The Devil In Your Milk – 3 Reasons You May Not Tolerate Dairy

Welcome to the Mike Fave podcast. I’m your host, Ethan Wright, joined by Mike Fave. On this podcast, Mike and I help you make sense of the online health chaos while providing you with solutions along the way. In today’s episode, we are going to dig into dairy and discuss the three main problems that Mike sees with clients in terms of tolerating dairy and what you can do to navigate these problems if you want to incorporate dairy into your diet.

So in the bioenergetic sphere, dairy is like a centerpiece, almost like a panacea type food when people originally come. And I think in previous diets, maybe a lot of people had removed it, and then they come into bioenergetics and they start eating just, you know, a ton. And I know from videos that you’ve made in the past or maybe your own experience, there can be some problems with that, right?

Yeah. So dairy is kind of, um, it’s a dual-edged sword because there’s tons of benefits to it, but there’s also some significant problems that people experience with it. That I think it’s important to get a full picture on so that you can determine, number one, do you tolerate dairy? And then number two, if you don’t tolerate dairy, is there other options that you can bring into place?

Or do you have to eshoo it all together? And then if you eshoo it all together, what would you do? Like, what do you do to make up for some of the benefits that you would get you from using dairy as a food source? So I, I think part of the problem is just when you come into this sphere, like you hear only the pros, right?

Like you’ll hear only how good it is and then people double down on dairy. It’s kind of like when you go low carb, you double down on, on, like having less and less carbs. And the bioenergetic sphere, it’s like more and more dairy and less and less polyunsaturated fats. So I, I think we want to get some nuance to the picture in the podcast.

I think it’s gonna be the most important piece here. And this, this doesn’t mean that I, that I don’t think that dairy has a bunch of benefits ’cause it definitively does it just that it also, it also has some specific problems. That we’re gonna go through today, talk about what the symptoms are of those are, what exactly is going on, and then what the solutions would be.

And when you first came to bioenergetics, I assume that you got on the dairy train pretty quickly, right? Not necessarily because it was, there was coming from the low carb background and coming from the, the keto, paleo esque perspective, I was extremely hesitant to adopt, at least initially the pro fructose or pro sugar stance.

First was adopting pro carbohydrate, then it was the pro fructose, pro sugar stuff. And then after that, dairy was kind of like the last pillar to fall, uh, in terms of me incorporating it into my diet. And then when I had incorporated into my diet, yeah, then I went like full bore with it. ’cause once you start having.

Milk and ice cream and stuff like this, again, it, it’s, it’s delicious. It’s addicting and you want to keep having, having more and more and more. Plus, from a logistics standpoint, it’s extremely easy on your prep time. So if you can just plow milk or you could just eat Greek yogurt or something like this, you don’t actually have to cook.

And then doing that with fruits actually saves you quite a bit of time. So it’s like, I wanted it to work. I really wanted it to work. I spent at at least a full year dedicated to experimenting with all forms, all different types of dairy to get it to work. And I still struggled and finally settled on where I’ve been in most recent times.

And again, like that’s why I bring this perspective, kind of hedging on the idea that like dairy is just across the board a benefit and there’s no downsides because there definitely, there definitely are some. Yeah, I think Ray too makes kind of an argument at times for the downsides of, uh, maybe it’s like too much red meat or something like that.

And then you get, you come to his perspective and you see, okay, maybe dairy can be like substituted for some of that, and you get all these additional benefits. And maybe if you weren’t feeling good on the previous diet, you kind of go, oh, like maybe it was all the red meat and I can replace it with this dairy thing.

And um, yeah, that, I mean, that was, I guess everyone’s kind of looking for a justification, right? To eat, to eat ice cream for lunch instead of, instead of, at least that’s my, that was my personal experience. I think that there’s this, because the perspective with the dairy is the amino acid profile and then a lack of iron, and then it’s the saturated fats, uh, and then it’s the calcium, the phosphorus ratio, and these different components.

And it’s like, I think those arguments are all fair minus the amino acid ratio for dairy is a little bit, that one’s a little bit more of a shaky, uh, argument. Although in some of Dr. Pete’s quotes, like he does say that the amino acid profiles for a growing organism, so it’s actually not necessarily ideal.

Um, but then there’s other quotes that say something a little bit different. But in general, I think that those are all fair arguments and pros for dairy. And so I, I wouldn’t say that it’s like, oh, you shouldn’t, like, those are, those are wrong. It’s just that there’s other things that happen with dairy or there’s other components of dairy.

The big three being, uh, inability to digest lactose, which we all, I think the vast majority of people know about. And that one’s not as big of a deal. That one’s easier to work around. But the, the inability to tolerate the opiate peptide of Cain called Omo, morphine being the second major driver, that one’s probably the most significant and the hardest one to work around.

And then after that, you have the inability to tolerate the hormones present in dairy. So those three areas, I think are the biggest problems. And those, the goal is to figure out one, which of those are the problem for you as an individual? And then two, figure out how you work around that. Do you incorporate dairy?

What form of dairy do you incorporate into your diet? Uh, and then kind of run from there. And then if you do have to cut it out for whatever reason, maybe you have more than one of those there, maybe you have three, all three of them are a problem for you. Then in that circumstances, like if you’re going to minimize dairy, what can you do instead?

I think these are the questions that we wanna be asking, not is dairy good or bad? Like avoiding a dichotomy. And starting to bring into perspective this idea of a spectrum of options based on your individual context. For this, for, for the different types of dairy or for dairy tolerance in general, since you’re working with clients, what would you say is the percentage of clients that come to you and you start them off with like, uh, a dairy heavy diet?

I guess I would say the, the vast majority of clients that I’m working with, I actually hold dairy in the beginning. I. Especially if they’re having hormonal problems, digestive issues or, or anything dealing with weight. If you’re dealing with those, you want to get to a baseline, make sure everything’s going well, solidify things, and then start to reintroduce some of these more problematic foods so that you can get an understanding of what your true responses ’cause.

One of the problems that I, I find when I first start working with people is they’re not clear on what bothers them and what doesn’t bother them. There’s not a sense of like, well, this food causes this and that, food causes that. So I try to create a foundational paradigm or foundational dietary setup, and then start to test the individual components one by one.

And then that’s how you get to figure out the nuances and find where you fall on the spectrum. And so I think the found, getting a foundation and then working from there is extremely important rather than just like, like it, it becomes very piecemeal if you’re trying to do it with all of the pieces. Now, this doesn’t take necessarily that long within a couple weeks of having some of these foods out.

Like one to two weeks of having the food out. You’ll know if you feel a difference and you start building a bank of reference experiences saying, well, this affects me this way, that affects me that way, that affects me that way. And so that starts to allow you to get a more personalized perspective with nutrition.

So you actually get to a point where you can make realistic decisions about foods and understand their effects on your physiology and, and construct a diet around that. Uh, and I think that’s probably, I mean, that’s for me, been the most effective way to go. You can do a bunch of testing with this stuff, but it’s also, I mean, it’s sometimes it’s difficult.

The testing I think doesn’t really give you as good a picture as like your actual empirical responses to foods a lot of times. Yeah. So what you’re saying is you just in the beginning remove all the potentially problematic stuff to give yourself the clean slate. And particularly with dairy, because there’s so many different forms.

