Rachele Shaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Robert Cohen wrote:
>
> >The Vedic religion, brought to India by the Aryans was a cult in which
> >the priests performed ritual sacrifice.  Hallucinogenic substances were
> >mixed with milk, primarily clarified butter, into a "mind altering"
> >substance called "SOMA."
>
> Unfortunately, Robert Cohen' understanding of ayurveda is very limited.
> (Soma in it's true meaning is related to the field of consciousness.
>
> Dr. Richard Averbach, M.D. writes to the medical community:
>
<article and reference material on Ayurveda snipped>

> My family has used this knowledge for years now with tremendous success for
> bringing good health.  Also, I think you have to consider that milk for a
> weak, dairy-sensitive person might be a detrimental, but that this is not
> the case for the entire world's population who does not carry this weakness
> in their nervous system, and that milk can and does have health promoting
> and strengthening properties.  (Although not the kind of processed, hormone
> infested milk we find the dairy industry giving us.)
>
>
> Rachele Shaw

Dear Rachele, thank you so much for redressing the balance on the
subject of Ayurvedic medicine.

I also welcome your comments about milk and health. I want to see
a balanced and intelligent discussion about milk & health issues on
this mailing-list. It would, for instance, if the list is interested
in persuing this, be useful to look at how milk-use first developed
among early primitive farming communities who first domesticated
animals, and how it became a way of life for the pastoralist
cultures.

Bill Elkus raised the question of ginger as an additive to milk. I've
seen in several herbals that ginger was used as an anti-colic. That
suggests at least that milk was not so easily digestible even before
our modern farming methods were developed. In fact milk has probably
always been processed in some way to make it more digestible - cheese
making lowers the lactose content and yoghurt is supposed to make the
milk proteins more digestible. There is also the practice of adding
blood to milk in some cultures - I guess for the same reason.

Even so, the tribes that moved from place to place, taking their
flocks with them, must have lived (and still do live) healthily
enough. So is milk universally bad for us, or does it depend on how
it is used, in what quantity, and in combination with which other
staple foods? The pastoralists' diet was pretty much exclusively milk
and meat, not an (in my opinion) unhealthy combination of
industrially treated milk with a diet high in carbohydrates and
sugars. They also lived a healthy outdoor life!

Max Desorgher


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