the heartbreak of lactose intolerance

[B Edulis x]

Eleven years ago, after a case of E.Coli poisoning, I discovered that milk products made me sick. It turns out that severe food poisoning can distroy the lactose-digesting cilia in the intestine. If the lactose isn't processed, bacteria move in and will do the job instead. This causes symptoms I'd rather not describe. So I usually abstain from milk products, but I've found that I can get away with butter, because it's mostly fat with very little lactose.

But I really miss cheese! And cream (iced, whipped, pies, and sauces)!

I've tried lactase pills, which don't seem to work. Nor does lactose-free milk, with the odd exception of Tasti-d-lite "ice cream" (I suspect that there's very little dairy in it).

Sometimes I cheat, when I just can't resist and it seems worth it -- after all, it just makes me sick, it doesn't kill me. But here's the mystery. Usually I will have symptoms, as expected, but sometimes I won't. I have not been able to figure this out, but would love to be able to eat dairy again.

Is there anyone else out there who has experience with this who would be willing so share tips with me?

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B. Edulis

[DonWalsh x]

could be a question of developing tolerance...try eating miniscule amount of dairy each day...see if you can handle a little more after a few weeks...might work...

[Mamster x]

It may not be the lactose, if cheese gets you--cheese in general has very little lactose, and hard cheeses practically none.  Maybe try some Parmigiano-Reggiano and see how it treats you.

[Fat Guy x]

To quote Jeffrey Steingarten's book, The Man who Ate Everything:

"Overnight, everybody you meet has become lactose intolerant. It is the chic food fear of the moment. But the truth is that very, very few of us are so seriously afflicted that we cannot drink even a whole glass of milk a day without ill effects. I know several people who have given up cheese to avoid lactose. But fermented cheeses contain no lactose! Lactose is the sugar found in milk; 98 percent of it is drained off with the whey (cheese is made from the curds), and the other 2 percent is quickly consumed by lactic-acid bacteria in the act of fermentation."

Of course Steingarten thinks everybody who claims to be lactose intolerant is a neurotic liar, when in fact that's only true of most of them. You, for example, seem to have had a legitimate and definable trigger event. But if the lactose pills and other correctives aren't working, and if you're having a reaction to cheese, you may be experiencing a problem driven by something other than lactose. Sometimes, for example, we just have trouble digesting foods we haven't eaten in a while.

(Edited by Fat Guy at 2:04 pm on July 30, 2001)

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Steven A. Shaw

www.fat-guy.com

eGullet Community Coordinator, New York

[B Edulis x]

You know, I had seen that Steingarten quote and that's one of the things that got me thinking. I'm as neurotic as the next New Yorker, and it's possible that this is a combination of real and psychosomatic.

I didn't know that cheese has little lactose. I do use parm/reg on occasion, more like a seasoning rather than an ingredient. Mamster: do you know how much lactose the fresh cheeses, like farmers, ricotta, mozz, and cream cheese, have?

Re: Don Walsh's suggestion to build up a tolerance -- I've experimented a little in the past and it seems that rather than building up a tolerance, when I increase the amount I hit a "critical mass" point and then I'm really sick.

Thanks to all for your suggestions. I'm going to experiment with aged cheeses. I'll let you know.

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B. Edulis

[Preet Baba x]

There are a whole lot of Lactose resources on line. There are many links at:

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/stevecarper/

Some of these sites are political, of the "milk is evil" school, but there is good info all over. The producers of Lactose reduced products, like Lactaid, also have sites.

[Katherine x]

Don't touch that ricotta! Whey is a major ingredient in the manufacturing process, and that's where the lactose is. I find ricotta is the only cheese I eat which gives me the same symptoms as drinking fresh milk, and I'm only moderately lactose intolerant.

I just expect lasagna or ricotta gnocchi to bring on a bout.

[franklanguage]

Quote: from Fat Guy x on 11:55 pm on Aug. 5, 2001

Of course Steingarten thinks everybody who claims to be lactose intolerant is a neurotic liar, when in fact that's only true of most of them. You, for example, seem to have had a legitimate and definable trigger event. But if the lactose pills and other correctives aren't working, and if you're having a reaction to cheese, you may be experiencing a problem driven by something other than lactose. Sometimes, for example, we just have trouble digesting foods we haven't eaten in a while.

