Mighty Milk
Some people believe milk is dangerous like Kryptonite, and they go to heroic lengths to avoid it. But the truth is as long as you aren’t made of steel – or from another planet – you can benefit a great deal from daily consumption.
There’s a lot of contradictory information flying around about whether or not milk is good for you, but in reality, people have been relying upon milk for high quality nutrition for a very long time, and lots of good quality science confirms its value.
But like all things nutrition and health, context is important, and it’s possible to react badly to milk (often only temporarily), even if ironically milk is one of the best things to consume, to help improve your health. It can be a bit of a conundrum.
Most of the time the reason for bad reactions is because of different things that are added into milk, or because of problems arising due to the consumption of other ingredients in your diet, interfering with digestion. Sometimes it’s just because of the particular diet of the cow, or because you have a poorly functioning metabolism and inflammation. There are a number of studies attached below which go into more detail about ‘lactose intolerance’.
All that aside for now, when it comes to promoting health, or for protection against the effects of stress on metabolic function, I think milk is more important today than it has ever been.
Why would I say such a thing? The simple answer is that the world has changed significantly over the last century. The concept of stress has taken on a whole new meaning, very different to what still comes to mind for many people, when that word is used.
Polyunsaturated fat (PUFA) consumption, radiation, environmental estrogens, toxic chemicals, heavy metals, dangerous pharmaceuticals, the wrong kind of light, sleep issues and numerous other harmful things have a cumulative stress promoting, metabolism interfering effect, that likely has never been seen before. Anti-sugar hysteria makes things significantly worse.
These things, especially when added together, promote increasing levels of chronic inflammation, and thyroid and energy metabolism dysfunction. And they promote them in such a way as to be able to prevent ease of return to normal function when stress reduces.
If you put the idea of ‘genes’ as the cause of all problems aside, you’ll discover that degeneration and disease is always at the very least, exacerbated by stress, inflammation and thyroid dysfunction.
Once you are already suffering from the effects of ongoing stress, including chronic inflammatory issues and suppressed energy system function, your ability to assimilate the nutrition necessary for healing is interfered with, and your food options can be limited.
If you want to recover from or avoid illness, there are a number of reasons why you have less of a choice these days, but to include milk in your diet.
Milk is a fairly easily digestible, high calcium, high protein, low iron, reasonably low phosphorus food, with milk sugar (lactose), mostly saturated fat, and a variety of vitamins and minerals. This is a really good thing when it comes to protection against stress and inflammation.
The calcium in milk is almost enough of a reason not to go without milk in your diet. The importance of calcium can hardly be overstated. Calcium is an anti-inflammatory, anti-stress, anti-obesity, anti-allergy, pro-metabolism substance.
Insufficient calcium can cause PTH (parathyroid hormone) to rise, which pulls calcium out of the bones into circulation causing an excess of calcium inside cells.
Even though calcium plays a crucial role in cellular metabolism, improper regulation of calcium is central to stress, inflammation and disease. Sufficient calcium intake helps keep PTH low, ensuring the vast majority of calcium stays in the bones, and the amount of calcium required to be in the cell remains properly regulated for optimal metabolic performance.
High PTH is itself an issue which promotes inflammation and disease. PTH stimulates the production of inflammatory cytokines, inhibits oxidative metabolism, and encourages the production of lactic acid instead of carbon dioxide, pumping up stress. Rising PTH has been shown to increase cancer, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, hypertension and all cause mortality.
There are some other ways to get sufficient calcium, however there is evidence showing that calcium in milk or dairy is the easiest to assimilate, a factor which is likely to become even more important as stress rises, metabolism is suppressed and the digestive system is inflamed and sub-optimal.
Alternative sources of calcium often worsen digestive irritation and may end up adding to the severity of high PTH, inflammatory, calcium dysregulation issues, rather than achieving their anti-stress objective. I’m not saying it isn’t doable, but it may not be ideal at a time when the right results can be crucial.
