Hello everyone
as people tend to ask me a lot about my problems with milk (including some dairy products) and my skeptical attitude towards its consumption I'll simply have my own thread about it and tell you my story in detail:
When I was still young and tiny during my time of kindergarden my nutrition was as good as it was for most children of that age, every morning I had a cup of cocoa and never had a problem.
In my first years at the elementary school when I also started to eat a lot of pudding - no problems either. Then in the third and fourth grade at the elementary I was sick a lot - by that I mean
a lot, never experienced something like that before.
Despite 25% of "normal" illnesses while being in that age, I 75%ly had abdominal pain with horrible flatulences , which often disappeared throughout the day.
And back then (1997-99 I think) lactose intolerance and food allergies were not really known to the extent they are today.
My doctor at that time didn't really know what had caused the problems, as I remember, and gave me standard medications, if he gave me anything, I think he thought I had faked it - if I would've been him I'd probably have assumed the same.
It was a high and low time with the belly aches - I had to live sometimes with, sometimes without them.
One day, the worst day I remember, the abdominal pain was like glas fragments in my belly, I couldn't move and was lying on the floor - the only position I could remain in without pain was fetal curl or when seated, completely bent over. We drove to the hospital and by the time I was on the doctor's examination chair it had almost disappeared completely again.
Guess how confusing that is for a small boy and especially my mother, who even works at that hospital (administration, but she knows the hell of a lot about medical problems, a walking Pschyrembel, seriously) - pure helplessness.
In 2000 I started to attend the academic high school and graduated in 2009.
2000-2004: the problems were still there and I often was "ill" at home with the stomach pain. Then I must have changed my nutrition a little and left dairy products out of my nutrition for many years, quite unintentionally. By then I slowly forgot about my old problems.
2005-2007: When having breakfast before leaving for school I ate some sort of chocolate creme for breakfast with wholewheat toast. On my way to school I already had to fart a lot, the actual problem was the smell though (I refer to the "horrible flatulences"-thread in this case, hehe). I often managed to make the other people look like they had farted though, especially in the bus - over the years I became a specialist
Yet the real bad abdominal pain had disappeared at least. I noticed that I can't eat in the morning before my circulatory was really running after getting up - the farting disappeared or remained only to a minimum extent.
Hot summer 2008: The first approach to get to know the cause of my many problems - I didn't drink milk for years. I read a cool-down-recipe for banana milk shakes and directly made some and drank them of course.
As awesome as I am they tasted totally delicious
but my "old" problems re-occurred. Then I knew what caused my trouble.
The milk shake consisted of milk, bananas and some vanilla ice cream. As intelligent as I am I started to experiment the following days:
Day 1 - I ate maybe 3-4 bananas, no problems.
Day 2 - I ate vanilla ice cream, just a little farting, "normal" extent, but no problems actually.
Day 3 - drank 0,5 liters of milk, my stomach literally died. Farting and belly aches (not that bad though, luckily) in the deluxe edition.
Then I knew the problems' origin:
Milk.
As hungry for knowledge as I always am for topics that are affecting me or are interesting to me I started to investigate on the internet, at first in German, then also in English for getting more hits and topics.
During that time of 2008 problems with milk-consumption were much more well-known than back in the last 90ies. It was the first time I read about
lactose intolerance and I knew it must have been that.
From then on total milk abstinence (and products like yoghurt, in general dairy stuff that's quite liquid - my tummy didn't like them either).
I found it to be weird though that I could consume a lot of dairy products without any or little problems only though - cheese, cake / soft cake etc.! I didn't care though as I felt fine without drinking milk - neither did I do an allergy test on milk.
I continously read about problems with dairy products, lactose intolerance and other stuff.
At the end of 2008 I had my medical examination for my military service and was invalided out due to my two older brothers having done alternative service already and me saying "I've got lactose intolerance" - they ran a blood test on me. Sadly I didn't get the actual results after some weeks, only the notification that I don't need to serve. Even though that I had liked the idea of serving in the army
Early 2009: I noticed that there were many more people having my problems or similar symptoms.
One of my aunts for example has lactose intolerance, at first she had Lactase pills (helping your stomach to digest the lactose) and then she drank "Minus lactose"-milk and started to consume "Minus lactose"-products in general. I bought those pills, too, and I have no problems at all when eating something dairy (solid stuff like cheese and Co.).
Self-experiment part 2: There was a wide variety of different sorts of milk out on the market and as I really missed the taste of cereals with milk badly, it was time to try something!
I drank all variations and types of fat, low-fat and no-fat milk, minus lactose milk, rice milk, soy milk and milk sorts I can't even remember anymore - the problems I had years ago came back. No real pain evolved, but certainly horrible flatulences and some belly aches.
Then I realized that it must be something else than lactose intolerance only, leaving me wondering if I even had lactose intolerance.
I quit the milk-drinking again with complete abstinence. Worked great for me since then - and entire 2010 no problems at all.
Since I'm registered here I discovered a lot of threads dealing with milk consumptions or threads about flatulences and assumed nutritional problems, which led to me writing my entire milk story down once.
I guess there are a lot of people out there not knowing what causes their problems, in many cases it probably has got something to do with dairy products or in special cases - milk.
Due to the fact that I've got no results set out in writing I'll see an allergist within the next weeks to finally clarify my problems with milk. I assume that I don't have lactose intolerance but rather a milk protein / casein allergy.
Let's see. Time will tell.
Philip
