You gotta drink milk, does'nt matter if its from cows, goats,sheep or humans, the stuff's good for you.
You drink enough for what your body needs, do not listen to all the know alls & do gooders they only tell you rubbish to make money.
Civilizations & nations survived on milk 'cause there was always plenty of animals around.
Use your commen sense.

To clear up most of the confusion, i will list many facts about the benefits that milk and milk products have.

Benefits:

• Our best source of calcium.
• A good source of vitamins A and D, riboflavin, phosphorus, and magnesium.
• Low-fat dairy products are low in cholesterol and are high in protein.

Drawback:

• Whole milk and cream are high in saturated fat. (The stuff the body turns into cholesterol).
• Some people cannot digest milk sugar.
• Milk protein can trigger allergic reactions in susceptible people.

Calcium helps to prevent Osteoporosis, and may help protect against high blood pressure. Inorder to absorb calcium, the body needs vitamin D. Vitamin D is added to milk, and vitamin D can also be obtained by the sun's ultraviolet rays. Calcium isn't the only thing found in milk that promotes good bones and teeth. Vitamins A and D, also promote proper development of bones and teeth, and other stuff. As for disease-causing organisms found in milk, the pasteurization process kills most of the microorganisms, without affecting taste or nutritional content.

As for milk protein, which some people can be allergic to, switching to goat's milk is the better way to go. The fat in goat's milk is easier to digest, but goat's milk may lack vitamins A and D, as well as folate.

And, Thorned Rose, to treat eczema naturally, make sure the person eats plenty of legumes, brown rice, wheat germ, and other food high in vitamin B6. Obviously, avoid foods that would trigger or worsen eczema, and avoid wearing wool clothing next to the skin. Some common foods that may trigger or worsen eczema are: eggs, dairy products, seafood, walnuts, and pecans. But, these arent always the case. There are other things, like nickel and latex, that can trigger such a thing. Oh, and eczema is a family thing, also. Many outgrow their sensitivities by the age of 6.

As for alternatives for things that have calcium, like i said, in order for the body to actually absorb calcium, it requires vitamin D. Some orange juices now comes with calcium. But, contains little or no vitamin D. Meaning if you're an indoor person, you'd have to either get used to going outside, or eat foods that have vitamin D.


Lets look at each problem, and see just how much milk and milk products are involved.
We'll go down the list.

Asthma:
Foods that should be avoided are: any foods, including dairy products, or additives that seem to trigger an attack. Mushrooms, cheese, soy sauce, and yeasty breads should be avoided if molds trigger an attack. Foods containing salicylates (an ingredient in aspirin) such as tea, vinegar, salad dressings, many fruits and vegetables should be avoided. Any food preserved with sulfites should also be avoided. Along with foods containing tartrazine, or yellow food dye 5. Mind you, foods aren't the only triggers to asthma. There are enviromental pollutants, smoke from cigarettes, pet dander, and many more stuff.

Eczema:
I've already mentioned about this, but some jobs and hobbies can trigger this.

Cancer:
The most common cause of cancer is lack of minerals and vitamins, and a large intake of fats. I would agree with the case that whole milk could trigger cancer, but there are alternatives. 2%, 1%, and skim milk are all the better choices cause of its reduced fat. Skim milk being the best. There are things you can eat to prevent some deadly cancers. Foods rich in vitamins A and C, beta carotene, bioflavonoids and other plant chemicals. Also, foods that are high in fiber.

Digestive problems:
If milk is the case, then stop drinking that kind of milk, and switch to another, unless directed otherwise. This may relate to IBS.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS):
Milk has not been established as a cause. Although, milk can trigger allergies, and such allergies may aggravate IBS, it is still no main cause for IBS. Also, although, milk has fat, like mentioned there are alternatives, and milk isnt the only thing that has fat. Many people like to fry their foods. Gas-producing foods, like beans, should be avoided. Along with all sources of caffeine, and products sweetened with sorbitol. Stress may also be a problem for this.

Lactose Intolerants:
As for anything related to the natural sugar found in milk, there are alternatives, most of which have already been mentioned.

Mind you, before taking natural actions to help cure something, consult with your doctor first.

This post has been edited by truefusion: Mar 23 2006, 11:13 AM

just to focus on one drawback:



well, i think that people are allergic to everything, not one person to everything, but some people to different things, so allergies would be a drawback to every food source...but then i really didn't know about all of them other things :S

I like milk. Milk doesn't like me. I used to drink a gallon or two a week when I was kid. Then when I turned 21, milk started not liking me. I started having a lot of gas and stomach problems. After my fiance and i broke up, I didn't realize that my dairy consumption was next to nothing. I went several weeks without any problems and then was at a friend's house and was eating some fresh choloate chip cookies and a nice tall glass of milk.