In which you can like, consume dairy, like cheeses, yogurt, a one, a two, casing, da, da, like all the different forms. So that’s why it’s important, I think, for this podcast to give everybody the context on like, all right, these are the three main problems. Like if you think these are the ones you’re having or if you, if you resonate with any of them, stop these forms, maybe try these and so we can like get into all of that.

That’s the, that’s the goal, right? It’s literally a framework of if you have a problem with casein, here’s what you’ll expect and here’s what you can do. If you have a problem with lactose, here’s what you can expect and here’s what you can do. So the goal is to get practical about it, but again, like before you even start to determine the, before you start to test or determine your response to these individual, individual types of dairy, I would first get to that baseline diet.

And just as an example of what this looks like, it’s essentially gonna be a meat. Some type of veg, probably low fodmap, veg cooked that you tolerate fruits if you do well with starches, tubers, maybe some rice, something like this. Uh, and then fat sources could be a variety of monounsaturated and saturated fat sources.

I would hold dairy fats to start, just again, so you can see a response if it’s causing hormonal issues for you, for example, like acne. But what you wanna do is you wanna use something like avocado, like macadamia nuts, like olive oil, like, uh, uh, fat from beef or other ruminant animals. You could keep eggs, uh, into the diet.

Egg yolks, uh, dark chocolate. These types of things would be, I think, good to incorporate in the beginning, just so that you can, uh, you don’t, you have minimized the potential of having some of these problems from the different dairy fats. And then you can test your response to dairy fats. You, you wanna have a diet set up like that, that protein.

The carb sourced from fruit or tubers, the fiber for some type of low fodmap, tolerated cooked veg. And then the monounsaturated saturated fat sources. We set up the diet in this fashion. Again, I talk about how to do this inside the nutrition blueprint, which you could check out on the website, but set up the diet from there.

And then, then what you can do is when you, you could try these different forms of dairy that we’re gonna talk about and see what your response is and go from there. And also set up metrics you want to test, right? So if you are dealing with digestive issues, try to gauge like, okay, my constipation is X out of 10, or my acne, if it’s skin problems, hormonally related X out of 10, or if it’s related to lactose, my the loose stools, bloating and gas is X out of 10.

And just rate yourself on a daily basis for the previous day to gauge how these things are changing when you add these components in. Just you remind yourself to focus on that symptom when you’re testing out some of these individual foods so you can see what your response is. And one other thing I want to mention really quick here, it’s slightly tangential and we’re not gonna massively cover it here.

But some people, depending on how they respond to some of the fats in their diet, will see changes in their lipid panel with some of the dairy fats that, um, like may bump their values. And they, they may, if they’re, like a lot of clients look looking for, are working with, are looking for a particular target.

And if you go sh shift your, your profile towards tons of high fat dairy that’s high in tic acid, which is a type of saturated fat that can actually bump LDL total cholesterol values up significantly. And some people freak out when they see that. So I just wanna mention that here. ’cause that is something that, that people tend to see.

And I tend to see that with dairy ’cause I’m seeing limit panels all the time and I can see people’s diets in chronometer weighed against their lipid panels. And so then I can try, I can see kind of how things affect. Plus the research talks about this as well. So that’s something to keep in mind for some people with dairy as well, it’s less of a concern ’cause it’s a whole can of worms about, uh, whipple proteins and types of fatty acids and like what’s driving cardiovascular disease.

But that is something I think important to actually mention that’s some of the dairy fats can drive this effect for some people. And they may see it on their lip profile and they may not like that. And if people want to check out some of the lipid stuff that we talked about and the metrics, they can do that on the other podcast.

So let’s jump into the lactose one. Maybe start like, what are the, you know, symptoms that people experience if they have a lactose intolerance? Yeah, so lactose is probably the least problematic issue with dairy. So everybody’s talks about lactose intolerance. It’s like, oh, I don’t know if I’m lactose intolerance or not.

Um, but it’s probably the one that I, I think is the, like, least problematic and it’s much more easily rectified than some of the other options. So if you have lactose intolerance, what you’re probably gonna deal with is bloating, grass, cramping, maybe g gurgling in the stomach or the intestines after you eat, and then potentially lose stools, uh, and diarrhea.

Now these symptoms are, they happen within like one or two or three hours after having lactose. Once it hits the small intestine, uh, and, and, and then the, the undigested lactose reaches the large intestine and the bacteria start to ferment it. You start to get some of these symptoms, so it should happen relatively quickly, and that’s going to, this is a little bit different than some of the other problems with casein or the hormonal content ’cause those can have more of an extended effect or not happen directly after consumption of the meal.

So the timeline is as important as a type of symptom. The other ones also probably aren’t gonna cause these same symptom profiles. So if you’re getting this gas floating, cramping, loose stools, diarrhea with dairy, and it’s relatively quickly after, within a couple hours, probably a lactose intolerance problem.

The other, the other symptoms, we’re gonna talk about different timeline and also different symptom sets. That’s the first thing I think is important to understand is the timeline for lactose intolerance and the symptom profile are different. Maybe give a rundown of like what causes sort of the lactose intolerance, like what is going on there?

Yeah, so there’s two primary causes for lactose intolerance. One is genetic and that’s as you become an adult, you lose the ability to produce the enzyme lactase in the intestine. And so, just so we can show you here at the small intestine, the enzyme lactase sits at the brush border. So there’s the little vii here, and we see lactose here, which is a combination of glucose and lactose bonded together.

Lactase cuts this bond and then you basically get free glucose and free lactose, which could be absorbed. If you don’t produce a lactase enzyme, it doesn’t get broken and the lactose cannot be absorbed. So it sits in the intestine and when it sits in the intestine. What winds up happening is you get the colonic bacteria fermenting that lactose producing short chain fatty acids and a bunch of gases.

The epithelial cells or the colonocytes will use those short chain fatty acids. And then the gas, the gas will cause bloating and cramping and things like this. And also the, the lactose will pull water into the bowel. And that’s what creates the, the bloating, the gassing, uh, uh, the gassiness, the loose stools and whatnot.

’cause you pull the water into the bowel, you’re creating the gases. You have that rapid distension of the intestine, which is often quite uncomfortable. And then you can get diarrhea and things like this. So you have, on the flip side, the opposite to this is that you actually produce the enzyme lactase consistently, and you’re able to break down lactose and you absorb it.

So you don’t get any of these problems because it doesn’t actually go into the microbiome. And something to keep in mind is that the microbiome piece here is exceptionally important. Because some people who don’t produce lactase actually don’t get symptoms, and the adjustment is based on what’s going on with the microbiome and how well their microbiome’s able to process the lactose without producing the gases and all this type of stuff.

So we’re gonna get into that, but that, that’s quite important. What I wanna mention here is that the vast majority of the world’s populations are actually lactase, uh, non persisters. So they don’t actually continue to produce lactose. So about 68% of the world does not continue to produce the enzyme lactase as a, as adults.

The most of the people who are able to produce lactase come from Northern European descent. Um, and that’s like the, the, the other, what is it, 32% of the population. Um, and there’s, there’s like, depending on what your genetics are, there’s gonna be a mix in terms of how well you’re able to tolerate it.

Because depending on what type of gene you inherit and whether you’re homozygous or heterozygous, that’ll change how well you process lactose. So basically that’s type one is whether you genetically continue to produce lactose or not, and then type two is going to be, if you have, if you are somebody who actually produces lactase on a consistent basis right at into adulthood, then if you have damage to the intestine, to the small intestine where the lactase is produced, then what winds up happening is the, the intestine is not able to produce that enzyme, and then you, you basically can’t digest lactose anymore, so you get the same problems.

