What's wrong with milk? (Sparkle and Jenna. Tami too)

[quinnersmom]

My son does not drink milk anymore. He gets congested and then gets ear infections. No more Dairy at our house!!

 

[oldrooster]

I am lactose intolerant.

 

[muffler dragon]

This is just a side note.

A physician told my wife and I recently that people (women especially) need to have more magnesium in their diet to help metabolize the calcium. A lot people who suffer from osteoporosis would benefit themselves by injesting more magnesium in order to metabolize what calcium they already have. An added benefit of magnesium is that it is a natural muscle relaxer. Therefore, it is also beneficial for women during the menstrual cycle.

On the topic side of the issue, I enjoy milk greatly. In the past few years, I have tried to consume more water and juice just for the mere reason of mucous production. I tend to have a little bit too much after drinking and eating dairy products.

 

[BeanMak]

oops a mistake

 

[Beastt]

This is just a side note.

A physician told my wife and I recently that people (women especially) need to have more magnesium in their diet to help metabolize the calcium. A lot people who suffer from osteoporosis would benefit themselves by injesting more magnesium in order to metabolize what calcium they already have. An added benefit of magnesium is that it is a natural muscle relaxer. Therefore, it is also beneficial for women during the menstrual cycle.

On the topic side of the issue, I enjoy milk greatly. In the past few years, I have tried to consume more water and juice just for the mere reason of mucous production. I tend to have a little bit too much after drinking and eating dairy products.

It sounds like you're doing some of the right things in as far as drinking more water and juice and consuming less milk.

I would like to suggest that your wife consider contacting a nutritionist for some secondary advice relative to concerns about osteoporosis. The advice she received from the physician is pretty standard fare for a medical doctor not trained in nutrition. But the fact remains that calcium deficiencies aren't always due to intake of insufficient calcium and taking magnesium to improve calcium assimilation is unlikely to provide sufficient help. The key, based on a growing body of evidence, is to take care not to over-consume protein. In the five studies listed below, the results were always the same. Low-protein diets lead to positive calcium balance while high-protein diets lead to negative calcium balance. Note the amounts of supplimental calcium that were provided to the test subjects. It seemed to have little if any affect since the body can only assimilate a small quantity of calcium per day. Any additional calcium simply creates a problem for the kidneys to handle and if enough extra calcium must be removed from the blood over a long term, the likelihood of developing kidney stones and kidney disfunction increases.

Studies:

1. Anad, C., "Effect of calcium intake on calcium balance of young men given 500mg calcium daily" - Journal of Nutrition, 104:695, 1974

2. Hegsted, M., "Urinary calcium and calcium balance in young men as affected by level of protein and phosphorus intake" - Journal of nutrition, 111:53, 1981

3. Walker, R., "Calcium Retention In the Adult Human Male As Affected by Protein Intake," Journal of Nutrition, 102:1297, 1972

4. Johnson, N., "Effect of Level of Protein Intake on Urinary and Fecal Calcium Retention of Young Adult Males," Journal of Nutrition, 100:1425, 1970

5. Linkswiler, H., "Calcium retention of young adult males as affected by levels of protein and calcium intake" - Trans New York Academy of Science, 36:333, 1974


Study #1
Calcium Intake (milligrams): 500
Change in Calcium on Low-Protein diet: +31
Change in Calcium on High-Protein diet: -120

Study #2
Calcium Intake (milligrams): 500
Change in Calcium on Low-Protein diet: +24
Change in Calcium on High-Protein diet: -116

Study #3
Calcium Intake (milligrams): 800
Change in Calcium on Low-Protein diet: +12
Change in Calcium on High-Protein diet: -85

Study #4
Calcium Intake (milligrams): 1400
Change in Calcium on Low-Protein diet: +10
Change in Calcium on High-Protein diet: -84

Study #5
Calcium Intake (milligrams): 1400
Change in Calcium on Low-Protein diet: +20
Change in Calcium on High-Protein diet: -65

"Throughout the world, the incidence of osteoporosis correlates directly with protein intake. In any given population, the greater the intake of protein, the more common and more severe will be the osteoporosis."
Chalmers, J., "Geographic Variations of Senile Osteoporosis," Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, 52B:667, 1970

 

[Tami]

By the way, Tami - you should never take magnesium with calcium - the calcium interferes with the absorption of the magnesium.

This site says that you need magnesium in order to absorb calcium but taking too much calcium can prevent magnesium from being absorbed: http://www.mgwater.com/calmagab.shtml

This site says the same thing: http://www.life-enthusiast.com/twilight/research_magnesium.htm

So, it's not that you should never take calcium and magnesium together, but you should take it in the right proportions.

 

[Tami]

Well, I for one like my pus with chocolate. Tasty goodness.