Well, my mom is and has been lactose intolerant for ever; it gives her terrible gas which she makes worse by announcing her farts. (Some people blame it on the dog - not Mom. Maybe it's that she doesn't have a dog.) Because she's Polish and Polish food is full of dairy, she's just become aware of the possible cause of this problem; we seem to have lactose intolerance running through her side of the family like a river.

Although I've got hereditary problems directly traceable to her, it seems the lactose-intolerance gene has skipped me. It could be because I've been eating yogurt since I was ten, but I'm not about to speculate. I recently had to stop drinking milk, however, because I've discovered that when I don't eat dairy products, I can breathe a lot easier.

The real alarm for me that made me severely cut my dairy consumption to practically nil was the knowledge that my mom and her mother both have severe osteoporosis. While the doctors and medical professionals are scratching their heads as to why my mom's osteo gets worse no matter what she does about it, I've heard from a few sources that excess protein can cause calcium to leach out of your bones, making them brittle and giving you osteoporosis. I don't want to take chances, so I've decided I can live without dairy if it means there's a chance my bones will last the rest of my life; as it is, I may have to have multiple pins and plates holding together my bones if I want to keep eating dairy.

As a result of this cutting back, I've found I can breathe freely for the first time - well, ever, actually. I'm inclined to believe what the "Not-Milk" man says: milk is just pus, hormones, and glue. (Casein is glue, which is what they stick labels on beer bottles with.) Your mileage may vary, however.

(Edited by franklanguage at 1:15 am on Oct. 23, 2001)

[B Edulis]

I tried checking out the not-milk man but he seems to be gone.

I'm experimenting with aged cheeses, and so far so good! Amazing. Thanks for the tips!

[foodgeek]

I am extremely lactose interant. I have to check labels of anything i eat ebcause I will react regardless of how little lactose is in something. I don't feel like defending my lactose intolerance, so let's leave it at that. :)

I do notice that a lot of people think that they are, but aren't. When they tell me that they can drink skim milk I usually smirk. :)

Anyway, if you really are lactose intolerant I recommend goats cheese, since goats milk no lactose.  Sheeps milk cheeses have less than cows milk cheeses, but enough to bother me. You might want to try yogurt with live cultures since it practically digests itself. My best suggestion is to know whatingredients are in what you are eating. You would be surprised by what contains dairy.

[Fat Guy]

Jayask, lactose is present in all milk -- including goat's milk. If you are able to digest goat's milk with no trouble but are extremely sensitive to cow's milk, chances are you are not lactose intolerant but, rather, have an allergy to cow's milk. There is an important physiological difference between a milk allergy and lactose intolerance. Have you seen an allergist?

If you're having no trouble digesting cheese made from goat's milk, that may have little to do with the differences between cow's milk and goat's milk. Most aged cheese has little or no lactose, regardless of the type of milk from which it's made.

[franklanguage]

Quote: from B Edulis on 6:56 am on Oct. 20, 2001

I tried checking out the not-milk man but he seems to be gone.

Try this link.

[franklanguage]

Quote: from B Edulis x on 8:58 pm on Aug. 5, 2001

Eleven years ago, after a case of E.Coli poisoning, I discovered that milk products made me sick. It turns out that severe food poisoning can distroy the lactose-digesting cilia in the intestine. If the lactose isn't processed, bacteria move in and will do the job instead. This causes symptoms I'd rather not describe. So I usually abstain from milk products, but I've found that I can get away with butter, because it's mostly fat with very little lactose.

But I really miss cheese! And cream (iced, whipped, pies, and sauces)!

I've tried lactase pills, which don't seem to work. Nor does lactose-free milk, with the odd exception of Tasti-d-lite "ice cream" (I suspect that there's very little dairy in it).

Sometimes I cheat, when I just can't resist and it seems worth it -- after all, it just makes me sick, it doesn't kill me. But here's the mystery. Usually I will have symptoms, as expected, but sometimes I won't. I have not been able to figure this out, but would love to be able to eat dairy again.

Is there anyone else out there who has experience with this who would be willing so share tips with me?

Barbara: I have a link that won't answer your question (how to cheat and win every time), but will show that the problem is very, very common. On VegSource.com there is a discussion about why milk makes certain individuals sick.

Having gone about two months now without dairy, I'm not sure I even want to toy with trying to go back to eating it, to tell you the truth. Although not all dairy products can be substituted for by soybeans or nuts, I am finding it to be extremely rewarding to work around the problem; the longer I go without dairy, the less I miss it. (Of course, I'm consuming about a quart of Soy Delicious a week; if that's cheating, so be it.)

