How Much Do I Need to Know if I Suffer from Dairy Intolerance?
Everyone reading this will bring a different amount of knowledge with them about dairy intolerance and dairy related healthy conditions. You will each need to learn at least some different things. Some of you may have been living dairy free for many years, while some of you are only just beginning to suspect that something may be wrong and deciding to do some research. As always, I recommend speaking with your health care practitioners if you do have health concerns, experience symptoms you can’t explain, or plan to begin a new dietary program. This list is only the very beginning, and not even the only beginning. There are some of the key terms that I found were useful for me as I first began to understand my dairy intolerance.
If you have just begun to learn about dairy intolerance (DI), or dairy-free (DF) living in general, it can be easy to be caught up by all the technical terminology and feel like you are back in biology or food science class. This post will define many of the basic common terms you will find on this website and in your pursuit of living DF with pleasure. Note that this is an introductory article so it steers clear a lot of the scientific mumbo-jumbo (sorry, no molecular diagrams this time!), while hopefully offering enough info to get you started by providing a bit of a foundation with some key definitions and distinctions. Without further ado, here are 10 definitions in bullets:
Dairy Intolerance: 10 Key Definitions
- *The troublesome parts of milk:
o Lactose: A milk sugar.
o Whey: A milk protein.
o Casein: A milk protein. - Lactase: An enzyme in the body that digests lactose.
- Dairy intolerance: Also referred to as milk protein intolerance (MPI) is sometimes used to describe both lactose intolerance, as well as milk protein intolerance, but technically refers only to the latter (see #4 below).
- Milk Protein Intolerance (MPI): A delayed reaction to at least one dairy protein, often casein. Onset of symptoms will vary (referred to as type I, II, III), and will range anywhere from a few minutes to nearly a day.
- Casein Intolerance: Intolerance to the milk protein casein (see #4 above).
- Lactose intolerance: A common condition where the body does not produce enough (or any) lactase enzyme to digest lactose sugar in dairy products. Degrees of the condition vary greatly. Some people can tolerate small quantities of lactose, others merely cut out milk in liquid form (for example), or switch to milk fortified with lactase enzyme. In general, most sufferers can be aided by supplementing lactase enzyme tablets before consuming dairy.
- Milk allergy: An immune reaction to the protein in milk that can be serious or life-threatening to the point of anaphylaxis (basically a serious general, whole body immune reaction, not a local reaction). A milk allergy is distinct from DI (see #3).
- Non-dairy: Simply means that dairy products are not a main ingredient but may still contain small amounts or traces.
- Dairy-free: No dairy-containing ingredients. Note: be careful to check whether the product was produced on equipment shared with dairy-containing items, and/ or facilities that make dairy-rich products. In other words, “dairy-free” might still contain traces as a result of cross contamination and if you suffer from DI, you should avoid such items.
- Cross-contamination: Where otherwise DF products may contain traces due to contact with dairy-containing items. Usually the result of manufacturing practices.
That’s it for today. Look for the Dairy Intolerance {dot} org resource tab on the top of the page (coming soon) Thanks for reading!
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