For the Love of Dairy

Dairy, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: a nice tall glass of milk with my evening dinner and as the base of my morning smoothie; cheese, preferably mild, melted on just about anything; brie paired with black grapes; cream cheese in or on pretty much everything; butter in or on pretty much everything; yogurt, preferably sister Susan’s homemade lemon yogurt; and above all, ice cream, especially Susan’s homemade. I’ve mentioned in a previous post how sugar and I had a love-hate relationship. How I loved it, but that love was an unhealthy, obsessive, addicted love. One that was toxic and damaging. I had refused to believe this was the case with dairy. My love for dairy is deep and unchanging. While sugar is the Devil, drawing me in, dairy is my friend, my comforting soul food.

Christianne Northrup, OB-GYN, in her book, “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom,” says this love is common for most.

“The cow at some deep level is now associated with ‘mother’ and ‘nourishment,’” she writes. “The very notion of eliminating dairy products causes heart palpitations in some people; they cannot conceive of living without milk.”

Yep.

Northrup goes on to say that dairy (along with possibly eggs and red meat) frequently is the culprit of women’s menstrual cramps and other monthly pains. She stressed menstrual pain and mood swings are not a normal part of a woman’s life and are caused by some outside toxin or emotional issue. I had suffered from excruciating cramps every single month since puberty and always had assumed these were a normal part of menstruation until reading Northrup’s book. I trusted her expertise, but I was never successful at fully giving up dairy long enough to test what she wrote.

Then in early 2017 I read “Grain Brain” by Dr. David Perlmutter, M.D. He says to achieve optimal brain health, people should limit their milk and cream intake to the splash they put in their coffee or tea due to the inflammatory response it triggers in most. There it was again. The universe seemed to be telling me that dairy was not the friend I had believed it to be. Interestingly, Perlmutter said people can eat cheese and butter to their heart’s content, but milk and cream should be avoided at all costs. He never explained why some dairy was OK, though, which thoroughly annoyed me. Should I heed his advice and start cutting back, I wondered? I wasn’t experiencing any digestive issues when I ate or drank it, and it wasn’t causing any brain fog, depression or anxiety the way gluten and sugar had. But with my extensive family history with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, I was willing to do almost anything to achieve optimal brain health. I also had a nagging voice in the back of my head reminding me that dairy wasn’t always my friend.

My mom had told me that when she switched me from baby formula to milk, I hadn’t been able to tolerate the milk and would get sick. This eventually went away, however, and I happily drank milk without issue as I got older. But then in later elementary/early middle school years, milk began to disagree with me again and would give me the worst stomachaches, so I went off dairy again. I don’t remember how long I went without that second time, but I eventually reintroduced it and was fine. By the time I was a teenager, I was loving dairy again without any issues – or so I thought.

I was taking a blend of ibuprofen and Pamprin (multiple pills of each) every 4-6 hours to help control the pain from my menstrual cramps. Month after month for decades I fought that battle, never imagining my diet could be causing it. My doctor over the years prescribed various forms of birth control along with prescription pain medication, but nothing worked. The birth control only made matters worse by creating other unwanted symptoms and the pain med, which was supposed to last 12 hours, only lasted a couple hours and then I was stuck in misery until able to take more. I took one dose of that and said never again.

At the same time I was reading “Grain Brain,” my doctor was urging me to try one more type of birth control. I had sworn off “the pill” several years earlier, having never found one that worked for me, but my doctor insisted a very low-dose form might do the trick. I agreed to try a progesterone-only form without expecting results. Sure enough, when my next period arrived, it was as painful as ever. But this time, I made a mental note of how much dairy I had eaten in the days prior and during. Turns out it was quite a lot.

Perlmutter’s and Northrup’s words were ringing in my head, so I decided to take the next step, and this time, stick with it. I eliminated cream and milk entirely and switched to almond milk. (I have more to say on almond milk below.) And then during the week before my period and the first few days after its start, I gave up all dairy. Low and behold, it worked. My cramps did not fully disappear, but they became mild and didn’t last nearly as long, requiring little to no medication. I really didn’t know how much the birth control was contributing, but I knew the lack of dairy was clearly helping. A year later I stopped the birth control wanting to try a bio-identical progesterone instead (more on this in the future). My cramps worsened slightly during the few months I was not taking a hormone, but they never came anywhere near the intensity I had experienced prior. Greatly limiting dairy also brought on a very happy side effect I had not anticipated: I slowly started to lose more weight.

