Steve Carper wrote:
>
> First, a response to a response.
>
> Robert Cohen wrote to you:
> > the Average American consumes the same cholesterol contained in 53 slices
> of bacon every single day in their milk and dairy.  A 52-year-old  will
> have consumed the equivalent of 1 million slices of bacon worth of
> cholesterol.<
>
> Let's examine this.  A slice of bacon has 5 mg of cholestrol.  (Bacon, as
> it happens, is actually a fairly low cholesteol meat.)  So 53 slices of
> bacon would provide 265 mg of cholesterol, or about the same as 1 egg.
>
> Whole milk contains 33-35, say 34, mg of cholesterol in 1 cup, or 8 oz.
> So you would need to drink between 7 and 8 cups, just about a half-gallon,
> of whole milk per day to get 265 mg of cholesterol.  Does the Average
> American consume this much (and remember, it has to be whole milk -- skim
> and lowfat milks have much lower cholesterold counts)?  I doubt it.  The
> National Dairy Council estimates that dairy products (excluding butter)
> contribute 10% of the Calories to the national diet.  The average person
> consumes 2000-2500 Calories per day.  1 cup of whole milk has 150 Calories.
>  So the average american has the equivalent of fewer than 2 cups of milk a
> day.  Total.   That's a lot less than 7 to 8 cups.  And that's from all
> milk products in all foods combined, some of which, of course, are likely
> to be from lowfat milks.   Beware of impressive sounding statistcs.
>
 
Thank you for clearing this up, but dietary cholesterol is not a concern for
me in any case. As far as I know we make 2-3 grams of cholesterol per day.
The body also has a rather efficient mechanism of reducing this number if
we ingest any cholesterol. So, unless one eats more than that there is really
no need to be worried. I happen to need more cholesterol than an average
person (lots of highly unsaturated fats in the diet). My daily intake of
eggs is 1 to 2 dozen per day, so I am really NOT concerned with cholesterol
at all.
 
> Now for some of your questions.
>
> >2. If the reaction is to proteins - casein, whey - can one take protein
> digesting enzymes to break them up? I am already taking bromelain, there
> are plenty others out there as well. Or is the reaction to specific chains
> of aminos that are found in milk
> proteins and would not be broken down by these enzymes.<
>
> I doubt that a protein digesting enzyme would be of use, but I am not an
> expert on this.
>
 
My thinking on this is that we are not sensitive to individual amino acids.
So, the sensitivity is to amino acid sequences. If the digestive enzymes
break up the proteins into smaller sequences, then we might just be able
to use them to get sequences that we are not sensitive/allergic to.
 
> >3. If the reaction is to casein (or even whey) why is there reaction to
> other dairies, such as yogurt. I thought that bacteria in yogurt use the
> milk proteins to make the proteins they need, therefore the only milk
> proteins found in yogurt would be 'residual' proteins, not yet digested by
> the bacteria. Is this residual amount of milk proteins responsible for the
> reactions?<
>
> For the most part, the bacteria in yogurt feed on the lactose, so that
> natural (i.e., non-commercially processed)  yogurt is lower in lactose than
> the milk it comes from.  I don't think the bacteria do anything to the milk
> proteins at all.  Again according to the National Dairy Council, whole milk
> has 3.29 g of protein per 100 g of whole milk; whole milk yogurt has 3.47 g
> of protein per 100 g of yogurt.  Protein is hardly "residual" in yogurt.
>
 
When I am refering to bacteria in yogurt using the milk protein I didn't mean
for energy - I meant for building the proteins it needs itself. As far as I
know they can't use atmospheric nitrogen so must get it from the proteins.
Since the various proteins in those bacteria are NOT casein then they must
use it up to build those they need. Thus there would no longer be sensitivity
to it. By residual proteins I did not mean that there is little protein left
in yogurt. I was talking about residual CASEIN left in it, not yet broken down
by the bacteria. Protein that is part of bacteria would still be counted as
part of yogurt protein, but would not be causing sensitivity reactions in
humans.
 
> >4.a. Is it possible that reaction to milk proteins really happens due to
> other reasons. For example, gluten, yeast overgrowth,
> or other problems causing 'leaky gut syndrome' or similar problems. So your
> body now starts absorbing incompletely digested milk proteins and then
> starts developing antibodies to them. Has anybody had these kinds of
> problems? And if yes, has milk intolerance improved when those problems
> were taken care of?
>
> 4.b. The reason I am thinking of this is that if the body is developing
> antibodies to milk proteins they must be getting into
> blood steam. The body does not normally develop antibodies to things still
> in the gut, as that will be broken down and there
> is no reason to 'waste' immune system efforts on it. If milk particles
> (proteins, lactose, whatever) are getting into bloodstream then the problem
> is with the 'leaky gut'. Does this make sense?<
>
> You may be confusing issues here.  Some people with gluten sensitivities,
> as well as people with a variety of intestinal ailments, may lose their
> ability to produce the lactase enzyme that digests lactose.  In many cases
> healing the ailment brings back the ability to produce the lactase, and so
> the lactose intolerance ends.  Whole proteins do sometimes get into the
> bloodstream, and that is the source of some allergic reactions.  As for the
> rest, biopsies of patients with milk-protein allergies show that their
> intestines have serious lesions.  Does this constitute a "leaky gut"?  I
> don't know.  But it may very well cause lactose intolerance.
 
I was not really talking about lactose here. In general, I am not concerned
with it because I can take lactase to deal with it. I was talking about
other factors that could make it easier for the milk proteins to get into
the blood stream to cause allergic reaction. I don't know too much about
gluten, but I thought it was capable of causing such a condition. There are
people who are highly knowledgeable on this subject on this list. I was hoping
they would answer this.
 
> >6. I have seen a lot of references to paleolythic diets, eating only what
> could be picked in nature/killed with a stick. Dairies
> are usually excluded from that list on the basis that neanderthals did not
> raise cows. But they were still breast fed as infants.
> Does anyone know why these diets exclude milk if it's a natural part of
> one's life early on? How is human milk different from
> cows, goats, etc.?<
>
> Human milk differs from the milk of other animals because each one is
> optimized for the needs of their own specific young.  Sea lions, for
> example, have milk that is 35% fat but with no lactose.  Each kind of milk
> also has variations in the percentages and exact makeup of vitamins,
> minerals, proteins, etc.    For most of human history and human evolution
> adults did not drink milk at all.  According to some theories, they lived
> instead on a diet of very lean meats and lots of greens, fruits, roots,
> nuts, berries, and so forth.  This is the diet that was publicized in the
> book, The Paleolithic Perscription.  Their point, very loosely, was that
> the human body has been naturally selected for this diet for much longer
> than it has for the modern diet that includes large amounts of grains,
> dairy products, and fatty foods, so that the optimum diet is the older one.
>
 
I agree that milk of different animals have different compositions. What
puzzles me is this. Human milk may have less of some protein(s) than cow milk.
However, if it still has sufficient amounts of it then that would suggest
that human babies should not have allergic reactions to it. Otherwise we
would not evolve to have it in our milk. Well, if human babies don't have
allergic reactions to those proteins then what causes such reaction in them
to cows milk and why are adults different?
 
 
> Steve Carper
> author of Milk Is Not for Every Body: Living with Lactose Intolerance.
 
Does your book deal primarily with lactose? Do you cover proteins in it
as well as other subjects?
 
Thanks, Ilya