Things that could trigger this type of response is if you have celiac disease, which basically flattens the villi in the intestine. Inflammatory bowel disease, which causes ulcerations in different areas and things like Crohn’s disease would be the major driver here. If you have chemotherapy or antibiotic deuce damage to the intestine, or if you have an intestinal infection, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, et cetera.

These types of things can affect the intestine’s ability to produce lactase. And then allow you to, which allows you to digest the lactose. So intestinal damage. And then genetic non persistence of the lactase enzyme are the two drivers of lactose intolerance. And then the last piece here, the modifying factor.

If the lactose isn’t absorbed by the intestine, then what winds up happening is it goes to the colon, as we talked about. And this is important ’cause we get to the solutions. If, if your colon is, or your colonic microenvironment is off, or it’s not ideal for digesting lactose, then you’ll get more symptoms than somebody who’s colonic microbiome, uh, environment, or the microbiome actually digests lactose well without producing all these gases and components like this.

So that’s why even though 68% of the world is lactose intolerance, a large portion of people can actually digest lactose to some extent without actually getting symptoms because of what’s going on in their colon. So if somebody was lactose persistent. But was getting these types of symptoms where they’re like running to the bathroom or something within the three hours after having it.

That would be a sign that there’s something going on in Intestinally with, with one of those things you just mentioned. Right. That would be my first thought would be that there’s potentially either SIBO or there’s some damage to the small intestine or some type of pathogenic infection or maybe an autoimmune process that is leading to, uh, damage to the small intestine so it can’t produce lactase or the bacteria is so high up in the intestine that they’re fermenting the lactose in the small intestine, creating symptoms before the person is able even is even able to, um, to have their enzymes access it.

Or the other thing is if transit time is altered, you may not be able to digest that lactose rapidly and then it will still make its way to the colon. So yeah, I’m starting to think dysfunction in the small intestine, but potentially for someone who’s lactose persistent, like even if their microbiome was in good shape, let’s say they normally like are fine.

Then if they were to just go over a certain threshold of like milk or something in a short amount of time, would that potentially like overload the system and you could get like a la No, not for, for lactase per persisters, I think it’d be hard to overload the system if everything was going well. Oh, really?

For, so like if they’re still producing that enzyme into adulthood for people who aren’t, well, that’s a different story. You could then overwhelm your capacity to digest lactose. Now, in the research they do show that if you, if you are a lactase per persister, you keep producing the enzyme into adulthood and you stop dairy for a period of time, it will there in people who are heterozygous for the enzyme.

So they have, uh, two different copies of the enzyme, one functional, one non-functional, uh, for the gene for the genes. Then they may decrease their absorptive prec or the enzymatic function. Uh, of lactose in the intestine, and then it takes, maybe it takes a little bit of time to get it back with exposure to lactose.

Whereas for people who are homozygous, they have two functioning copies of the gene. Then in that circumstance, they typically will continue to digest lactose without too much of an issue, uh, overall. So what would be some of the solutions for someone who’s, um, either, you know, not like a lactose persister or, but wants to include some amount of dairy like in the diet, even if you’re not a lactose or a lactose persister, you will still be able to handle, or most people are still able to handle small portion of dairy.

Now, how much dairy that actually is, is gonna be person specific. But some of the studies say people, some people are even able to tolerate up to a cup of milk in one sitting, which be 12 grams of lactose without necessarily developing serious GI symptoms. For other people that may be less, maybe it’s four ounces.

Maybe it’s a half a cup. Maybe they’re doing yogurt, like a Greek yogurt, that some of the lactose is fermented away and there’s, they’re able to handle the Greek yogurt and without too much issue. ’cause you also have some of the, the bacterial components present in there as well that maybe helps with the lac uh, handling lactose.

So it will depend on the type of dairy. But I think even if you’re a lactase, non persister, you may still be able to tolerate dairy without getting serious issues, but the amount may be important. And then what do you think about this idea? Like, I know when I came to Pete, he would talk about dosing, like small amounts of milk, like progressively overloading like, um, for, uh, weeks or months or something like that, until maybe you could start producing the lactase enzyme again.

Or I don’t know if maybe you’re adjusting something in the microbiome that allows you to tolerate it better, but do you think that that’s a plausible way to try to go about, like maybe remedying the lactose. Yeah, so there actually is studies on this and they have found that progressively increasing consumption of dairy products with lactose can help to shift the microbiome, not change your production of lactase enzyme, but shift the microbiome’s fermentation patterns and get it more accustomed to lactose such that it becomes less a problem.

So that is something that people can try is progressively increasing their dairy content. Maybe starting off with like, uh, two ounces of, of milk or something like this or another dairy, and then increasing every couple days, two ounces, maybe go to four ounces and then kind of see where your threshold point is.

Maybe you go up to nine ounce or, or 10 ounces or eight ounces and you’re like, okay, eight ounces, I’m okay. And it, again, this is in one sitting as well, because it’s gonna be based, it’s gonna be in one sitting, not just for the whole day. Right. That’s something that’s important because it’s just when it’s in that meal, it’s a problem.

Versus like, so if you have a breakfast with dairy that has 10 grams of lactose, and you’re like, okay, there. You may be able to have another 10 grams at dinner without necessarily causing a problem. ’cause that food is already gonna transit. It have transited through the digestive tract, reach the colon and the lactose fermented po potentially by the time you even had dinner.

So that would be just improving overall microbiome. Would it help, does it have to be improved through like using the dairy products? Are there other ways that you can go about, um, I don’t know, trying to increase like the population of beneficial bacteria in the gut, like that may help with the dairy tolerance, the lactose tolerance.

You could just progressive, like try to progressively increase your dairy first. Again, this is if it’s a lactose issue and then if, if that’s not working, then I would look to try to use, you could use some probiotic species, particularly bifido bacterium animos and in certain lact baso species as, as well as potentially incorporating lacto oligosaccharides.

Which are types of, they’re, they actually are FODMAPs that encourage the growth of these same types of bacteria, the bifidobacterium and the lactobacillus species that will subsequently ferment lactose. So you can use those two things. I would just be careful, um, again, like if the taking too much probiotic could be problematic for some people and you gotta be careful on the strain ’cause they could give you some symptoms.

But yeah, you could incorporate galacto, oligosaccharides and some of the probiotic bacteria and that may actually, there are studies with this help to improve response to lactose, such you don’t have as much gas production, loose stools and stuff like this when you’re having the, the dairy in your diet.

So I first you could just try increasing and then you could look to incorporate some of these options. Or you could look to incorporate things like, uh, yogurts. Uh, which would, which provides some of these bacteria depending on if it’s like a fresh yogurt or store-bought. And it also decreases lactose content.

And then anecdotally, some people do actually find they will tolerate more raw milk or stuff like this than they would if they had fresh milk. Now, I’m not saying for people to actually take raw milk, of course, you know, listen to the regulations, but that is something that I’ve anecdotally heard from people who were doing raw milk, is that they found that they tolerated it a little bit, uh, better than they did some of the store-bought milk.

But I’ve also had people tolerate the store-bought milk a little bit better than, than the raw milks or even like a lower, a low temp pasteurized milk or something like this. But I think that’s not necessarily ’cause of lactose. That’s ’cause some of the other issues that, that we’re gonna talk about. And then with people who maybe just want to avoid the lactose problem like altogether, but still have dairy in their diet.