I read up and chances are I'm lactose intollerant, but if only when I drink more than a glass a day. So if I have ceral for breakfast, no icecream for dinner. The biggest problem is not thinking about what you eat. A lot of salads have cheese, so do most tacos, and Pizza. So a lot of times I'll have a couple slices of pizza...get about half way through, and know I'm going to pay for it later.

I think milk is good for you. People have drank milk for centuries. Acording to the scientists, this week wine is good for me, but steak is bad. Next week wine will be bad and steak will be good. I try not to eat a lot of fast food and watch portions, but if I want steak I eat steak. If I want milk...I make sure I take a lactaid first...

Drinking milk is good for the body, doctors suggest drinking two glasses of milk per day. It helps make your bones stronger, it also helps in making your teeth stronger too, it is rich in calcium. It will also prevent you from getting Osteoprosis, a kind of disease that weakens your backbones because you lack calcium.

too bad I am a lactose intolerant, I get stomach aches everytime i drink milk.

People, you just don't seem to get it. Stop listening to all the crap that the dairy corporation has fed to society and as tonyused said, use common sense. I'm sorry but drinking milk is not good common sense.
truefusion, you have not stated all the facts, only the ones the dairy industry wants you to know. So I will now list some facts for you.

Not so. The best source of calcium is from dark leafy greens. The calcium in milk is not easily absorbed by the body whereas calcium in things like greens are better absorbed. Also some foods have a higher amount of calcium, that is better absorbed than milk like sesame seeds.

Milk is not low in cholesterol comparitively speaking (though low fat isn't as bad as standard) but the cholersterol is still bad enough that drinking 2-3 glasses per day can significantly increase your risk of heart disease
"Milk and milk products gave the highest correlation coefficient to heart disease, while sugar, animal proteins and animal fats came in second, third, and fourth, respectively."
- A Survey of Mortality Rates and Food Consumption Statistics of 24 Countries, Medical Hypothesis 7:907-918, 1981

Actually it's most people - 75% of the world in fact are lactose intolerant.
"At least 50% of all children in the United States are allergic to cow's milk, many undiagnosed. Dairy products are the leading cause of food allergy, often revealed by diarrhea, constipation, and fatigue. Many cases of asthma and sinus infections are reported to be relieved and even eliminated by cutting out dairy."
- Natural Health, July, 1994, Nathaniel Mead, MD
Susceptible people eh? 50% seems to be a pretty high number of children who are susceptible. Could it just be that milk causes allergies in all not just susceptible?! Aslo you are ignoring the fact that people who come from countries of low milk consumption to countries of high milk consumption with no family history of allergies suddenly find themselves allergic to some foods, asthmatic and/or suffering from hay fever. Are you going to say that that is somehow coincidence?

Calcium helps prevent osteoporosis yes, but milk does not. As I said, the best source of calcium is from dark leafy greens, calcium in milk is not easily absorbed by the body and there are other foods higher in calcium, that is better absorbed than milk.
Most of your vitamin D comes from sunlight:
"Adults need 10-15 minutes of sunlight, two or three times a week to ensure proper Vitamin D levels."
- Journal of Pediatrics, 1985; 107 (3)

and strangely enough:

"It has since been discovered that the Vitamin D necessary to absorb the calcium moving down the intestine must already have been in the bloodstream for a while; what is present with that calcium (in milk) is useless at that stage. Vitamin D is part of the mechanism to break bone down so that it can then stretch and grow. Thus an overdose of D can eventually lead to osteoporosis."
Vegetarian and Vegan Nutrition, by George Eisman, M.A., M.Sc., R.D.

Milk is not a good source of vitamin D

And pasturisation not only destroys some nutrients like vitamin C, it does NOT kill all bacteria:
"Milk from cows inoculated with listeria was pooled for 2 to 4 days and then heated at 162 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 seconds in a high-temperature, short-time pasteurization unit. Live listeria bacteria was then successfully isolated from the milk after heat treatment in 11 of 12 pasteurization trials. Results indicate listeria can survive the minimum high-temperature, short-time treatment required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for pasteurizing milk. In February of 1999, 350,000 cases of milk and dairy products were withdrawn from every state in America because of listeria contamination. Dozens of Americans died from a bacterial infection that might take as long as 45 days to incubate in the human body."

Goats milk still contains milk protein which is the problem therefore switching usually does not make any difference.