Lastly: yeah, cheese is a toughie. It's impossible to make cheese "cheese-like" without casein, which is the glue they stick labels on beer bottles with.

[Jinmyo]

I'm lactose intolerant.

But I don't care.

I save up for it. I bide my time. Don't put cream in my coffee for a while, one eye on the chevre or the Brillat-Savarin, the triple-cream brie, the Stilton...

But it doesn't seem to matter at all when I cook with butter (which is often). Does cooking dairy alter the lactose?

For myself, saying that "milk is just pus, hormones, and glue" is like saying that rare meltingly tender prime rib is just charred mammal corpse or that a crisp baguette is just the ground unborn babies of enslaved grasses bloated by the wanton death of yeast screaming in the fires and steam.

Butter, man. Cheese. Yowza. C-H-E-E-S-E. Heh heh heh.  Cheeeeeeeeeeeese.

[Jinmyo]

Oh yeah. They make pills for this. Sometimes I take them. But usually I forget and just save up.

[Julliana]

I became lactose intolerant after stomach surgery and it took many years of trial and error to figure out what made me sick.

Example - you eat something for breakfast and dont get sick symptoms until after your next meal - your assumption is you got sick from the second meal.  I read something from Jean Carper who said that it can take 3-5 hours for the symptoms to arrive.  That one statement solved many problems and detective work that had gone nowhere. I suggest you not only pay attention to what you ate, but when your symptoms started and that might help you pin it down more.

I definitely noticed that any type of low fat or no fat dairy product caused much more problems than any regular dairy.  Beware of friends and relatives who feel compelled to sub these products in their recipes.  

I found that I could tolerate small amounts of certain dairy products but had to be careful not to eat it daily. If I wanted to have something I knew might cause problems, I would have it and then not have any dairy for several days.  The worst thing  for me seemed to be eating the problem food several days in a row.

I did take the Lactaid super duper strongest pills regularly  and I would take a minimum of 2 and most times 3 or 4 with most dairy. Its just a personal opinion that in my case I think eating the dairy combined with taking the pills did allow my body to build up a small tolerance that has increased over time.

After coping with this for 9 yrs I now dont take any Lactaid and do eat dairy almost everyday.  For some reason certain foods like sour cream and ricotta cheese and other things still give me symptoms but I dont eat those often and only occasionally.  I also find that some brands might cause more problems than others  - ex: certain pizza stores cheese effects me differently than others.  

I'm not certain about this but sometimes I think the way the food is prepared "may" add to the symptom.  One that comes to mind is fried food combined with certain dairy products like blintzes.  I dont think the filling alone would make me as sick as the combination of the two.

I did see something in one of Jean Carper's book about a study that was done and they found drinking a 1/2 glass of "chocolate" milk helping to cure and increase your tolerance for dairy and eliminate many of the problems.  If your interested I can look it up and post it - it was something about the effect of the chocolate and the quantity of a 1/2 glass being the key.

Hope some of this helps. Your detective work is not in vain - for me the big difference was that revelation that it could take 2 hrs or 5 hrs for me to experience symptoms from something I ate - I was blaming the wrong foods for making me sick and kept getting confused about what WAS the bad food.  

Good Luck - dont give up!

Julliana        

[IslandMom]

My family is lactose intolerant, and one of my sons was allergic to milk.  When he drank milk, he'd wheeze, and his eczema started up.  After some detective work, we cut out the milk.  In his late teens, he found that he could tolerate limited amounts of dairy products.  We did the Lact-Aid bit, but find that using almond or soy milk with cereal is easier to do.  I look for yogurts with live lactobacillus acidophilus cultures, which is not to be confused with raw milk yogurt.  Maybe you can repopulate your gut with lactobacillus!  According to our allergist, most lactose intolerant people can consume yogurt safely, though you might want to experiment and see what you can safely eat without too much ummmm "discomfort".  

Experiment, and keep notes!

[dorietz]

As webmaster of www.notmilk.com I created this one some time ago... a thought provoker:

As a consumer:

If someone wanted to bring to market a product they claimed was healthy (even vital to your very life) and that contains:

* A standard bioactive cocktail of FIFTY-NINE hormones such as estrogen and testosterone. Hormones that have proven to alter behavior and catapult youth into an early sexual maturation....

* The powerful growth hormone called "Insulin-like growth factor one" (IGF-1) now being identified by the medical system as a primary prostate and breast cancer accelerant....