What are some of the options that they can, they can go for, whether they’re just, you know, I wanna eliminate anything with the lactose, like they’re having problems with that. I mean, the two easiest options are shoot for lower lactose dairy op products. So, hard cheeses, uh, potentially like, well fermented yogurts, Greek yogurts and skier.

Uh, those will have much less lactose than your typical cup of milk. Uh, and then you could look, I mean, some of the other, uh, cheeses may be okay, like not at, not like, it doesn’t have to be all the way in age guta. Um, then a whey protein, uh, isolated whey protein would probably be okay in isolated case would probably be okay.

And then also dairy fats, like butter would probably be okay. Uh, the other thing is you could use lactase enzyme. Now this is a bit hit or miss ’cause some people tend to have allergic reactions to it ’cause it’s from a fungal fermentation process. But I’ve had clients that completely have no issue with using the lactase enzyme and tolerating dairy.

And I think if, if that’s a route that you want to go, that would, that would be okay. Uh, or you can incorporate the lower lactose options if you have the intestinal problems. Obviously addressing those would be paramount if you’re having issues with lactose. So if you know you have SIBO or you know you have inflammation going on in the gut or problems like this, looking to address that would be important.

And something to mention is that the, in some of the papers, they actually talk about antibiotics causing dysregulation in the gut and leading to people having a harder time tolerating dairy in certain foods ’cause of depletion in the microbiome. So if you have an infection, then of course they’ll be helpful.

But at the same time, if you use antibiotics and you didn’t have an infection and you create dysbiosis, that could potentially worsen your tolerance to foods, not only dairy, but other foods long term. So you just wanna be careful and weigh the pros versus cons. With the antibiotic usage in these circumstances.

Um, and again, I tend to like herbal stuff personally because there’s less of a risk to massive microbiome disruption than if you were to just like, you know, go hard on, on like the pharmaceutical antibiotics. Yeah, we should, I mean we should definitely do an episode all on antibiotics and the stuff, ’cause that’s another one in the Pete ecosystem that I think gets some people into trouble.

Um, I mean we, we both, we both have, we both have. And I think it’s something I’ve seen with quite a few clients, so that’s why I dropped that year. ’cause there is that m that taking antibiotics will like improve your tolerance to dairy. And it maybe for some people it will. Like, I wouldn’t rule that out.

But for other people I’ve seen that it actually makes things more difficult for them on their di on their GI tract long term. Uh, so this is, and that was something that happened to me as well. So this is something to. Just keep in mind to like look at the full picture for them and determine like, is it indicated, do I have an infection where I’m gonna use the antibiotics or am I just trying to like throw antibiotics at this with like a Hail Mary in hopes that it’s gonna solve my tolerance to dairy?

And also, is the tolerance again, like is it a lactose issue or is it a casing issue or is it a hormone issue because the antibiotics aren’t gonna fix a Cain or a hormone issue with dairy. They may potentially help with a lactose issue. And honestly, before coming to Or any of your work or, or Yeah, bioenergetics, like I had not heard of the Cain problem with dairy at all.

It was always just the lactose thing. I think probably that’s the case and the hormones, you hear a little bit about the hormones, but the casing stuff, I mean, I had no idea. I think it was on the form like way back in the day where I saw you post about it originally. And that was like the first time I had ever seen it.

I spent. At least one year dedicated to trying all types of dairy. So I was doing goat dairy, camel dairy, buffalo, dairy, a two dairy. I did like, I was doing keifer, I was doing yogurt. I was like literally trying everything I could to tolerate all these different types of dairy. I was trying different protein powders.

At one point I was trying like probiotic enemas to see if I could shift my microbiome to tolerate dairy. ’cause I was so convinced that it was gonna be this ideal food. And plus I really liked it and I just could not get it to work for me. Um, and you’re lactase per persister? Yeah, genetically. I, I continue to produce lactose, so that’s when I started.

It was a ca the casing and the hormones for me, I didn’t tolerate well. And so I started to, I started to, like, this is where I started to come to this perspective was from that experience. And, and then when I started working with clients, because I was like, maybe it’s just me. Like maybe I’m just weird.

But when I started working with clients consistently. I started to see the same thing that like people would have these same types of responses and that’s why I tried to like group these things and try to get a sense of what exactly was going on. Like is so so that you can make sense of it, right?

Because if not, like you’re kind of just in this quagmire of like, well, I should tolerate it, but I don’t know if I do. And, and so that’s why I wanna make, that’s why this podcast thing was helpful. What are the symptoms they could see with the opioid or the casein problem? So I think an easy parallel to draw, and it’s not, again, this is just like an exaggerated example, but the opiate based drugs.

So when you’re thinking about something like heroin, fentanyl, oxycodone, you think about their list of effects, um, you get a bit of a euphoria. You can get constipation, you can get brain fog, lack of libido, you can get histamine responses and rashes and lack of motivation. Um, these types of things are what I typically would see with somebody who doesn’t do well with opiate peptides, with casein.

So they’ll typically find that they’re getting random rashes, potentially hives, they’re constipated with dairy. Their intestines are inflamed or irritated. So they may feel bloated, but not in the same way that you get with lactose. They may have brain fog, they may have lack of libido, they may have a lack of motivation.

And then for some people it messes with their hormones. Now it’s hard to say. It’s hard to parse out is it the hormones already present in some of the dairy, or is it the casein itself? I wanna preface this here. I don’t think this happens to everybody. So it’s not like supposed to be a scare tactic. It happens to people who are susceptible to it.

And essentially, for me, I think that the opiate signaling nuked my dopamine and then also was like raising my prolactin. And the highest prolactin values I had ever had were when I was drinking tons of dairy. Now they weren’t terrible. It was like 14 or 15 nanograms per milliliter. But when I stopped doing dairy, I was like eight.

So I was not tolerating the dairy very well. And my thought, again, this is mechanistic in nature, but my thought was it was in relation to the opiate peptide present in, in the dairy that I just wasn’t tolerating very well. And with the opioid stuff, do you think that that is why people love cheese? Like they just can’t stop eating cheese?

Actually I do. Is there anything there? Oh, really? No. Straight up. I think that people are, are addicted to bread products and cheese products or dairy products in general because of the opiate peptides. Now obviously, like there’s also the texture and then like dairy has fat and it has carbs and it has like, cheese has salt.

So you have like a bunch of components coming together. Well, the, the salty flavor and the fattiness and the, the sweet flavor like ice cream is like a combination of salty, sweet, and fatty together, which those are all taste like taste reward centers for humans. So I think there’s some of that, but I also think the opiate peptides.

Make these foods uniquely addictive for people compared to some other foods. Okay. So the, yeah, what is the, I guess what is the mechanism going on kind of behind that? Like a, a protein is essentially a string of amino acids, right? So you have all the different amino acids here, like tyrosine, proline, phenyl alanine, proline glycine, right?

And when you break, when, when the, when a protein is started to be broken down by digestive enzymes, you get peptides, which is like a shorter string of amino acids that doesn’t have the same effect of the protein, ’cause it doesn’t have the same structure. And so inside casein, particular beta caseins, um, from a one variety of animals or a one a two variety animals, so you can be, he, the animal could be homozygous a one or heterozygous a one, A two.