You can have all the pus you want. No more pus for me, thanks.

 

[zoe_uu]

I don't drink cow's milk. Cow's milk is for baby cows. It also grosses me out to think of drinking something that came out of a cow. That's just a couple of the reasons why I use soy and rice milk and avoid dairy products altogether.

 

[zoe_uu]

This site says that you need magnesium in order to absorb calcium but taking too much calcium can prevent magnesium from being absorbed: http://www.mgwater.com/calmagab.shtml

This site says the same thing: http://www.life-enthusiast.com/twilight/research_magnesium.htm

So, it's not that you should never take calcium and magnesium together, but you should take it in the right proportions.

You are correct.

 

[Wroth]

However, when any person is polishing off the better part of a gallon in a day, it's just not good.

LOL.

Good days I can clear off almost 5 or 6 liters (parents don't like that much, but oh well). Look at me now - 6'5", 215lbs, 15% body-fat (my target for sports). I've been drinking milk by the liter since I was about 5 or 6, then stopped/slowed down when my family started getting more and more juice/pop a few years ago. That's when I noticed more and more joint/sprains after playing sports and stuff. I went back to milk/water/gatorade and my body is running better than it ever had before - I'm growing and getting stronger without training (I've raised maxes without having trained/lifted seriously with those muscles for 2 years) I love milk (I only drink skim - 1%/2% is nasty stuff) and drink it whenever I get thirsty at home now.

And the "trace" elements/chemicals in the milk - hah! Get over it. Your body can handle a lot of **** if you maintain it well - I know how badly my body can be beaten without it breaking and I know these trace elements aren't hurting it. This is sort of like the arguement against pesticides on apples. People think they're so terrible for humans after the apples have been processed in the packing houses and stuff. What absolute bunk. I've dealt with the raw stuff floating around in the air since I was a little kid (I live on an orchard) and I'm one of the biggest and strongest guys in my grade. They really aren't going to affect you after they've been rain-washed from the apples and then heavy-duty cleaned at the packing house.

We complain about the chemicals so much, but no one thinks about what happens when we leave them to grow naturally - we get less efficient producing, inferior products and the like. I for one don't care much for worms in my apples or low-quality milk, etc... Let science help us out in fixing up things and stop whining about every little bit of change.

 

[zoe_uu]

Also, another reason I don't drink cow's milk, is if you're drinking cow's milk bought in a grocery store, you're more than likely supporting the veal industry, which is cruel by anyone's standards.

 

[born2run]

I've jumped headfirst into this topic before on another forum, but here goes again There was something mentioned at the start how big dairies are cruel, etc. etc. Since you've all branched into the actual nutrition part of milk (which I am quite ignorant about) I thought I'd throw my two cents in on the "cruelty" part of dairy.
I work for a commercial dairy, in the great state of Wisconsin. I grew up on a dairy, so this industry runs deep in my blood. I love cattle, and enjoy working with them. True, the family run farm seems to be a thing of the past. But this dairy that I work for is far from cruel. These cows are treated better then some people. True, it is too keep them in shape to produce, but they are happy and healthy. My boss refuses to use BST. The result is some super friendly and nice looking animals. I have a huge problem with people that have never stepped foot on a dairy judging it as inhumane. If you ever question that one is inhumane, there is an open invitation to come tour the place where I work. My boss' like visitors!!

 

[zoe_uu]

born2run: I wish more large corporate dairy owners were like your boss. Sadly, not all of them are, and most of the time the consumer doesn't know where their milk came from, a farm like yours, that respects the animals and treats them with kindness, or one that doesn't and only cares about profits, no matter what.

 

[Beastt]

Look at me now - 6'5", 215lbs, 15% body-fat (my target for sports).

I know there is a long held belief that being large, but not fat is a sign of good health. Certainly there are diseases and disorders which can inhibit growth but this doesn't necessarily mean that being "big and strong" are indisputable signs of being healthy. In fact, unless you're genetically predisposed to being so tall and well filled-out, it may be the sign of a problem caused, in part, by all the milk you drink.

About 25 years ago a powerful human growth hormone was isolated and identified. It has a very similar structure to insulin so it has come to be called "insulin-like growth factor", or "IGF-I". Although it resembles insulin it is actually 30-times more potent.

In the January 23, 1998 issue of "Science" magazine, IGF-I was identified as the key factor in prostate cancer. What that article didn't mention is that the IGF-I molecule is identical in both humans and cows. In the 1999 issue of the "Journal of the American Dietetic Association", it was demonstrated that drinking milk can increase your IGF-I levels by a factor of 10%. I'm not sure how significantly this increases the risk of prostate cancer, but certainly the risk would be increased to some degree.