Being able to satisfy nutritional requirements as easily as possible, with food that is highly palatable, removes another layer of stress getting in the way of the potential to avoid inflammatory conditions, or heal from illness.
Apart from being very high in calcium, milk provides quality protein, and protein deficiency is another thing which causes PTH to rise, suppresses liver function and thyroid energy metabolism, and generally increases stress, inflammation and disease.
Ironically, thyroid dysfunction and inflammation can interfere with the ability to digest protein, making it hard for some people to fix a protein deficiency by eating protein. There are some good ways to approach this (potato juice and BCAAs for example) but in many cases, lowering stress and inflammation and improving liver function is a reasonable idea.
A large amount of the protein in milk is casein, which has been shown to have anti-inflammatory protective effects.
Apart from milk and dairy, no other protein source that I am aware of, offers as much easy to digest, easily assimilable protein, whilst at the same time being low in iron, low enough in phosphorus and high enough in calcium (to help maintain a good phosphorus to calcium ratio), and low in pufa. This all goes a long way towards making milk one of the best foods around.
Excess iron, too much phosphorus (relative to calcium), and the over consumption and storage of PUFA, are three of the most biologically relevant and scientifically backed drivers of chronic inflammation, stress, aging and disease. Limiting the impact of these issues has been demonstrated to reduce many kinds of symptoms, and to improve recovery from illness.
Grains, beans, nuts, seeds, legumes, meat and many vegetables all have at least one (and in some cases all) of the above mentioned problems, and it looks like none of these foods, on their own can provide calcium and protein as safely and effectively as milk. Am I saying they can never be part of a healthy diet or that eating any of them means you can’t ever be healthy? No I’m not.
It is true that milk protein has some tryptohan content, and that particularly as a person gets older, it’s a good idea to limit intake if possible, as it has the potential to be inflammatory and to be converted into the stress substance, serotonin.
The good news however, is that tryptophan is more likely to be converted into niacin than serotonin, if stress is low, thyroid is functioning well, polyunsaturated free fatty acids are minimized, progesterone to estrogen ratio is good, and calcium to phosphorus ratio is optimized. Thankfully milk is a great food when it comes to achieving all these objectives.
So milk gives you lots of protein and calcium, minus issues associated with iron, too much phosphorus, and excess PUFA. When it comes to thyroid energy system metabolism, this is a bit like winning the lottery. And there’s more.
Milk also comes equipped with its own sugar, lactose, and there are a number of reasons why this is helpful. One reason is that it has been shown that lactose increases calcium absorption, and that this is true even when there is a deficiency of lactase.
The sugar or lactose content in milk is another factor which can be understood to provide energy and protect against stress, increasing carbon dioxide production, reducing free fatty acids, keeping PTH low and improving calcium regulation. Sugar, by lowering stress, can also help to reduce calcium requirements. Stress reduction is beneficial for disease in general, and this includes weight loss and blood sugar related issues.
Milk consumption has been shown to lower cortisol, helping to minimize the release of the inflammatory amino acids (including tryptophan) into circulation.
The combination of milk and sweet fruit (or milk with added sugar) can be a great way to minimize negative effects from amino acids (including the possible low blood sugar effects of protein). The addition of gelatin or glycine into the diet can also be protective against any inflammatory effects from excess tryptophan. It appears that casein may also be able to protect against tryptophan absorption.
There is plenty of science which demonstrates that ‘lactose intolerance’ symptoms can be dealt with by fixing inflammatory thyroid related digestive issues, and that small amounts of milk with food or with added sugar can almost always be tolerated, and symptoms can completely go away over time.
In my experience, removing inflammatory things and gradually increasing your intake of pro-metabolic foods over time is an effective way to lower stress and get rid of digestive issues that interfere with the assimilation of milk. Perhaps milk cannot work like a ‘superfood’ until the real Kryponites are dealt with.