I read Dr. Dale Bredesen’s “The End of Alzheimer’s” in October 2017, and he reinforced what Perlmutter and Northup wrote about dairy. However, unlike Perlmutter, Bredesen says to “avoid (all) … dairy as much as possible” in his ReCODE protocol, the program he had created to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Like gluten, he says most people’s digestive systems have not evolved to handle dairy, resulting in leaky gut and chronic inflammation, key contributors to Alzheimer’s. Now even more desperately determined to prevent Alzheimer’s in myself, I stuck to my plan even more strictly. I allow myself limited cheese and butter for 2 ½ weeks of the month along with rare ice cream splurges, but other than that, I don’t touch dairy.

I may have the motivation to one day fully give it up, but right now, I’m not willing. As I said above, dairy is my soul food, and I just can’t see myself going completely without. I believe the program I’ve created for myself works well for me – a good compromise on which my health has only improved. (I’ve learned to listen to my body above any expert when it comes to my health.) Between the new dairy regime and the intermittent fasting I began as part of Breden’s Ketoflex 12/3 diet plan (more on this in the future), I continued to lose weight in 2017 and the early months of this year.

I had lost 35 pounds, dropping to 160 pounds, in 2015 by eliminating gluten and most grains and added sugar, but I had plateaued in 2016, believing I had reached my ideal weight, despite my body mass index of 26 telling me I was still overweight. I truly believed BMI was little more than BS. Imagine my shock then when the weight started melting away once again with my new dairy and fasting programs. By early 2018, I had lost an additional 25 pounds, reaching 135 pounds and effortlessly dropping from a size 10 to a 6 in less than a year. I continue to maintain that weight without difficulty, and my BMI is 22 – right in the middle of the ideal zone. Now I think maybe the folks who created the BMI chart knew a bit of what they were doing after all.

I also in the early part of this year requested the blood test Bredesen recommends for determining inflammation levels in the body – the high-sensitivity C-reactive protein test. My results were right at the cusp of Bredesen’s ideal levels for preventing cognitive decline. I plan to have the test done again early next year to see if the numbers have improved, but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve successfully patched another hole (and what is possibly the biggest hole) in Bredesen’s roof of 36 Alzheimer’s causes by getting chronic inflammation under control through my diet changes.

For anyone considering giving up dairy (or who already has), I have a few thoughts on almond milk as a great dairy milk replacement. When I first gave up dairy milk, I replaced it with a common brand of store-bought almond milk but struggled with the strange, seemingly artificial flavor. (I purchased plain unsweetened, not vanilla or any other flavor.) Anyone who’s tried plain store-bought almond milk can probably attest to what I’m trying to describe. I tolerated it and eventually got used to the flavor and used it for several months. But the ingredients continued to bother me. I hated that the list included various thickeners and the ever-mysterious “natural flavor.” I wondered if I could possibly just make it myself. I found a very easy recipe and now make my own with much better tasting results. I can’t remember the website where I found the recipe (my apologies to whomever that is) but it basically runs as follows:

Soak 1 cup of plain, raw almonds in a nonporous bowl of water (the almonds will stain a plastic bowl) for about 12 hours. (I usually let them soak over night.) Once rehydrated, rinse repeatedly until the water running off of the almonds runs clear and then drain in a colander.

Add almonds and 4 cups of water to a kitchen blender (I recommend a Ninja blender, which I use, or a Vitamix blender) and liquify to your desired consistency. Pour into a jar or pitcher and keep refrigerated. It lasts about a week in the fridge before developing a slightly sour taste.

The recipe gives the option of straining the pulp out of the milk by pouring it into the jar or pitcher through a cheesecloth or other thin towel. The pulp then can be stored in the refrigerator and used as an additive to smoothies and other recipes, or it can be roasted in the oven until dried and then pureed in a food processor to make almond flour. I choose to leave the pulp in the milk partly for convenience and partly because I use the milk mostly for smoothies and want the pulp in them.

You’ll find the homemade almond milk is light with a lovely, mild flavor, and at the end of the day, it’s cheaper than store-bought. You’ll never want to drink store-bought again.

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