My daughter developed eczema at the age of 3 months or so. She is now almost 6 and still has it. As for treating it, you're not telling me anything we don't already know. We have a healthy diet, we give her flaxseed oil, use natural creams etc but no difference. It has since decreased since putting her on a dairy free diet. Ask naturopaths and they will tell you that a LOT of the time, eczema is because of dairy. My son also suffers from bad reflux made worse by milk. If I don't have milk products, it's virtually non-existant.

Seens as you have incorrectly missed a link between some illnesses and milk, I shall correct you

Asthma
"Many cases of asthma and sinus infections are reported to be relieved and even eliminated by cutting out dairy."
- Frank Oski, M.D., Chief of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Medical School Natural Health, July, 1994
And as I said, people who move from low dairy consumption countires to high suddenly develop asthma.

Cancer
"Human Insulin-like growth factor (IGF-I) and bovine IGF-I are identical. Both contain 70 amino acids in the identical sequence."
- Judith C. Juskevich and C. Greg Guyer. SCIENCE, vol. 249. August 24, 1990.
"IGF-I plays a major role in human breast cancer cell growth."
- E.A. Musgrove, Eur-J-Cancer, 29A (16), 1993
"IGF-I produces a 10-fold increase in RNA levels of cancer cells. IGF-I appears to be a critical component in cellular proliferation."
- X.S. Li, Exp-Cell-Res., March, 1994, 211(1)
"Poor absorption of lactose may more than double the risk of ovarian cancer in women."
- American Journal of Epidemiology, 1999;150
"Galactose is linked both to ovarian cancer and infertility...women who consume dairy products on a regular basis, have triple the risk of ovarian cancer than other women."
- The Lancet 1989; 2
"A strong positive association was observed between IGF-I levels and prostate cancer risk."
- Science, vol. 279. January 23, 1998
"Cheese was found to be most closely correlated with the incidence of testicular cancer. The incidence rate of prostatic cancer was highest in the U.S. (101/100,000), followed by Canada (65), Iceland (61) and Sweden (55). Korea had the lowest incidence rate (0.9), followed by Vietnam (1.2), Algeria (1.8) and China (1.9). Milk consumed between 1961 and 1990 was found to be most closely correlated with prostatic cancer incidence (r = 0.71) and mortality (r = 0.77)."
- International Journal of Cancer (Ganmaa, et. al. 98:262-267)

Digestive problems
As I said, 75% of the world are lactose intolerant. Lactose intolerance causes abdominal pain, bloating, nausea, indigestion, gas, diarrhoea all very similar to Irritible Bowel Syndrome, but fixed by eliminating dairy.
And as I have said several times, casein (milk protein) cannot be digested so it causes indigestion i.e. the body increases bile to the stomach which causes an overabundance of acid. To combat this, the body takes calcium from your bones secretes it into your stomach, helping to neutrlise the acid.
"Dietary protein increases production of acid in the blood which can be neutralized by calcium mobilized from the skeleton."
- Journal of Clinical Nutrition, (1995; 61, 4)

Irritible Bowel Syndrome
Most of what people think is IBS is actually Lactose Intolerance so they don't actually have IBS. IBS has no known cause. The very diagnosis of IBS is the symptoms minus any explainable cause. If dairy is causing IBS like symptoms, then it can't be IBS. Milk can certainly worsen IBS further. So you are right in saying milk is probably not the cause, however the fact remains that milk causes the same sorts of symptoms, not just in some people but in 75% of the world's population.

AS for lactose intolerance, see above. Milk has also been linked to Arthritis, pimples, alzheimers, colic, kidney stones, mood swings, strokes, listeriosis, ADD, autism, calcium deficiency, salmonellosis, obesity, diabetes, muliplte sclerosis, headaches, migraines, irritibility, congestion, lowered immune response even bed wetting. If you don't believe all of what I've said (and I have stated reputable sources such as Science and The Lancet) then go to NotMilk.com and read for yourself. I would especially read Dr Robert M. Kradjian's "Milk Letter".

And, truefusion, do you work for the dairy industry because you are repeating almost verbatim a lot of what they say and as has become so obvious with other large industries, they are interested in surviving and turning a buck while doing it not keeping people healthy.
You think McDonalds is bad?! At least they are starting to admit that their foods aint so hot unlike the dairy industry who is pouring millions of dollars into pulling the wool over our eyes.

I have said it before and I will say it again, in no way is milk good for you - it is plain and simple BAD.

Milk can hardly be bad for you. look at it it this way: everyone of us (well most of us anyway) as well as most every other mammal lived several weeks/months on nothing but pure milk. In essence, milk is enough to live on (kind of like eggs) though of course anything in excess can be harmful.

If milk really "wasn't good for you" there would be a lot of dead/dieing baby animals/people...