Milk Allergy Symptoms

Milk allergies are nothing new. Hippocrates wrote about symptoms arising from milk back in 370 BC!

Being allergic to milk is a lot less common that we think it is with about 3% of adults experiencing symptoms after drinking milk or eating food with milk as an ingredient. The percentage of infants being allergic to cow’s milk varies between 5 and 15% depending on their age. Most Infants do seem to grow out cow’s milk allergy. And for most people it is a food intolerance they experience not an allergy.

And that brings straight to the question “Are you allergic to milk or intolerant?”

Both are unpleasant but knowing whether you are intolerant or allergic can be important to its treatment.

A food allergy is not just experiencing unpleasant symptoms after eating the food; a food allergy is having symptoms such as stomach upsets, wheezing or hives – from the immune system reacting to proteins in the food. If the symptoms are produced simply by indigestion or some other non Immune system reaction then you have a Food Intolerance and not an allergy.

Milk has a protein called casein and a sugar called lactose. Milk allergy is a reaction to the casein and milk intolerance is a reaction to the lactose.

And the symptoms can be similar making it difficult to distinguish, so it is a good idea to get specialist advice and help especially for a very young patient!

Milk Allergy Symptoms

Only about 1 in 10 of people getting reactions to milk are allergic but here are the typical symptoms.

•    Runny nose and then sneezing, wheezing and coughing
•    Eyes – watery or itchy or black eyes – “allergic shiners”
•    Mouth – swelling of lips, tongue or throat,
•    Hives, Itchy rash or eczema
•    Stomach Pain and bloating
•    Gas, wind and cramps
•    Diarrhoea

Dairy Products such as cheese and yogurt are very different from milk and you may well be allergic or intolerant to milk while being completely unaffected by the others. Experience or allergy testing is the only guide

Allergy Testing and Nutritional Remedies

The obvious and immediate response to a food allergy or intolerance is a
substitution of the food that seems to be causing the problem. Sometimes this is easy but with milk it can be difficult depending on what kind of diet you have. Milk is a common ingredient of bread and bakery items causing quite a burden on the affected person.

Sometimes a switch to soy or rice will work, with plenty of soy “milk” and rice “milk” products.

There may be other options for folks who want to explore them. These are best explored with the help of a Nutrition expert and depend on whether you are allergic or intolerant.

The conventional view of Allergy Doctors is that allergies are disorders of the Immune system, implying that your immune system should not be reacting to food. In a way that is correct because food should be digested in the digestive system before food molecules get to be absorbed. If that was happening then food molecules would not be getting undigested into the bloodstream.

Nutrition Doctors and Naturopathic doctors view allergy as a problem with the digestion – in particular, they consider that the lining of the gut is too thin allowing a kind of leakage of the undigested food into the bloodstream. It makes sense that the Immune system goes into overdrive! This condition is called Leaky gut and there is a diagnostic test for this which is simple to do- it just involves drinking a special mix of sugars and giving a urine sample to a laboratory.

If the leaky gut test comes up positive then it is quite simple to remedy. Typically a special nutrition supplement including the amino acid L-glutamine would be used. L-glutamine is a major nutrient of the lining of the gut and an aid to repairing it.

Another strategy is to use digestive enzymes to help your body digest the milk. A health shop may stock several kind of Digestive enzymes and a Nutritional Therapist is best placed to help you with the selection of which is best for you. Many people get a lot of help with their Allergy and Intolerance symptoms just by taking a Digestive Enzyme at mealtime.