If you react badly when you consume dairy products--with symptoms including diarrhea, gas, and cramping--you may have lactose intolerance. This stems from an inability to produce sufficient quantities of lactase, the digestive enzyme responsible for breaking down lactose, which is the sugar in milk. There are many reasons you might be lactose intolerant, and there are some alternatives available to you with regard to consuming dairy products.
Dairy Troubles
Milk and most other dairy products contain lactose, a sugar that's somewhat related to--though much less sweet than--table sugar. You need digestive enzymes to break down lactose--the specific enzyme responsible for this reaction is called lactase. While almost all babies and children produce lactase, some adults do not. If you're among them, the lactose you consume passes into your large intestine, where native populations of bacteria break it down. This results in the production of large quantities of gas.
Dairy Reaction
You shouldn't assume that you're lactose intolerant just because you react badly to dairy products--it's entirely possible that you have an allergy to one or more of the proteins in milk. Symptoms of lactose intolerance are entirely gastrointestinal--if you experience hives, itchiness or difficulty breathing after eating a milk product, you much more likely have a milk allergy. Contact your physician for a diagnosis if there's any question as to what is causing your symptoms.
Causes
There are many reasons that you might not produce lactose. Some individuals simply stop making sufficient quantities of the enzyme to handle milk and most other dairy as they age. Others never produce the enzyme at all. Still others stop producing lactase--either temporarily or permanently--as the result of an intestinal disease or inflammatory process. Regardless, if you don't produce lactase, there's nothing you can do to force your body to start producing it again.
Solutions
To avoid an uncomfortable lactose reaction, there are several options available to you. If you're not a fan of milk in the first place, you can simply avoid dairy, or use a dairy substitute like soy or almond milk. Alternately, you can use lactose-free milk and other lactose-free dairy products; these have been pretreated with lactase to remove the offending lactose. Finally, you can try a lactase supplement like Lactaid, which will temporarily provide you with enough lactase enzyme to digest the milk sugar you're taking in at a particular time.
References
- "Biochemistry"; Reginald Garrett, Ph.D. and Charles Grisham, Ph.D.; 2007
- Mayo Clinic: Milk Allergy
- Mayo Clinic: Lactose Intolerance
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