I've been drinking milk by the liter since I was about 5 or 6, then stopped/slowed down when my family started getting more and more juice/pop a few years ago. That's when I noticed more and more joint/sprains after playing sports and stuff. I went back to milk/water/gatorade and my body is running better than it ever had before

Have you considered the possibility that the problems with joints and sprains had more to do with drinking the softdrinks than with drinking less milk? Milk actually removes calcium from the skeletal structure because it contains protein, (about 15% protein in the case of cow's milk). Protein makes your blood more acidic and the body responds by bringing calcium - a base - from the skeletal structure to neutralize blood pH. Most of that calcium is then excreted in the urine and only a tiny bit of the calcium in the milk is assimilated. The result is that you end up with less calcium in your bones rather than more.

In addition, if any of the pop you were drinking was of the diet variety, most of those contain aspartame by any one of its many names. Aspartame has been shown to produce formaldehyde in the joints which leads to a great number of joint problems.

And the "trace" elements/chemicals in the milk - hah! Get over it. Your body can handle a lot of **** if you maintain it well - I know how badly my body can be beaten without it breaking and I know these trace elements aren't hurting it.

I'm curious as to how you "know" that the trace elements in milk aren't hurting your body. As for how much of these toxins our bodies can handle without adverse effects, I suppose we should first identify what many of these compounds actually are. Certainly there will be traces of the antibiotics given to the cows. There will also be a certain quantity of hormones such as the IGF-I mentioned above. Probably of the greatest concern will be the organohalogen and chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticide residues.

One you shouldn't have to worry about is diethylstilbestrol, also known as "DES". This hormone has been removed from the cattle industry after it was shown that even the smallest doses imaginable can cause cancer in humans. Of course even several years after the ban was enacted on DES, the FDA found no less than half a million cattle which had been implanted with DES despite the ban. I would hope that in more recent years more attention has been paid to the ban by cattlemen.

I'm sure we're all familiar with dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane by it's common name, "DDT". This potent insecticide was found to have such negative affects on animals well above insects in the food chain that it was banned in 1972. Yet, due to the stability of the compound it is still found in lakes, streams, soil and in the animals living in or eating from those areas. So persistent is DDT in the environment that even today, fish consumption advisories are in effect for DDT in many waterways including the Great Lakes ecosystem due to high levels of DDT present in the flesh of the fish.

Two more that you are likely to encounter are malathion and parathion. Both of these insecticides are members of the nerve gas family. Parathion is so lethal that a chemist who accidentally swallowed an amount equal to .00424 of an ounce was instantly paralyzed and died before he could take an antidote which he had prepared beforehand as a precaution.

Dieldrin is another chemical now banned because of the dangers involved with its use. It was found to cause cancer in lab animals in every single dosage tested even down the the most infinitesimal amounts. At the time it was banned the FDA found it in 96% of all the meat, fish and poultry in the country, in 85% of all dairy products and in the flesh of 99.5% of the American people. Dieldrin, like DDT is a very stable compound and is still found in frightening quantities in the fatty tissues sold as food and in the milk taken from cows. Though dieldrin is no longer being applied to crops, it still shows up in the crops grown in the soils where it was once applied.

Dioxin, 2,4,5-T, 2,4-D, Heptachlor, polybrominated biphenyls, polychlorinated biphenyls and many more exist at every level of the food chain. But, since the vast majority of these compounds are fat soluble, they will show up in the largest quantities in the fatty tissues and excreted fluids of the animals which feed upon the grain that the chemicals are supposed to protect. At their worst, some of these chemicals can cause birth defects and cancer. At their best, they reduce the effectiveness of your immune system. You won't know if they have affected you or not until it is too late.

I've dealt with the raw stuff floating around in the air since I was a little kid (I live on an orchard) and I'm one of the biggest and strongest guys in my grade. They really aren't going to affect you after they've been rain-washed from the apples and then heavy-duty cleaned at the packing house.

Since you've been inhaling these chemicals since you were a very small child, the worst thing you can do is to elevate the level of contamination further. You may be one of the largest and strongest students in your school but that doesn't mean that these chemicals aren't silently taking their toll on your health.

These compounds are designed to last. They're fat soluble so that they won't easily wash off the surface of the plants they're applied to or the foods harvested from those plants. Water acts as more of a transit system for these compounds where they will eventually encounter some form of fatty tissues. When cows eat the grain, the compounds find their way into the fatty tissues and fatty fluids of the animal, (such as milk). Once you drink the milk or eat the animals flesh, these compounds find their way into your tissues where they will remain for a very long time wreaking havoc to your immune systems and even the basic process of cell division.

We complain about the chemicals so much, but no one thinks about what happens when we leave them to grow naturally - we get less efficient producing, inferior products and the like. I for one don't care much for worms in my apples or low-quality milk, etc... Let science help us out in fixing up things and stop whining about every little bit of change.