So it’s basically just the, the type of gene that they have. They will produce a change in this protein structure that releases these peptides called beta caseomorphins and omo morphine. The reason it’s named this way is ’cause it’s a casein morphine. So they just blended the name together ’cause it’s a, a morphine-like peptide from casein, which morphine is an opiate agonist drug, right?

So it has a, it, it stimulates the opiate receptors in the body case of morphines, stimulate the mu opiate receptor in the body. And so these create similar effects that the opiate like, uh, as other opiates would in the body. And it’s based because of their protein structure. Now there are different dairy.

Different dairy animals have different genes that allow this peptide to be released. So this is where the whole a two thing comes in. And so basically you have a two beta a, uh, a two beta caseine and a one beta caseine. The difference between these is just a difference in their protein structure. So in a one beta caseine, we see on the bottom here in pink, it has an, uh, at, at position 67.

So the 67th amino acid here, it has a histidine instead of the proline. Now why is that important? ’cause proline is basically block or proline basically blocks the digest enzymes from cleaving or cutting out this peptide. So this peptide doesn’t get cut out of the A two beta caseine. Whereas an A one beta caseine with the histamine there, it actually can get cut out by the digestive enzymes ’cause there’s not a proline blocking that cleavage or that cutting.

So then you get this peptide release. This one here is beta komo morphine seven. And it’s named that way ’cause it has seven different amino acids instead of 11 or four or three or whatever as we saw on the other ones. And essentially what happens is then this goes and has the signaling effect. So this peptide by itself has the signaling effect and again, it’s an A one variety animals and also animals that are A two A one heterozygous, they will produce not as much a one beta caseine.

Uh, or, or, or Omo, morphines, excuse me. They will, but they’ll produce some, whereas an A two, A two animal that’s like has no a one beta caine at all is the homozygous A two. A two should not produce much of the beta caso morphine. Seven. And in the studies it’s a little bit shaky. Like in some studies you see that, uh, with a two variety of dairy, there is some, uh, uh, beta komo morphine seven produced.

But those animals, I’m wondering in those studies, if they were not a one A two instead of just A two. A two. ’cause there’s other studies where they do a two A two animals and you actually don’t see the case of morphines produced. And anecdotally with my clients, if I take somebody and I switch them to an A two variety of dairy, whether the, the cows are genetically tested to be a two A two or they do goats or some other animals that are more often like pure a two breeds, then what winds up happening is they actually have less symptoms than if they were to do a one dairy by itself.

And I, that’s where I was like, okay, so this, this beta caseine stuff. It is legit. And also for me, the symptoms from goat dairy was not as bad as cow dairy. Like a one cow dairy, terrible time. My intestines were always inflamed. I was always having problems. I was gaining weight, like no, no, nothing else. And again, like I’m typically lean in general and I got quite fat when I was doing all the cow’s milk.

When I went to goat milk, I didn’t really have the same problems, although I still had some minor problems and it was mostly cognitive. Again, anecdotal experience, I’ve seen this with with a large portion of my clients. But I also have clients who tolerate the A one casing. Well now that’s more the exception than the rule, but again, like there’s still a spectrum of responses here and I think that’s important to point out because I’m not trying to fear monger dairy for people just trying to provide some nuance on it.

Well, the problem I think is that it becomes so like such a foundational piece of the diet. Like when people come to pee. Where it just takes up like a, a large amount of somebody’s like total calories versus, I mean, maybe there’s just a threshold, right? For like how much of this stuff you can tolerate for all maybe the different problems.

Well, that would, that brings us to solutions, right? Because there’s like one, you have type of dairy, so again, this isn’t all or nothing on your dairy, so it’s not like you have to stop eating dairy altogether. It’s like, and it’s about more of a spectrum. So it’s like, are you gonna do a one varieties or a two varieties?

Like that’s what you figure out first after that. Some interesting stuff from the research is in the fermentation products, uh, uh, process for cheeses, uh, especially more aged cheeses, the case of morphines actually tend to get broken down. So if you’re gonna use like a Guta or a Parmesano Reggiano or a pe, uh, aged Pecorino, or a sharp cheddar or an aged manchego cheese, again, like.

There’s other problems, like if the cheeses have like crappy additives, those are another thing to keep in mind. We’ll, and we’ll do a whole podcast on additives I’m sure. But the, um, like the more aged cheeses may be tolerated better, and then if they’re like goat variety as well, even more, even less of a problem, like Pecorino is like a sheep cheese.

So I’ve, I have some clients, quite a few clients who are like, yeah, I can do this cheese thing, no problem. But if I start plowing milk, like regular store-bought milk, huge problems. And I think, you know, there’s other problems that you could get from like your generic store-bought milk, but these people are doing like grass fed, a hundred percent organic milk and still having problems.

And I think that’s because it, because of the, the case Omo morphines, again, based on their symptom profile, I’m gauging is it lactose, is it casein? Um, whereas the cheeses are not causing as much of the issue. So you can switch to a two varieties. So your a two cow sheep, goat buffalo dairy, maybe camel dairy, depending on where you are in the world.

Um, and then at, to be fair, like I was looking to get camel dairy at one point when I was trying to, where did you even go to get camel dairy? Oh, you can find everything you want online, man. Oh, geez, though. Then you could try cheeses and then if the, if that doesn’t work, like for me, I don’t do well with any casings at all.

I’ve like come to that determination. It, it, the A two is better. The A two cheese is better overall, but so, but even then, like I still get a little brain foggy and like slower cognitively and I don’t really like that. And it slows down my transit time a bit, my bowel transit time. So I stick towards whey protein instead.

So no problem with whey protein. I don’t have digestive issues. It doesn’t affect my motivation, doesn’t affect my hormones. So the whey protein, a whey protein isolate, or a goat whey protein, they don’t actually contain much Cain, so you’re less likely to have this problem. And there’s also dairy fats, like cream and butter could be used, but then you have the hormonal concerns, which we’re gonna get to next.

Yeah. And with, well, like what I was kind of saying about the threshold stuff, when you come to pee or bioenergetics and the calcium to phosphorus becomes this target that you have to hit, and you don’t really know how to go about hitting it without, um, slamming dairy. Or you do, or maybe you look in chronometer and go, oh, if I kill this pin of ho toss, like I should get my calcium to phosphorus in line.

Um, you know, it’s like there’s no other, uh, solution, at least, uh, like when you first come, you know, besides maybe the eggshell, um, powder. Um, so. You know, it’s tough. It’s tough for people, right? If they are having these problems. Yeah. And then the, the thing is, is like, so that’s where the calcium supplements become important.

So like whey protein does have some calcium, but as I’ve talked about multiple times, like my preference, what I tolerate well is coral calcium. Or if you get like a micronized, eggshell calcium or you could potentially do like a micro crystalline hydroxyapatite calcium, which is bone calcium. But the bone calcium comes with some phosphorus.

Whereas the eggshell calcium and the coral calcium come with some with is calcium carbonate. So it’s pretty much all, there’s no, there’s no phosphorus. You get all base from the carbon, the carbonate, uh, and then also the calcium itself. So I think those are pretty beneficial. And even if the, we’re gonna do an episode on calcium supplements and stuff like this, but even if the absorption is lower than other forms, I still think they’re pretty decent forms to incorporate.

