There are many reasons this could have happened, including a bad batch o' milk, a little stomach bug, you drank too much at one time, wrong combination of other foods, etc. Just lay off a couple of days and start back.
Member
Milk
All my life I've been drinking quite a bit of milk. All of the sudden, these last few days I've been getting stomache aches after drinking milk. Have you ever had anybody develop an intolerance to milk just all of the sudden? I'm 15, and I don't always notice it but I have noticed it several times recently. Are there certain things that I might have recently added to my diet that could be causing this?
I promise I tried to look this one up. I found a few things, just not quite what I was looking for.
TMPHBITEU
There are many reasons this could have happened, including a bad batch o' milk, a little stomach bug, you drank too much at one time, wrong combination of other foods, etc. Just lay off a couple of days and start back.
Member
I'm lactose intolerant, and your experience describes mine exactly. All of a sudden (literally overnight), I had vicious stomachaches, accompanied by deathly (and I mean deathly beyond any deathly you have produced before) farts and diarrhea.
OP, if you have the gaseous/bowel disturbance(s) I have just described, then maybe some lactaid pills are in your future. Of course, it could just be a bad batch of milk. But be aware that all mammals will eventually become lactose intolerant, if they live long enough. Evolutionarily speaking, we are only meant to drink milk as infants, and then only from our mothers' breasts.
TMPHBITEU
You are probably not lactose intolerant, just unused to drinking lots of milk like lots of people that don't drink lots of milk. And it is not true that all mammals will become lactose intolerant if they live long enough. Lots of old people drink milk quite easily. This adaptation is one of the features of human physiology that indicates that evolution in response to the environmental stresses of cultural influence is still in operation -- when we developed pastoralism many thousands of years ago and milk became a common food for people of all ages, we obviously redeveloped the ability to produce lactase (if we had ever lost it). That's why I can drink milk at 52 with no problems at all. And really, 52 is pretty damned old, at least as far as adaptive reproduction is concerned.
Member
I've been having milk recently and it's been better. I sometimes think my stomach isn't quite right but the farts and dumps never come with it. There has never been diarrhea.
Possibly, I was blaming the wrong thing, but I'm not sure about this. It might have been eggs that is giving me the problem. The last two times I have had eggs (last Thursday and today) I've had a bad upset stomach. I don't know what it is, but it's kinda starting to tick me off.
Member
52!!!!! You don't look a day over 42, Coach. Must be the milk, eh?
Crazy Canuck
Member
I'm sorry Mark, but this post is factually wrong. Saying things like "lots of old people drink milk" and "I drink milk" does not reinforce the position that the average person is not lactose intolerant. Also, the reference to pastoralism as a "trigger" for an evolutionary response betrays a serious misunderstanding of the theory of evolution. I am guessing you haven't actually taken a class in evolutionary biology?Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe
What is in fact much more likely is that the phenomenon of lactose intolerance has only recently been recorded accurately, since it ISN'T A LIFE THREATENING PHENOMENON. Welcome to evolution 101: genetic adaptations only occur in the event that there is a differential ability to reproduce. (Ignoring the fact that farts during sex hinder the mood.)
You may instead be referring to the general ability for the human body to adapt; meaning, a person who has been drinking milk for his/her whole life is very likely to be able to drink it healthily for a long time in the future. This is quite different from the generation to generation evolutionary adaptation that you seem to refer to.
In general, yes, the human animal will adapt to stress. This is a quite general evolutionary adaptation that has been present (and is still present) in virtually all living things. This has to do with our DNA being fundamentally redundant, etc. Saying something like "mankind can now enjoy a lifetime of drinking milk because a few thousand years ago we started domesticating cows, and since then we have adapted to the situation" is absurd.
And the fact is that the OP, according to statistics, IS PROBABLY lactose intolerant. I'll quote Wiki: "According to Heyman (2006), approximately 70% of the global population cannot tolerate lactose in adulthood." The link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance
TMPHBITEU
Well, my undergraduate degree was geology, my minor was anthropology, and I have had both invertebrate and vertebrate paleo, the latter under Walter Dalquest, so I have had some exposure to evolutionary biology (although no formal training in process, merely 30 years of independent reading).
Here's my link: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolib...070401_lactose
I stand by my point, despite the fact that my presentation may have been a bit clumsy and imprecise.
Member
I'll guess you haven't taken an actual college course on statistics? Well I have and it is absurd to ignore the fact that you have enough information about the OP to know that he is from a sample with different characteristics than "the global population".
It is also absurd to make a desperate appeal to authority (or rather a desperate criticism of someone else's authority) and then paraphrase wikipedia for us. I'm sure that despite his lack of college courses on evolutionary biology, Coach Rippetoe is more than capable of paraphrasing wikipedia for himself.
Since you are so interested with other people's credentials, I am surprised you didn't share your own with us.
Member
You are right, I did not look into the specifics of the relevant distribution; had I done so, I would have seen that the Chinese population overwhelmingly skews the global results. So yes, I am wrong when I say that the OP probably is lactose intolerant, viewed solely from the perspective of statistics among Americans (for example). I also did not see the OP's response where he says the problem may be with eggs, etc.
I was mainly responding to Rip's misapplication of evolution. I get irrationally "nerd angry" when I see people claim that evolution accounts for certain changes that have only occurred over a few thousand years. The choice of suggesting that he has "never taken a course in evolution" was a poor choice of words; I fully grant that one does not need coursework to understand a subject, and this sentence was out of line. However, to suggest that the ability to enjoy a lifetime of drinking milk is a consequence of us domesticating cows, and to cite evolution as the culprit, is simply a mistake.
Anyway, this is ultimately beside the point. People, drink your milk, it will make you strong, Prof. Rip has declared it, etc. etc. The beneficial nutritional profile of milk does not get negated simply because of the trivial matter of mammals (sometimes) not being able to digest a sugar present in it. If you are lactose intolerant, then buy some cheap pills that will let you eat normally. Thank your lucky stars that you live in a society where these pills can be bought at every drugstore.
If you are wondering if you are lactose intolerant, try the pills FIRST, since it is so easy, and if they don't work, then look into other explanations. This is the point I should have made to begin with, and I apologize for being stupidly unclear amidst my nerd rage.
Ok, so now for some real nerd rage, since I have to respond to the quoted post. Mr. jcf, I have in fact taken a course in statistics. Had you paid attention in your course in statistics, then you would have known that Bayes' theorem is relevant here. I.e., since we already know that the OP is experiencing digestional difficulties, then his likelihood of being among the victims of lactose intolerance is skewed considerably, since lactose intolerance is among the most common explanations of digestional discomfort.
I wouldn't call what I wrote an appeal to authority, although I admit I am attacking Rip's authority in matters of evolution. And wikipedia is a useful tool that I do not apologize for using. I obviously misapplied an article to "back up" my point; in retrospect, I should have left it out, and used Bayes' theorem instead. Since you will probably knee jerk if I post a link to the wiki article on Bayes', I won't post it.
And as to my credentials, you can see my website. It's not fun or exciting, but I bet it's better than yours.
http://math.berkeley.edu/~borisp/
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