* Up to 52 different antibiotic residues that will desensitize body systems to those expensive wonder drugs....

* A powerful histamine that causes mucus generation within the body. This protein (80% in this substance) is more fittingly used as furniture glue....

* a protein linked to the occurrence of asthma....

* a protein linked to the development of diabetes....

* an additive that caused cancer in lab test animals....

* substances that prevent tens of millions of potential customers from consuming it....

* the equivalent cholesterol of 53 slices of bacon in each recommended daily amount (adds up to the equivalent of over 19,000 slices of bacon a year)....

* sufficient flavor and industry promotion to evolve into almost 40% of the American diet... (and turn the USDA food pyramid upside-down)

* an abundance of fat (and cholesterol) that will promote heart disease as the number one killer in America....

* a substance linked to osteoporosis that, by its composition, may actually leach calcium from the body....

* virus, bacteria and government allowed-levels of herbicides and pesticides along with animal blood and feces....

IF YOU ARE A TAXPAYER would you:

* condone help from government organizations and officials in promoting this substance?

* approve of massive (multi-billion dollar) subsidies that prop up the price leading to overproduction, giving the taxpayer a double-edged sword of having to pay inflated prices at the supermarket while watching their government GIVE the excess (purchased, stored and distributed with tax money) to the poor and other countries... and even throwing it away so they can buy more!!??

* permit the US FDA to hire a drug industry employee (who helped to develop a drug to make MORE of this substance for an already glutted market) to review and approve her very own drug?

* permit the US FDA to help classify "trade secret" a report that proves this new additive caused cancer in lab test animals?

Would you buy and consume this product?

No? Ooops! Would you believe that this substance is already ON the market? Would you believe that Americans consume billions of dollars worth of this unhealthy substance? If you are an "average citizen" you have already consumed massive amounts of it!

MILK: What a surprise!

The renowned Dr. Benjamin Spock said: "Cow's milk in the past has always been oversold as the perfect food, but we are now seeing that it isn't the perfect food at all and the government really shouldn't be behind any efforts to promote it as such."

Dr. Jane Heimlich said: "A more disturbing consequence of the bovine growth hormone is that it increases levels of a powerful growth hormone, IGF-I. IGF-I is a key factor in the growth and proliferation of cancer." (Posilac rbGH shots can double this substance--- DOR).

Dr. Jullian Whitaker (500,000 subscribers to his newsletter) said: "The notion that milk is healthy for you is, again, 'udder' nonsense. While eating fruits, vegetables and whole grains has been documented to lower the risk of heart attack, high blood pressure and cancer, the widely touted health benefits of dairy products are questionable at best. In fact, dairy products are clearly liked as a cause of osteoporosis, heart disease, obesity, cancer, allergies and diabetes. Dairy products are anything but 'health' foods."

For the WHOLE story get a copy of "MILK: The Deadly Poison" written by Mr. Robert Cohen (one-time heavy dairy user).... and review his 336 references. Call 1-888-not-milk (668-6455) to order the book; visit http://www.amazon.com or your local book store to obtain a copy. Visit http://www.notmilk.com for more FREE information.

Can't give up all that tasty diary? Refuse to believe this information? You say that you have used milk and dairy all your life and your are still alive... so don't bother you with the facts?

NOT CONVINCED? OK... the finale on this dairy information is that the FDA allows up to 750 MILLION pus cells per liter (they allow up to a maximum of 177 million cells per 8 ounce glass before it is thrown away)... bon appetite!

(This should go well with the up to twice as much IGF-1 cancer "fuel cell" in each 12 ounce glass of cow's milk.)

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(Think allergies, asthma, abundant mucus production, diabetes, eczema, irritable bowel syndrome, leukemia, cancer, poor digestion, lactose intolerance, gas, bloating, obesity, heart disease, osteoporosis, and a steady diet of hormones, pesticides, herbicides, virus, bacteria, glue protein, blood, feces and pus that cause other problems.

Also think LOTS OF WASTED DOLLARS TRYING TO GET WELL!)

MILK: What a surprise!

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For the whole truth visit http://www.notmilk.com

For a recap on pollution by dairy http://www.notmilk.com/wm/pollution.txt

[Katherine]

C'mon Dorietz, don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel.

[Jinmyo]

I like dairy infected with mould and which has been wrapped up in straw that smells like horse piss.

[SobaAddict70]

Yay for mold infected dairy. May there always be cheese forever.

Soba