Milk allergy or dairy allergy are the most common food allergies seen in my practice and cause a multitude of health problems.
Dairy may be the most misunderstood food of our culture. It is often assumed to be of high nutritional value and even mandatory for good health, although it can create serious health problems.
Lactose intolerance is frequently confused with milk allergy, but the two conditions are not the same. We'll discuss these two dairy food disorders below.
What's a Dairy Allergy?
An allergy is an immune response that results in inflammation and tissue damage. Such a response to food can be exhibited in any part of the body, therefore it can cause a wide range of problems. Food allergies also interfere with nutrient absorption, resulting in conditions such as iron deficiency anemia, osteoporosis, and fatigue.
What Are the Possible Milk Allergy Symptoms?
A dairy allergy, like any food allergy, is capable of triggering a wide array of milk allergy symptoms. Some of the most common complaints include ear infections in children, sinusitis, heartburn/reflux, constipation, diarrhea, and irritable bowel syndrome. A more complete list includes:
Abdominal Pain, Acne, ADD/ADHD, Anxiety, Arthritis, Canker sores, Constipation, Diarrhea, Ear Infections, Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, Gas, Headaches, Heartburn, Indigestion, Iron deficient anemia, Irritability, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Joint Pain, Lactose Intolerance, Osteoporosis, Poor Growth, Poor immune function (frequent illness) and Sinusitis
What Is Lactose Intolerance?
Lactose intolerance is an enzyme deficiency, not an allergy. However, lactose intolerance can be the result of a dairy allergy and the two are frequently confused.
What Causes a Milk Allergy?
Most likely it is a genetic condition. In the big picture, humans have only recently introduced cow’s milk into the diet, so it’s not surprising that the immune system doesn’t always recognize it as a friendly substance.
Why Is It so Difficult to Recognize One's Own Food Allergy?
This is a significant problem because of the difficulty in connecting your symptoms with your eating habits. Your symptoms probably vary in intensity or come and go. The trick is that allergy symptoms may show up hours or even a day later, after a food is well absorbed into your system.
And if you stop to think about it, you probably eat dairy every day. Even if you only eat something 2 or 3 times per week you can still have a significant allergic reaction to it.
Which Foods Are Dairy Foods?
Dairy includes all types of milk from a cow, all cheese, butter, half and half, yogurt, cottage cheese, ice cream and other obvious milk products. It also includes the proteins casein, whey, and lactalbumin, which are found in many processed foods. Low-fat and nonfat milk are just as allergenic as whole milk. And eggs don’t come from cows, so they’re not considered a dairy product.
How Do I Determine if I Have a Dairy Allergy?
The only sure way to determine if you have a milk allergy is to have your blood tested for antibodies to dairy. This is done with an ELISA Food Allergy Panel.
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This article originally posted on the Center for Food Allergies website. Click HERE to visit.
Image used with permission from Stock.xchng.com
2 comments:
Hi,
Love the blog, however Im a bit confused by the statement you made about only recently has cow milk been introduced into our diet. Humans have been drinking cow/goat/sheep milk for centuries. Perhaps it was recently introduced into the american diet, but in other countries it is a staple part of their diet. The only difference is the milk is unpasteurized compared to the milk we drink now which is pasteurized. Pasteurized milk is usually what leads to allergies.Unpasteurized milk has live enzymes in it and rarely do people develop allergies from it.
Hi Rene,
Thanks for asking.
When I'm referring to the recent introduction of foods into our diet, I'm looking at the big, big picture of evolution. We're talking about millions of years. A few hundred or even a few thousand years is almost nothing within that perspective. In that sense milk is a very new food, and many people do not tolerate it well at all.
And the immune reaction to dairy is not related to whether or not it's pasteurized. I've had patients who drink only raw milk who still have a terrible dairy allergy. The enzyme issue irelated to lactose intolerance, which is when people can't digest lactose because they don't have the enzyme to digest it. This is a completely different issue than having an immune reaction to a food.
It would be nice if eating raw and organic solved everything, but problems with food go much further than that. We have to ask ourselves if we were ever meant to eat it in the first place, meaning, did we evolve eating it.
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