There are methods of reducing the damage insects do to crops which require no pesticides and represent no harm to man. We have an understanding of environmental systems that could allow us to use the natural enemies of these insects to keep their numbers in check.

In 1979 a USDA task force of scientists and economists formed to study the matter. The task force discovered that some farmers actually experienced no reduction at all in yields when using organic methods of insect control. Those who did suffer a reduced harvest still found that their profits were higher because they didn't have the expense of the chemicals to pay for.

 

[Wroth]

There are methods of reducing the damage insects do to crops which require no pesticides and represent no harm to man. We have an understanding of environmental systems that could allow us to use the natural enemies of these insects to keep their numbers in check.

In 1979 a USDA task force of scientists and economists formed to study the matter. The task force discovered that some farmers actually experienced no reduction at all in yields when using organic methods of insect control. Those who did suffer a reduced harvest still found that their profits were higher because they didn't have the expense of the chemicals to pay for.

In 1979... I wasn't even born yet. Half the chemicals and techniques for applying the products weren't even in use then. The bug populations hadn't gotten to terrible levels yet.

And we, as orchardists, would like to hear the methods to reduce the coddling moth population in our trees that don't involve many sprays and time used up trying to contain these pests. What do they do? Next time you're around an orchard during harvest, look for little black marks on the apples, or webby, tent-like areas in trees or little black eggs on leaves near apples. These represent at least 130 new moths who hatch into larvae who find their way to the nearest apple and eat it out from the inside. These moths can decimate apple crops, there having been reports in Santa Barbara and other areas of farmers being shut down because of the massive loss of product due to these pests. Coddling moths are the major concern for us and we'd like to find easier and safer ways to kill them off. Spraying our trees forces us out of the trees for 2 days before we can get in to work on them again. Those 2 days can easily represent an enormous amout of pruning or thining completed in an orchard to increase our yields even more.

 

[Kittykatgrizabella]

I heard that Its bad to drink milk while eating lobster. For whatever reason I have no idea.

 

[Tami]

I heard that Its bad to drink milk while eating lobster. For whatever reason I have no idea.

I heard it's bad to eat lobster, period. I saw a Christian doctor named Ted Broer on t.v who said that lobster is called "cockroach of the sea". Lobsters are scavengers, which means they'll eat almost anything, whether it's dead or alive.

Also, lobsters are crustaceans which are also called aquatic athropods:
http://www.offshore-sea.org.uk/sea/dev/html_file/sea4_consult.cgi?sectionID=237

Spiders and other insects are also called athropods:
http://www.uidaho.edu/so-id/entomology/Spiders.htm

Eating athropods sounds yucky!

 

[darb]

The ONLY problem with milk today is what the dairy industry has done to it. Pasteurization, homogenization, skimming, strips milk of all the good things in it and kills the bacteria naturally present in it that help us digest it and promote a healthy digestive tract. Feeding cows grain is also a problem. Cows and other milk producing animals should only eat what they can graze on and gathered hay when there is not enough to graze on in the winter.

If you can, see if you can find some real raw whole milk in your area.

please go to "real milk dot com", sorry I cannot link directly as I don't have 15 posts yet.

That website gives locations of real milk farms where you can get milk as it was meant to be consumed when God spoke of the land of milk and honey.

 

[Tuffguy]

Theres freaks out there that think drinking lots of water is bad for you, so something like this doesn't really phase me. People can get themeselves worked up over anything.

 

[Beastt]

The ONLY problem with milk today is what the dairy industry has done to it. Pasteurization, homogenization, skimming, strips milk of all the good things in it and kills the bacteria naturally present in it that help us digest it and promote a healthy digestive tract. Feeding cows grain is also a problem. Cows and other milk producing animals should only eat what they can graze on and gathered hay when there is not enough to graze on in the winter.

If you can, see if you can find some real raw whole milk in your area.

please go to "real milk dot com", sorry I cannot link directly as I don't have 15 posts yet.

That website gives locations of real milk farms where you can get milk as it was meant to be consumed when God spoke of the land of milk and honey.

"Milk and honey" or bee spit and bovine lactation? I guess it's all in the wording.

Aside from high levels of pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, pus, blood, asthma, allergies, colic, IGF-I, the common cold, anemia, prostate cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, congestion, E-coli, lymphoma, breast cancer, lung worms, obesity and a few dozen other things linked to human consumption of cow's milk there's hardly anything wrong with it at all. Except of course for the aforementioned pasturization, homogenization and skimming.

Why is it so hard to understand that there is nothing natural about a grown human putting a lip-lock on a bovine teat? Other animals know to stop consuming milk when they reach the age of weaning at which point they can obtain their nutrients from other food sources.