Milk: intolerance or allergy?

Milk: intolerance or allergy?

Abdominal pains, diarrheas and distensions are symptoms common to the allergy to cow’s milk proteins and intolerance to lactose. only the first of these reactions of over-sensitiveness is due to an immunological mechanism. how to make the difference between intolerance and food allergy?

Is intolerance with lactose, it what?

Intolerance with lactose is an incapacity to digest the lactose which is due to the absence or an insufficient quantity of specific digestive enzymes: lactases.

It should be known that the lactose is a sugar which one exclusively finds in the milk of the mammals. Thus lactases are present at the new-born babies so that they digest their first food correctly, the mother’s milk. Then, as milk is replaced by other food, the activity of lactases decreases. Except that at the human ones, the consumption of dairy products perdure, which causes to maintain lactases and thus the capacity to digest milk until the adulthood and all the life.

Conversely, when the activity of lactases is insufficient, the digestion of lactose is hurt, this sugar accumulates in the intestine, which stimulates the intestinal flora and starts symptoms: diarrheas, acidity, distensions, abdominal pains.
The diagnosis of intolerance to lactose uses the test of expired hydrogen: one collects the air expired before and after the ingestion of a lactose amount. In the event of intolerance, this expired air contains much hydrogen because of the fermentation of lactose by the bacteria in the colon. A test of oral provocation (reproduction of the symptoms by ingestion of a lactose amount) makes it possible to confirm the diagnosis.

What to make in the event of intolerance with lactose?

It is necessary to decrease and split the lactose catches. The total removal of the dairy products is generally not recommended.
One also recommends to privilege full-cream milk compared to skimmed milk, because gastric draining is done more slowly. For the same reason, it is preferable to consume milk at the same time as food fibers.

And if it were an allergy to cow’s milk proteins?

The symptoms described in the event of intolerance with lactose also occur at the people presenting an allergy to proteins of the cow’s milk. However, this allergy to the characteristic to be accompanied by another specific sign: constipation. This symptom, found exclusively in the food allergy, makes it possible to distinguish it from intolerance to lactose. Attention however, it arrives that these two affections coexist.
The diagnosis of allergy uses a test of oral provocation which consists in introducing a milk amount without lactose. If digestive symptoms (abdominal diarrheas, pains…) disappear, one can eliminate intolerance with lactose.
In all the cases, it is important to establish the diagnosis because the assumption of responsibility differs. Intolerance does not impose the total ousting of the dairy products, whereas the allergy to milk proteins strictly prohibits the milk and its derivatives of the food mode.