Tuesday, April 1, 2008

MILK ... Does a Body Good??

I love me some milk. Ever since childhood I have been known to drink two full glasses of milk, back to back. I need milk when I eat super sweet cake, with any cookie and definitely to dunk my Oreo's. For the past couple of years though, I've noticed that within two hours of drinking just half of a glass of milk, my stomach becomes upset. I didn't even connect the two until I remembered that my sister, Elise, is lactose intolerant. Even when I realized that I could possibly have milk issues, I would deny it and just keep on drinking because... I love me some milk!

I have yet to consult our physician, but today I think I will concede and say that I think I am allergic to milk. I just finished a bowl of cereal (drowned in vitamin D milk) and it is not just an upset stomach or gas... I have a big headache, and I rarely get headaches. I felt like I almost had to lay down it was so bad.

Here's what I found on food allergies from www.science.com:


Question No. 19379 :
I have heard of people having headache after drinking milk. Is this one of the symptoms of being allergy to milk? If so, can I know what is the substance that causes this allergy?

The word "allergy" is often used loosely: people are said "to be allergic" to anything which does not agree with them. The true meaning of allergy (also called an antigen) is a condition in which a person's immune system regards a substance as a dangerous "invader" and responds to it by producting antibodies, which in their turn rise to some unpleasant reactions. For example, when a person experiences a noticeable upset subsequent to eating a particular food, they are said "to be allergic" to it. The upset is due to the fact that the substances of the food are not fully broken down by the enzymes in the digestive tract and are ingested into the bloodstream in a form to a greater or lesser extent poisonous to the body. Allergic symptoms include headache, fatigue, tremor, collapse, and manifestations in the intestinal, respiratory, cutaneous, hematologic, neurologic, urinary, and cardiovascular systems.

Chocolate confections are a common cause of migraine, and normal food components - milk, wheat, barley, rye, oats, corn, eggs, peanuts, soya, almonds, cashews, oranges, and salmon - are all headache triggers. Dairy milk and related products (cheese, yogurt, cottage and cream cheese, buttermilk, butter, sodium caseinate and lactate) are the cause of 60% of food allergies. Milk contains more than sixty different proteins, at least thirty-one of which may induce allergic reactions in humans. Numerous studies report that one of the common areas of the body to be affected by milk allergy is the brain and central nervous system. This explains why such symptoms as fatigue, depression, and headache occur.

Depression occurs?? Ugh. I guess it's back to soy milk for me.

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