Um, if you don’t tolerate dairy. And I think they are better than vegetable sources as well. ’cause people are, well what about spinach? And it’s like when you look at spinach on paper, it looks good, but when you factor in oxalates and other components in spinach and what needs to go into its prep, it’s actually not really such a great calcium source.

Yeah. And I like the idea of having the supplemental calcium and knowing exactly what you’re, you know, milligrams of calcium. It is. So that way, you know, like if you’re doing the one-to-one with the calcium and phosphorus, so, and I think all of us nutritionists, like having control over all the ratios or calcium, the, uh, to phosphorus, calcium, the magnesium, sodium to potassium, I think all of these things are, um, are really important and it’s nice to be able to control it with some of the supplements and as well as the diet.

The next kind of problem that you see with dairy is the hormones, right? And what are the symptoms that people can run into if, uh, the hormones in the dairy you think are giving them a problem? Yeah, so that’s a great question. And I think it’s difficult to parse the hormones and KC apart sometimes because the, the o when the, the omo morphines have an opiate signaling, they lower dopamine signaling.

And when you lower dopamine signaling, you allow prolactin to rise. And when prolactin rises, it can have an impact on testicular and ovarian function. ’cause it’s directly involved in shutting off the gonadal function during times of stress and stuff like this. So sometimes it’s hard to parse, is this the hormones in the dairy or is this the, a function of the, uh, the opiate peptides.

And so basically what I typically see, the biggest one with the hormones is acne. But there’s also hair loss, uh, water weight, like holding water weight, uh, resistance to weight loss change in menstrual cycle for, for women where like they get their PMS is worse or maybe, uh, the length can shift for some women Changes in libidos a big one.

Um, this doesn’t happen to everyone though, so it’s like there’s kind of a spectrum and I also think it’s how much dairy you have. So if you’re just having like a little bit of milk here and there, whatever, like you’re putting two ounces of milk in your coffee. I, I doubt this is a concern, especially if you’re using lower fat options.

’cause a large portion of the hormones that are problematic, the lipid-soluble hormones like estradiol are actually present in the fatty acid fraction. Estradiol or estro is actually the major concern with dairy, whereas the peptide hormones and stuff like this will likely get the degraded. So you do have some IGF one and some prolactin and stuff like that in the dairy directly, but those are potentially degraded in the GI tract.

Whereas the lipids may, the lipid-based hormones like estro sulfate will, is likely absorbed. And there are studies showing, like we have a study, um, showing that this stuff is actually ab absorbed and changes hormonal profile in men and women. So we’ll have a video, uh, directly discussing this and going through some of this in the study.

But yeah, you can, you can, um, you could see changes in, in, in even men’s testosterone acutely after dairy consumption. And the argument is that it’s through the effects of the estrogens on the hypothalmic, uh, pituitary axis, kind of suppressing it. ’cause that’s, it’s known that they do that. And you do get a relatively decent dose depending on your form of dairy, of estro and sulfate.

Um, you know, for when, when you’re consuming it, right? So you, you can, you could see that, especially if you’re having like a very fatty dairy, uh, like a butter or a cream is gonna be your highest sources compared to just regular milks. Could you potentially have the opioid, the casein, um, opioid problem and the hormonal problem, and then you get like a double whammy effect on the hormones.

’cause the rise in prolactin and the hormones actually in the dairy. A hundred percent. And I think, like for me and for multiple clients, actually acne is one of the big triggers that I’m like, okay, that’s probably the hormonal effect of dairy because it’s hard to parse. The omo morphines effect in terms of driving acne where it’s easier to see how some of the different hormones present in dairy could lead to some acne formation.

Um, so that’s a big one. And some people like get cystic acne or they get like really bad acne. Like for me, I was getting like blackheads and acne all over my back with dairy. So these are big concerns. And I’ve had clients get acne on the face or acne on their legs. So there’s a, there’s a variety of response, but I’d say acne, uh, changes them in, in the menstrual cycle.

And then potentially water weight, uh, weight loss resistance, potentially hair loss. These things are some of the big, uh, components that I see with the, with, with the hormonal effects of dairy and libido. That’s another big one, but that, that one’s harder to parse between the case of morphines and in the Pete sphere, you hear people say that, yeah, there’s, there’s estrogen in the milk.

But there’s also the progesterone what in milk as well. So like maybe there’s like a balancing there going on. But what are your thoughts or, yeah, do you have anything kind of like referencing the different amounts? The paper is titled Exposure to Exogenous Estrogen through Intake of Commercial Milk produced from pregnant cows.

And basically this is the, the levels, uh, serum levels of, they have estro, estradiol, and progesterone after consumption of milk in men. And what you actually see is that the estro level is significantly higher after the consumption of milk. Estradiol was not significant, but it did increase. And then progesterone also increases as well.

So you do get both. But I, but again, like that’s fine. You can make that argument, but I still see people having symptoms from it. So in that case, it’s like you can theoretically say, oh, I’m raising progesterone and I’m raising estro, and they should balance each other out. But if you’re having acne and you’re having these other symptoms, then it’s like.

Does that help you in that circumstance? Is that helping you in that circumstance? And so for me it’s more based on outcomes. So if I have a client and they don’t have the symptoms and they feel good with it and they’re doing well, great. Keep the dairy on board, no problem. But if you’re having the symptoms, whether this is like balances out and like how much this, the progesterone here offsets the eOne here, like I can’t say what that level of offset is.

Like we don’t know. So, but if you’re having symptoms like it’s, uh, probably not enough. ’cause the other thing that they show here is if you look at, look at this here, you see in men you have ionizing hormone, serum levels after milk consumption, drop follicle stimulating hormone drops. So these are, uh, involved in producing sperm and hormones from the testicles.

And then we see a subsequent drop in testosterone. So that’s actually would still not be an ideal thing. And that’s, even though progesterone eOne are balanced, you’re still seeing this effect. So it doesn’t seem like progesterone is offsetting this enough. To actually minimize the drop in testosterone and change in the gonadotropic hormones.

And so in that circumstance, if somebody is susceptible to this, I would still say it would probably be a good idea to be careful with the dairy hormones. The other thing that people say too is that the, maybe there’s some, I don’t know, missing nutrient or you need something in excess, uh, because milk and the calcium has this sort of, uh, it raises your metabolism so much and you could be like wasting nutrients and things like this.

But with most of your clients, that’s one of the first things you’re kind of covering, right? Is like nutrient intake and stuff like this. So it’s kind of coming more down the road or, or how do you think about that? I don’t really think that milk is raising the metabolism to the point that it’s causing nutrient problems for people.

I’ll give you an example. For me, I was on a heavy milk and honey and liver and oysters diet. I. And then when that didn’t work and I had like realized that I failed, the typical repeating diet was like the orange juice and that type of stuff. And I had to figure out next steps. I felt better on a diet that was ground beef, beef towel, and cane sugar.

Like I did better on that diet, which again, this is anecdotal, but this is, but at the same time, like that would invalidate, at least for me, the idea that it was micronutrients. And also, uh, like even the dairy diet with the OJ and stuff, it is pretty nutrient dense. Like if you put an a chronometer, like I had my nutrients topped off on that diet from diet alone.

Plus I was supplementing and I was still having the problems. And that’s the same thing I see with a variety of people coming to sphere because in the bioenergetic sphere, people tend to be conscious of their nutrient status. They tend to focus on like, am I covering my micros? Do I have all my fat solubles, these, am I calcium to phosphorus balance?