Bacterial endotoxin (LPS) is a major factor driving inflammation and metabolic suppression, and endotoxin becomes more of an issue as a result of calcium dysregulation and protein insufficiency, and all the other things that go along with and promote chronic stress and thyroid issues.
PUFA, iron and endotoxin powerfully interact causing or worsening inflammatory issues (including diabetes and metabolic syndrome) and milk is a very helpful food to replace the foods that are largely responsible for increasing the likelihood of these interactions.
High fat intake in general can interfere with energy metabolism, and the fat, (which stores some beneficial nutrients) is also the place of storage for toxins and heavy metals. Skim milk has been shown in some studies to protect against disease more than whole milk, and it’s worthwhile experimenting with the lower fat milks (especially as you age) to avoid excess PUFA and other problematic things, if you are consuming large quantities everyday.
“…we found that low-fat, but not high-fat dairy consumption reduced the risk of breast cancer.”
Estrogen levels in milk (especially low fat milk) are minimal, and they are counteracted by good quantities of progesterone. Even if this were not the case, it would still be a non-issue in comparison to the estrogenic effects of high iron, high PUFA, high phosphorus, low calcium, low protein, digestion interfering, bacteria feeding, liver overloading foods that replace milk and some other dairy foods.
There is very little way around this that I know of, and the addition of sugar or sweet fruit to a milk based diet also helps to protect against estrogen excess, as well as free fatty acid release, serotonin, endotoxin, cortisol, calcium dysregulation, and inflammation in general.
I’m not saying that milk is the be all and end all solution to every health problem, but I haven’t seen any evidence that has convinced me that removing dairy from your diet, and eating green veggies and flax seed oil is a good idea when it comes to chronic stress and inflammation.
Milk makes meeting nutritional requirements simple, and the last thing anybody needs when they are sick, is to spend their days trying to make difficult to digest things palatable and digestible. Chocolate milk with lots of sugar or with coffee is easy and delicious.
Milk also comes with other pro-metabolism anti-stress anti-inflammatory things like magnesium, potassium, B-12 and riboflavin, but even milk is not a perfect solution in today’s environment. And diet is not the only factor determining health outcomes, so things can get a little confusing if it’s assumed that all people who have longevity are eating an optimal diet. Studies are unable to control for every variable.
Milk has always been a good food, but there is good reason to suggest that the way things are today, it may be more important than ever. Regardless, milk can differ from one cow to the next (for many reasons), and metabolic conditions vary. Experimentation with different kinds, and with diet in general, is fundamental.
I often hear it said that ‘milk is meant for baby cows’, but all this does is make me wonder if seeds are meant for baby birds, or if leaves are meant for squirrels and moose.
There’s a reason why Aquaman isn’t able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
See More Here
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Dietary calcium and dairy products modulate oxidative and inflammatory stress in mice and humans.
Previous milk consumption is associated with greater bone density in young women.
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Milk consumption and bone mineral density in middle aged and elderly women.
Link between hypothyroidism and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth
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Impact of cows’ milk estrogen on cancer risk
Children who avoid drinking cow milk have low dietary calcium intakes and poor bone health.
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MILK CONSUMPTION AND THE GROWTH OF SCHOOL CHILDREN
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Dairy Food, Calcium, and Risk of Cancer in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study
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Subjective perception of lactose intolerance does not always indicate lactose malabsorption.
Tolerance to the daily ingestion of two cups of milk by individuals claiming lactose intolerance.
Lactose intolerance symptoms assessed by meta-analysis: a grain of truth that leads to exaggeration.
Improved lactose digestion during pregnancy: a case of physiologic adaptation?
Does Hypothyroidism Affect Gastrointestinal Motility?
Milk nutritional composition and its role in human health.
[Meta-analysis of the relationship between dairy product consumption and gastric cancer].
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Milk consumption and bladder cancer risk: a meta-analysis of published epidemiological studies.
Effect of dietary calcium supplementation with lactose on bone in vitamin D-deficient rats
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