GOT MILK? WELL, IF YOU HAVE, then a number of health advocates and scientists would say you’ve likely got health problems, too.

Doctors Neil Nedley and David de Rose, authors of “Proof Positive,” relate how, several years ago, a large US humanitarian shipment of powdered milk backfired as widespread cases of cramping and diarrhea—the classic symptoms of lactose intolerance—were reported in various South American communities that received and consumed the milk.

Physiologically, after infancy, many individuals lose their ability to digest simple sugar, or lactose, that cow’s milk is rich in. They develop an insufficiency of the enzyme lactase that is needed to break down lactose into two simple sugars so that it can be absorbed properly by the body. The result is that undigested lactose travels to the large intestine where bacteria break this sugar down, producing anything from gas, to cramps, to diarrhea. Lactose intolerance appears to be the main factor in as many as a third of cases of recurrent abdominal pain in children.

Well over half the world’s population is lactose intolerant. Some races tend to lose the lactase enzyme earlier in life than others.

Nutrition biochemist T. Colin Campbell, which co-authored “The China Study” with son Thomas Jr., wrote in a chapter on autoimmune disease how cow’s milk may cause Type 1 diabetes, one of the most devastating diseases that can befall a child. The ability of cow’s milk protein to initiate Type 1 diabetes is well documented. The possible initiation of this disease, he wrote, goes like this:

• An infant is not nursed long enough with its own mother’s milk, and is fed cow’s milk protein, perhaps as an infant formula.

• The (infant milk formula) reaches the small intestine, where it is digested down to its amino acid parts.

• For some infants, cow’s milk is not fully digested, and small amino acid chains or fragments of the original protein remain in the intestine

• These incompletely digested protein fragments may be absorbed into the blood.

• The immune system recognizes these fragments as foreign invaders and goes about destroying them.

• Unfortunately, some of the fragments look exactly the same as the cells of the pancreas that are responsible for making insulin.

• The immune system loses its ability to distinguish between the cow’s milk protein fragments and the pancreatic cells, and destroys them both, thereby eliminating the child’s ability to produce insulin.

• The infant becomes a Type 1 diabetic, and remains so for the rest of his or her life.

Contrary to numerous milk advertisements championing the product as loaded with calcium, Nedley and DeRose further said cow’s milk results in just a low absorption of calcium by the body. They cited various studies that show:

1. Only 25 percent of the calcium in cow’s milk is absorbed by the body

2. Human milk, although containing less than half the calcium of cow’s milk, is a better source of calcium because of its high absorption qualities.

3. Kale, turnip greens or sesame seeds are better sources of calcium for the same reason.

Major childhood health concerns related to drinking cow’s milk are the higher risk of developing allergies, iron deficiency anemia, lowered intelligence, milk sensitivities, early atherosclerosis, juvenile diabetes, acne, rheumatoid arthritis, dental decay and infectious diseases.

The milk sensitivity disorders could include chronic fatigue, tension headache, musculoskeletal pain, hyperactivity, bed wetting, aggravation of allergies and congestion and asthma and other respiratory diseases.

Nona D. Andaya-Castillo, International Board Lactation Consultant of the Breastfeeding Clinic Philippines, stressed that breastmilk is the only perfect food for infants and the only perfect milk for children. The World Health Organization and Unicef recommend that infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life to achieve optimal growth, development and health and should receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods, while breastfeeding should continue beyond two years.

Andaya-Castillo has consistently exposed cases of contamination of dairy products that have occurred here and abroad, which has even prompted employees of a multinational company that produced infant milk formulas to give her a top secret and voluminous documentation of the sale of contaminated milk by their company.

“These whistleblowers helped the Department of Health to win the case filed against it by milk companies when it was trying to strengthen laws that protect breastfeeding to protect parents from unethical marketing tactics such as issuing false health and nutritional claims,” Andaya said. By Tessa Salazar, PDI