You'll Outgrow It

In my last blog post, I told you about my casein allergy.

When I was ten days old it was Christmas time in the late 1970s and I was in the hospital. My mother thought I was dying because there was blood in my stool, my paternal grandmother told her it was the milk causing it, and the doctors confirmed it. My father told me that they did 'nuclear medicine' on me. He had never heard of it and had asked the doctors if it was safe. They assured him it was. I believe that it was probably a barium test that was performed on me. I had extreme inflammation and was bleeding internally. Because many people who have casein allergies also have soy allergies, they put me on an amino based formula called Nutramagen. My dad said it cost $25 a canister. That's about $100 today. I was not a cheap baby.

The doctors told my parents I would outgrow said allergy. I'm not sure that even happens with things that are autoimmune. I think that the milk became less of a part of my diet and I grew bigger so that I was able to tolerate it. I do not think I tolerated it well, and I believe the milk is the original cause of me being nearly 300 pounds. I believe that my gut was inflamed from the time I was allowed to have milk, until three years ago when I gave up all milk products entirely. You may find this hard to believe, but people have lived with far more intolerable things for longer periods of time. I also think as I grew older, that I was tolerating the milk less and less.

Symptoms:

If I were to sit here in front of you and drink a glass of milk, in approximately five to ten minutes, I would feel as if someone were stabbing me in the gut with sharp daggers. This feeling would subside in an hour or two, and is mediated by consuming other food with the milk. The next day and for several days after, I have bad joint pain to the point that moving is painful. I also become a very bad bitch. It's probably from the joint pain, but I am entirely unpleasant to be around if I've been exposed to milk.

I have never had soy by itself, and so I am unsure if it causes the same sort of stomach pain as the milk does. It however does affect my mood, and since it may also be causing low-level inflammation, I avoid it.

It took us a long time to figure out what my problem was. I had known since I was a kid that I'd been in the hospital because of the milk, but I had never heard of a casein allergy, only of lactose intolerance. I didn't think that it was a big deal, and there was no internet, and so I was none the wiser.

McDonalds has good coffee

I backpacked in Italy in 2012. One morning I got a cappuccino from the McDonalds across from Termini station in Rome. If you've not traveled in Italy I'm sure you're thinking McDonalds? Yeah, they have pretty good coffee in Italy, and in the States too. I drank my cappuccino, not having consumed any food with the intention of finding something to eat after, as all they had at that McDonalds was pastries. The Italians need to be introduced to the breakfast taco, seriously, desert for breakfast is not breakfast. Anyway I digress. I didn't get but about two blocks down the street before my stomach started protesting with a vengeance. I thought to myself, "Oh, yeah, coffee is so hard on my stomach, I need to find something to eat quick." No, just no. It is so obvious now that it was the milk in the coffee. In fact, I had made it a point never to drink coffee before I ate breakfast because I thought the coffee upset my stomach. You would think that we would have figured this out sooner, but none of us did. I do wonder how many other people suffer from the same thing, or something similar, and have no idea what is going on with them.

Another interesting thing occurred after I gave up milk. Hiccups used to hurt me bad. I hated getting them, because I would be in agony. My husband thought I was full of it. He would tell me that hiccups don't hurt and that I should buck up. It turns out that my gut must have been so inflamed from the milk, that hiccups did hurt me. They don't any more. I've had them several times in the last three years since giving up the milk, and they've not hurt me once.

But the best thing that happened since I gave up all milk products? The weight that had been plaguing me since the age of eight fell off me. I was and still do eat a low carb diet as well, but I don't count carbs. I just sorta watch that I don't eat too many. How many do I have a day? It's probably akin to the Atkins Maintenance diet. Maybe 60-80? It varies every day. Some days I have less. I rarely go over 100.

So how much weight did I lose? Well I had been stuck at about 190 on low carb for several years and despite doing the Atkins Induction, zero carb, highly ketogenic, I couldn't budge it. However, I had maintained a lower weight than before without struggling and wasn't hungry, so I'd made the decision that if that was as far as I could go, I would be fine with it. I felt so much better eating low carb after all. Then after I removed the milk, I went from the 190 range to about 150 now. I cannot believe that I wear a size 31 in men's Wranglers and I tried on a dress at the mall that was a size 8 and it fit me. I lost forty pounds. Without worrying. Without trying. Without much exercise. I walk my crazy deaf cattle dog down the road a mile or three every day. That's it. It had to be the milk.