Why is everyone suddenly lactose intolerant?
Have you ever noticed that every 2nd person seems to be either fully lactose intolerant or that coffee/ ice cream seems to send them running to the loo? Perhaps you yourself aren’t tolerating dairy products like you used to. I’m going to break down the issue of lactose intolerance in stupid simple terms as that’s my favourite learning language.
The first thing we need to understand is what is lactose? and how does our body digest, absorb and use lactose?
Lactose is a sugar/carbohydrate typically found in dairy and milk products, which our body uses to create the energy needed to power our cells, muscles, brain and nervous system (pretty powerful stuff huh?!). Lactose and the foods it is found in are too big for the body to effectively use as they are, so our body is clever enough that it breaks the food into smaller pieces through chewing and stomach acid, and on a microscopic level starts breaking the lactose into smaller more effectively absorbed units using our little friends called enzymes (Imagine the lactose is a bunch of Lego stuck together and the enzymes are really fast, clever kids/enthusiastic adults who like to pull the legos apart in order to contribute them to a new fantastic creation).
When we are first born, our body has a huge amount of these enzymes as a newborn’s only source of food is milk. As we hit our childhood/ teenage years, our biological need for milk reduces, which plummets the amount of enzymes our body creates by over half! Which you guessed it, makes it more difficult for our body to break down the lactose. This decrease in enzymes keeps happening as we age, and studies suggest that in adulthood, we only have 5%- 20% of the amount of lactose specific enzymes compared to the amount in our youth.
A couple hundred years ago, our dairy consumption involved only the milk and cheeses we were able to generate from the family cow on the homestead, where as our biology hasn’t adapted to the modern bombardment of dairy (I’m talking about the chocolate frappes made with milk, ice cream, whipped cream and every other dairy product we can throw at it). With our enzymes being outnumbered by lactose, it has nowhere to go but to become food for the bacteria in our colon, which helps them to multiply, irritating the lining in our gut and causing those impressive smelling gases/ changes in bowel momentum (if you know, you know…). Viola, lactose intolerance.
Note: This is different to a lactose allergy where upon the body detecting lactose, it triggers an immune response and starts attacking itself.
Sensitivity to lactose varies amongst individuals, but patterns can be detected amongst various ethnic groups.
So you might be thinking, “Lactose sounds terrible, I should cut it out completely”. Remember, that it is not only needed to provide that energy we need to stay alive, but also lactose rich foods contain other essential vitamins and nutrients needed for optimal body function such as calcium and vitamin b.
So what can you do to help your body better digest lactose?
- Don’t completely cut out dairy, but consume small amounts, gradually increasing the amount over time. Some studies suggest that the body can handle about 6g per day without causing irritation/symptoms.
- Eat dairy that have those incredible enzymes already added to it such as yoghurt.
- With your naturopath/ healthcare provider’s guidance, diversify the bacteria in your colon using probiotics, as this can also help even out the numbers of “fart inducing” bacteria.
Reference: Reference: Whitney, E., Rolfes, S. R., Crowe, T., & Walsh, A. (2019). Understanding nutrition (4th ed.) Cengage. Retrieved Sepetember 20, 2021, from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.torrens.idm.oclc.org/lib/think/detail.action?docID=6335558