Do I have enough magnesium? ’cause these are things that Dr. Pete had talked about. So I think that theory, that milk is pushing metabolism and that’s creating the problems. Um, if I understood your argument correctly, Ethan, I I would be less bullish on that theory personally, and I’m more bullish on the theory that these are some of the major drivers.

Especially because if you were having micronutrient deficiencies as well, just from what we understand of typical micronutrient deficiencies, the symptoms would probably be a little bit different. Right. Because typically you’re getting different symptoms from something like Berry, Berry or Pellagra or anemia, like the, you would have more like different telltale signs.

No, I mean I’m not even trying to make that argument. It’s just when I was doing a lot of the dairy stuff when I first came to Pete and then was running into problems like similar to the symptoms that we’ve discussed throughout this episode, and I’m trying to figure out why that is. Everywhere I’ve been going on the internet to try to find pea related content is like dairy is the greatest.

Thing ever. And I had this kind of underlying assumption that like, Hey, I think this is kind of giving me this and that. So, you know, maybe I’m missing, you know, maybe I need to take a hundred thousand IUs of vitamin A or maybe I need to, you know, just things you run into on the form or whatever. And, um, obviously I think, like you said in the beginning of the podcast, the easiest thing to do at that point is probably just cut out that variable and start from scratch, know what the problems are, the potentially, and then add any sources in like a systematic way.

And I think that it’s important to, number one, like actually read Ray’s work, because if you read Ray’s articles, like some of his statements are way more balanced than the perspectives that you typically get from the forum or from like, even like Pete influencers, like the way he lays things out, like it’s, they’re not this like harsh prescriptions where everybody has to do this.

It’s like, these are general reasons why I think this would be a way to go. And here’s what, like you could try this thing out. And then he like just lists like potential options for you to use. It wasn’t like this, like super prescriptive service. Uh, or, or prescriptive recommendations. So I think that is, you know, and then even on podcasts, like Pete has said, like, it’s like, well what do you think are the ways to like improve health?

Whatever. It’s like anything that gets the metabolism going, it’s like answers like this. Um, so I think like trying to figure out the nuance in your individual circumstance for me was one of the core take homes. And it wasn’t necessarily milk and orange juice, even though I went the milk and orange juice root.

Um, I just didn’t, I decided not to abandon all of Pete’s ideas together just ’cause the implementation didn’t work. And so even with people that, I think a lot of the things he talks about are completely sound in terms of the principles and the overarching theory and framework. But I just think the, like the implementation is really gonna be person specific and it’s not just gonna be milk and orange juice for everybody.

Uh, there there’s a, there’s gonna have to be this perceived think, act process, this systematic process. And so I think those that is really important here. And again, like this is not to bash on dairy ’cause there’s tons of benefits to dairy. We have another episode discussing this, but there’s, um, there’s also some cons and you want to kind of see what they are engaged.

Like are you dealing with any of these cons and then run from there. The one argument though, just to shift gears that I typically see with dairy is like, well, how come our ancestors could tolerate dairy and all this type of stuff? And I’ve actually thought about this quite a bit and they address this in the study.

So in that same study that we talked about before, they have a quote here and they say modern genetically improved dairy cows such as the Holstein continue to lactate throughout almost the entire pregnancy, extending the milk producing period to 305 days per year. Therefore, recent commercial cows milk contains large amounts of estrogens and progesterone.

So typical dairying products. One, like say for the Cain problem, a lot of dairying herds in the past were from animals that probably were a two, right? If you were, if you were a sheep herder, if you were a goat herder, a lot of the like traditional cattle, or actually a two, uh, there was a genetic mutation.

I think it happened in Europe that produced the A one. Um, then on top of this, like the other dairying animals were not pregnant 305 days of the year. And so like you’re getting a higher hormone content potentially because you have, and this is not a genetic modification to the animals. They didn’t, they’re not GMO cows, they’re hybridized cows.

So they’ve bred the cows to be LA to be larger, be pregnant for longer lactate, for longer, have a higher milk yield and things like this. And some of these changes may have also led to changes in the composition of the milk and how much hormone goes into the milk. And so I think this is probably why you’re seeing some of these responses more so now.

And the other thing on top of that is you have. Like you have the, the u the United States a melting pot, right? Previous times you have, you have people who were in one particular area who their ancestors ate the same type of diet over extended periods of time. And I would argue that there is some adaptation.

I’m not saying this is the be all, to end all, not going to this, this, uh, like entirely full ancestral perspective. But I would argue that there’s like these people, for example of Europe have lactose persistence or lactase persistence. So it’s like they probably have adaptations to tolerating dairy in general.

And uh, so like you have this as well, where now you have a bunch of people from all different places in one area trying to figure out what diet that they should eat. And I do think that, that some people are not gonna do as well with some of these other foods because of, because of what their profiles are, epigenetically, genetically, hormonally, whatever the deal is.

Um, and that, that may shift their responses. So I think you have that coming together with the change in the, like the dairy, how, how the dairying animals are handled and the hormones present. And like some of the processes that lead to people now having different responses than they may have in the past.

Because there’s poor populations now of people who, like none of their ancestors did, had dairying animals. They never did the, the whole dairying thing. And so like that may adjust their response to dairy and potentially beneficial or potentially negative way. So I think those are things that, that could be, should be considered in this context.

How does that play into, like if someone has their own, I guess, locally sourced form of milk or dairy that they get where they know the cows aren’t doing that, that would obviously be like. One of the best options to do. Right? Anecdotally, people tend to say that if they get like locally produced raw milk or, or, or raw dairy products, um, from like a, a farmer who has like a single herd or something like this, like they may actually do way better with those products.

Then the, some of the industrialized systems. ’cause the other thing too, to keep in mind is like at, as far as my understanding of some of the processing, they get milk from all different animals. They pull it together into a vat. They pull off the, the, the fats or they pasteurize it, pull off the fats, and they add back in afterwards.

Like, just like a certain percentage of fat, 1%, 2%, 3.25% to the milk. So you’re getting like this, this di like milk from all over the different cows, um, processed in a certain type of way. All different types of breeds, different herds, stuff like this. So that’s very different. Um, also maybe food supply for the cows are at, are in a, are, are, uh, different.

There’s also different seasons with the animals. Um, so there’s like a lot of variables that I think go on that can adjust what goes on with the product. And then also you have the variables of the person. What are some of the solutions that somebody can do if they think that they’re struggling with the hormonal aspect of the dairy?

I think that the biggest thing is probably just minimize the fat content, because the, the steroid hormones that are most problematic, like estro is probably gonna be mostly concentrated in the fat. So like when you look at the studies, butter and cream at the highest amount, and skin milk is like typically pretty low.

And then like whey protein, Casey protein powders can be even lower. Um, so I would look to minimize the fats and then, so that’s like minimize the cream, the butter, the ghee, maybe adjust how much fatty cheese you have in one sitting. So it could be a moderating amount thing. Then after that, you could look to do low, uh, like low fat dairy options.

So whe kine, low fat yogurt, low fat cheese, low fat milks, or at least decrease the fat. So one or 2%. You don’t have to go skim. Um, so things like this I think may be helpful for people who are struggling with some of the hormonal component. And as an example, for me, I have whey protein every day and I don’t get any symptoms from it, acne or anything like this.

