.

Mum at first scoffed at the idea that she is allergic, "nobody had any food allergies when I was young" but nobody KNEW anything about most food allergies then. She has always thought she had dysentery since she was a child in China, and has always said she's had lifelong issues, but now I think she's accepted that we all have the same thing.

Funny how people haven't liked to talk about these things!

I think I read recently that 60% of people have problems with dairy. I'm almost starting to think maybe everyone is, and it's just under-reported.

I'd love to hear more from others who have learned or are learning about this.

Fuzzipeg

It seems as if your family share the genetics which eliminate or restrict the production of the enzymes required to digest milk from possibly soon after weaning, its how we, human kind were always made. Later some cleaver people realised milk from animals was a good nutritious food eventually finding ways to preserve it in many forms to help them through the lean times of winter. With age our bodies can loose the ability to make enzymes, sometimes its because of poor nutrition, though its more likely the systems do not work so well.

True allergies are life threatening, will have someone at deaths door in seconds. In the UK we have had several people who died because the list of allergens in prepared foods have not been up to scrutiny. Legislation is changing and some companies are listing accurately. Others of us are subject to intolerances which can cover the minor to major things which may cause protracted periods of symptoms. Its well noted for many who suffer from gluten allergy, it can take them months to initially clear the inflammation it creates and one small slip can have them back in the depths of their reactions immediately.

The numbers with some allergy or other or number of allergies food related reactions are growing in more, dare I say "affluent" countries, where access to foods is or has been virtually unrestricted, I regret there are still pockets of poverty. Research has shown our microbiome is deplete against those of our species who's diet is the same as their ancestors have always consumed. They have fewer health issues, diabetes/Gaul bladder issues and other things which ail us associated with our wester diet full of "simple/refined" carbohydrates follows are non existent in their populations.

I know as a population we eat differently to how we ate in the 1950's and before. So much in life has changed since then. Recently I heard a programme which was taking of the smog suffered in large cities also in the early '50's because of open fires be they wood or coal and the smoke they produced. Here the clean air act was instituted and as the air cleared the deaths from bronchial related health problems were drastically reduced. It went on to say how those particulates were large enough to be seen, now as we use petrochemicals to get about the particulates are much smaller, microscopic, so we can not see them. I can't remember the University or Research institute involved, some of these particles are found in the blood and in some even in the tissues. Increasingly we have been unknowingly putting our bodies under more stress as we expect them to eliminate much more than the usual "by products of life", from digestion to enzyme creation and other applications where ultimately healthy cells have a "life span" so are continually replaced for optimal functions.

Allergy and Food intolerances is such a wide subject because there are so many points at which the elimination process can falter, not least because a person who continually grazes through the day will reset the digestive/elimination back to the start so in some of us it never completes the task so toxins build up.

Lactose/dairy issues could also be a casein issues, the protein in milks. Some of us function better using goat or sheep milk which is closer to human milk than bovine milk. Casein comes in 4 types, bovine is dominant type1, thought there are type 2 casein tested herds. This milk is like that of goat/sheep, these are designed to create a human size adult animal where as the bovine adult is times bigger.

I hope your sons IBS is down to your family's dairy issues. It can be caused by dietary salicylate consumption. I came across this through immunology. (Most doctors, at least in the UK do not understand it. I once told my doctor I can't take any salicylate pain relief, he said you will be fine on this gel but using a normal dose I was bed bound through greater pain. One of my sisters is similar). salicylate is produced by many plants to protect themselves from moulds and mildews, Anne Swane an Australian with colleagues did the first work on this many years ago. There are sites which cover Salicylate Intolerance.


I found an e-book by Sharla Race, Food Can Make You Ill, very helpful it covers most of the dietary substances which can cause digestive issues in some. Her work started because she wanted to help her husband and then she applied her knowledge to herself and then put it into the book.

Allergies and Intolerances are many and varied, interrelated and convoluted. I hope you can discover even more of this complex subject. I've scantly covered the subject.

acpgee

If you are only lactose intolerant (common among asians) and not truly allergic to dairy you might be able to eat yoghurt and some cheeses. The bacteria which has made the yoghurt has already digested the lactose. This could be a useful source of calcium if you can tolerate it.

lemurcat2

Orphia wrote: »

I think I read recently that 60% of people have problems with dairy. I'm almost starting to think maybe everyone is, and it's just under-reported.

I'd love to hear more from others who have learned or are learning about this.

It's 60% of people worldwide, and it's easy to find out if you do a genetic test, as certain genes are responsible for lactase persistence (lactose tolerance) in certain areas of the world where it is common. The vast majority of northern and western Europeans have the genes to digest milk as adults, which is why people never really thought about lactose issues in the US in the past, when most of the population had no issues with it. Issues are more common now.

I think it also may be possible to lose the ability just by not consuming milk much, and that there are issues besides the lactose one, but no, I don't think most everyone has issues. I know I don't (even when I stopped having dairy much for a period and then consumed it again it had no negative effects), and so I was not surprised when I learned I did have the genes that suggest lactose tolerance.

Orphia

I should point out I'm not genetically Asian. My mother and 2 generations above her lived/worked in China.

Thanks very much, everyone!

Very interesting, @Fuzzipeg !



I was thinking that the studies that show genetic types who are lactose intolerant might be based on international aid groups introducing dairy foods to people and seeing immediate ill effects.

And thinking that we just assume Caucasians can consume dairy because of reasons causing my family not to know of our shared intolerance. Wondering what large elimination diet studies have been done on Caucasians.

As Fuzzipeg said, there's a lot to this, and it'll be good to learn more.

Cahgetsfit

I am intolerant to lactose. I can eat some cheeses and yoghurt without issues, as long as it's not every day. If I start to eat it every day I start to bloat.

I don't like to completely eliminate it because that makes it even worse when you DO eat it, and hey, who doens't like a bit of ice cream on occasion, right?

You can take tablets here in Australia they're called Lacteze, which can help you digest dairy.

Orphia

Cahgetsfit wrote: »

I am intolerant to lactose. I can eat some cheeses and yoghurt without issues, as long as it's not every day. If I start to eat it every day I start to bloat.

I don't like to completely eliminate it because that makes it even worse when you DO eat it, and hey, who doens't like a bit of ice cream on occasion, right?

You can take tablets here in Australia they're called Lacteze, which can help you digest dairy.

Thanks, @Cahgetsfit that's all useful to know!