Lactose intolerance, intolerance to milk and dairy products: the spread ill.
The majority of allergic subjects to pollen, to the composite and high exposed to food intolerances symptoms, suffer from an ill more intimate and often misdiagnosed: intolerance to milk. Unlike lactose intolerance, intolerance to milk and dairy products is a system of food interference more wide and generalized, but also more profound and clinically more complex in its resolution.
We begin by distinguishing a disease that doesn’t fall in the field of food intolerances because it is a real enzyme-pathology: lactose intolerance. This intolerance, so inappropriately called for years, is a set of symptoms that can occur in subjects who have the inability to digest lactose, the main sugar found in milk, caused by a deficiency of lactase, the enzyme that breaks down lactose into simpler sugars and which in turn are absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract.
Not all people who have a deficiency of lactase develop clinically relevant symptoms, but those who develop them are called “lactose intolerants”.
Lactose intolerance is very common in adults: in the US, one of the most industrialized civilization and with the highest obesity rate, up to 22% of adults suffer from lactose intolerance, while the North-Europeans have the lower prevalence (about 5%), probably because we paid more attention to food combinations and it is practiced healthy lifestyles.
In Central Europe the number of lactose intolerant subjects is about 30%, and in Southern Europe is close to 70%, as for Hispanics and Jews. Instead there aren’t significant differences of incidence between the two sexes. The expression and activity of lactase begin to decline in most of the people around 2 years old of life with a genetically programmed progressive reduction, but the symptoms of lactose intolerance rarely develop before the age of 6 years , that’s why it is necessary that a child before the age of six years runs and respects a Junior test of food intolerances as the Biotest of Daphne Lab laboratories because eliminating those foods that predispose to allergies and intolerances to milk a lot of symptoms and successive diseases in old age are eradicated before they even are manifested.
Symptoms of lactose intolerance
The most common and spread symptoms of lactose intolerance as those of intolerance to milk are often confused with each other and overlap themselves. Thick non-focal and unspecific at gastrointestinal level, abdominal cramps, bloating, watery and acid diarrheal stools, etc. It is estimated that for the onset of symptoms to the lactose intolerance will be enough just 250 ml of milk a day.
Studies on the onset of lactose intolerance suggest that thyroxine can promote the reduction of expression of lactase in adolescence, while hydrocortisone seems to increase levels of lactase.
Treatments of metabolic modulation in age of growth can prevent the onset ,in adulthood, of all the annoying symptoms of bad digestion of lactose. Even those preterm born who have a partial deficiency of intestinal lactase for the intestinal immaturity, the enzymatic expression can be induced by a milk ingestion; this however is not possible for the infants born in term or in adults because it seems that the lactase is a no-inducible enzyme.
In the fetus lactase activity increases from the 3rd quarter onwards, reaching its highest expression at the birth of the baby. That’s why those pre-term born have levels of lactase lower than infants term, in 40% of those born at 34 weeks have developed more and better enzymatic significant activity of lactase.
In order to avoid and prevent the onset of symptoms of lactose intolerance is good do a test of food intolerance Thema 400 every two years, and eliminate for 60 days the only foods of group “dairy products”, and then reintroduce them with a appropriate weaning program.
The test Thema 400 and Thema Junior, pediatric intolerances, are indicated for individuals who accused symptoms of lactose intolerance but that were resulted negative to Breath test or that, even resulting positive to the lactose test, need a weaning protocol and a commensurate diet with the state of lactase pathology. This to better address the annoying and debilitating disease of lactose intolerance, to live better in the society and not renounce to all the culinary delights of which too times intolerant subjects necessary have to deprive themselves at the table with friends and relatives.
The Daphne Lab is also developing a dietary supplement vaccine for all those who suffer from lactose intolerance through a unique technology and a targeted dosage that ensures a reintroduction of foods based on milk and dairy products that were previously untouchable.
If you want to receive more information about our methods of testing of milk and lactose intolerances or to request the tests contact us.
View an example of the test of Lactose genetic intolerance