But you know, I start adding in like butter and it’s like immediate acne within two days. It seems like the way is the real kind of winner out of all the different categories, right? Like, like maybe that’s the best place to start. And I remember, you know, when we started working together, it’s like whey was one of the first things, um, I guess supplementary to like bring on board, which also makes your life easier, right?

’cause it’s kind of hard to hit a protein target consistently, um, without it. So, but yeah, yeah, yeah. WHE and collagen are like a winning combination ’cause of the amino acid profiles we talked about. So you have the whe is rich in branching amino acids for muscle tissue development, and it’s also rich in cystine, which combines well with the collagen.

And that’s rich in the glutamate and the glycine to make glutathione. And then the collagen is good for connective tissue development. So it’s like they kind of pair well together. So if you tolerate them, is an easy way to get high quality protein, a variety of different am amino acids for, for different purposes and optimize antioxidant status.

And you can, like, again, like logistics, super easy, right? Like you just throw it in a shake. The collagen doesn’t have much taste and you, you know, whey doesn’t taste good, but you can get like a vanilla whey or something like this. So whey is a, is an easy option and a lot of people I work with do really well with whey Now I.

Just one caveat. Whey is rich in immune, um, immunoactive peptides, uh, and, and proteins like lactoferrin and immunoglobulins. And some people may not do well with them, but again, you can also switch and try like an isolated way versus a concentrated whe versus a goat whe and things like this. And then I think a lot of people say they don’t do all whey protein, but if they’re buying like the bodybuilding whey protein brand du jour, it’s loaded with junk, sucralose, coloring, um, uh, uh, emulsifiers, things like this.

And I think those give people digestive issues, not necessarily the way. So you go on, rule that out as well. It’s another little nuance piece there. Don’t people talk about lactoferrin though, as being somewhat beneficial to the gut? It is, but it also has like immune properties. So if your gut is all jacked up and you have dysbiosis or whatever, and you start dumping in lactoferrin, like you can get symptoms from it.

So like for like isolated lactoferrin for me as a supplement, I don’t do well with, and I’ve had multiple clients because I used to use it as a biofilm disruptor and potentially an iron chelator in different circumstances. And I’ve had some clients respond poorly to it, where others, it’s like, oh, this is great.

Like massively change things. So there’s gonna be individualized, idiosyncratic responses to all of these things. Then you like, that’s why I try to give like a nuanced picture here. It’s like, like this, you could experience this. So when people don’t gaslight themselves like, well I didn’t really do well with way.

And it’s like, yeah, you may not, like, that’s completely reasonable. There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s just kind of the dynamic. Or maybe there’s something going on in your gut and the way is clearing stuff out. So these, these are all things to keep in mind. So before we wrap up, we should give everybody kinda like a synopsis of what this dairy spectrum looks like, you know, and how they can go about implementing and if they want to try out the different components.

So you have three different types of problems with dairy. You have, uh, lactose intolerance. You have casein intolerance ’cause the opiate peptides, and you have hormones, likeone sulfate present in the, in the fat portions of dairy symptoms. For lactose intolerance, it’s gonna be bloating, gas, cramping, gurgling, loose stools and diarrhea.

And that’s gonna happen within a couple hours of having the dairy because you’re not absorbing the lactose solutions there is to one, adjust how much lactose you have in a sitting. Progressively increase your lactose over time. Look to shift the microbiome, potentially using some probiotic species like bifido bacterium or lactobacillus species and potentially g galacto oligosaccharide has been shown to be helpful to minimize symptoms.

Then you can also consider using lower lactose dairy options like, uh, like cheeses, so, uh, hard cheeses or potentially yogurts. Things like this would be a bit easier to tolerate than like straight up milk. You could also consider using lactose enzyme, just watch out for allergic reactions. And then if you have intestinal dysfunction, you’re gonna want to directly address that.

With the D uh, because that you may, that may be impairing your ability to handle the lactose or your microbiomes messed up and you’re getting symptoms in terms of the case and hormones, the, the symptoms that you’ll experience for both of these, they will typically be longer time course. It’s not gonna be immediately after.

Usually you may get some symptoms after, but they’ll extend out longer than just the lactose stuff. With the opiate peptides, you’re looking for histamine responses like rashes and hives, constipation, intestinal irritation, brain fog, lack of libido, potentially lack of motivation, and then may be some hormonal shifts in terms of for some people if they’re sensitive to it.

Pro uh, gynecomastia from bumped prolactin, uh, maybe holding water weight, things like this. Solutions with Cain is to look for a two varieties of dairies first, so a two cows cheaps, dairy goat, dairy, buffalo dairy. Then you could from there, if that doesn’t work by itself, look to use aged cheeses from a two varieties.

So age guta, parmesano, Reggiano, aged Pecorino, sharp cheddar aged, uh, age manchego. ’cause the aging process, the fermenting process breaks down the opiate peptides, the case of morphines. Um, also amounts in a sitting can adjust your response. So adjusting how much you have at one time may shift the response.

And if those don’t work, then you can look to use white protein cream and butter, which none of those actually have any, uh, or have minimal case present with the hormones. But symptoms you may experience is water, weight, uh, weight loss resistance, acne, hair loss, potentially gynecomastia, changes in the menstrual cycle or worsening of PMS symptoms, changes in libido.

And again, all of this stuff like, we’re not saying everybody’s gonna have this. It’s just if you’re having some of these symptoms, this is what you could look out for and this is what you could do. In terms of solutions, you wanna minimize high fat dairy sources like cream butter, gee, fatty cheeses and fatty yogurts and potentially fatty milk.

And then what you wanna do is shift towards lower fat sources. So whey, whey protein, KC protein, low fat yogurt, low fat cheeses, and lower fat milks. And then, and then basically run from there. So that would be, that’s the breakdown. Those are the three major problems. Those are the symptoms you can see in each in the time course.

And we also talked about the solutions, and hopefully this gives people who are like on the dairy train and maybe suspect like suspecting that something could be going on with that. Like, hey, maybe just eliminate it for a while and then go about entering, um, you know, trying it again in a systematic approach.

I think the goal here was just to give people like kind of the. Context with like, alright, um, you know, the other side of the coin in the bioenergetic sphere when it comes to dairy. And then we also have the podcast going over like what those are, what are the pros and why dairy is a superfood, like if tolerated.

So people can also, um, check that out and stay tuned for that. So is there anything you want to, um, say before we jump off? Let the people know, like where they can find you and everything like this? Yeah. So I just wanna mention that and reiterate again, I know it sound like a broken record, but this is not a bashing podcast on dairy.

This is if you are not tolerating dairy. Here’s potentially why, and here’s what you can do. We have another podcast that talks about all the pros of dairy. So we wanna provide a balanced perspective. I mean, the goal for us is to make sure that people have options and solutions and takeaways that they can use to improve their health, not to be pro or like pro or cons on or, or for against dairy, like for or against dairy.

It’s, we are for dairy. If it works for you and if it doesn’t work for you, here’s what you can do instead. Uh, so I want to put that out there. And then if, uh, anybody wants to find me, they can find me at my website, mike fave.com. Of course, you can find me here on the Mike Fay podcast and you can check, check us out at the Mike Fave YouTube channel.

What about you? Awesome, Ethan, where can people find you? Um, Twitter and Instagram. Ethan write seven. That’s where you can find me. And then on this podcast too, talking with Mike. Awesome. All right, we’ll see you guys next week. I.