At 01:35 PM 1/9/00 -0500, you wrote:
>First of all, I am not a Doctor. I will attempt to answer some, but not
all, of
>your questions. My understanding, from multi-year personal experience goes
like
>this:
>    * LI is lactose intolerance and is exactly that. Your body doesn't
produce
>    enough of one type of enzyme and the body has difficulty processing the
>    untreated sugars. This situation results in bloating, diarrhea, etc. I
have
>    been LI for roughly 18 years.
>    * An allergy, on the other hand can range from a severe reaction such as
>    anaphylaxis to feeling ill. I have suffered from a relatively mild
allergy
>    for roughly 5-6 years. The problem went away when I stopped ingesting all
>    dairy exactly 3 years ago.
>    * When you mention that some things bother you but others don't. There
>is an
>    explanation. Butter doesn't have a great deal of lactose in it and if you
>    eat it with other foods, doesn't affect you. I experienced a similar
thing.
>    But try a glass of regular milk on an empty stomach and see what
happens! I
>    found out by process of elimination that I could eat a dairy protein
called
>    casein, whereas anything with whey was very bad. However, most people,
>    according to what I have read, react to casein.
>    * An Internist (Doctor) I went to see said I could also be intolerant to
>    chocolate. Every once in a while I react to something in chocolate but
not
>    cocoa. Chocolate chips which were certified Kosher Pareve (dairy free)
>    caused me a problem. It's not clear to me what is happening. I'm offering
>    it as a comment when you say you react to chocolate.
>    * To complicate matters, most LI symptoms seem to be very close to
>Irritable
>    Bowel Syndrome. So when I eat fruit or drink fruit juice on some
occasions,
>    I get the same intestinal problems as I do for LI. As an aside, some OJs
>    cause a reaction, others don't. Go figure.
>    * Lastly, no one in medicine can properly diagnose your particular
>    situation. Most Doctors just don't have the knowledge or time to diagnose
>    accurately. On an airplane trip, a passenger seated next to me
explained he
>    had IBS. When he said what the symptoms were, I said he should check
>    whether he was LI. The symptoms he reported were classic LI. The point is
>    -- you have to do some empirical testing. That is very complex unless you
>    absolutely know what you've eaten. I found it difficult because LI or IBS
>    reactions are with 6 hours or so. But dairy allergy reactions for me
start
>    at about 36 hours and run for up to 72 hours. Try to imagine what foods
>    you've eaten and, whether you prepared them or not, and what your
reaction
>    was, and what the time frame was. That's too many variables for most
>    analytic exercises. But it can be done. It just takes a while. You could
>    try an elimination diet but I didn't have the fortitude to try it.
That is
>    usually reserved, I suspect, for people with more serious allergies
than I
>    do
>I hope this helps. Please remember that I  have never been properly diagnosed
>as having a dairy allergy (but was for LI). But my life has dramatically
>improved since I stopped all dairy 3 years ago. And, by the way, most
>margarines have dairy in them. Check the container for "whey". It's usually
>1.4-1.8%
>
>Good luck.
>
>Don M
>
>At 10:28 PM 00/01/08 -0800, you wrote:
>>
>>I've been reading messages now for a few months and have learned a lot
>>for which I'm grateful.  However, for every question that is answered,
>>two are left unanswered!
>
>