Dairy Intolerant or Just Getting Used to It?

[mmshock]

First-time poster here!

 

So I've been doing a slow-roll reintroduction after ~40 days of doing the Whole 30. On Wednesday I did a little bit of dairy. Here's what I had:

 

Lunch at noon: Strawberry & Spinach salad with chicken and feta

Dinner at 7 p.m.: Several ounces of gruyere cheese

 

I felt completely fine after both meals (though the feta tasted INCREDIBLY salty -- blech!), but then the next day I started having (ahem) digestive issues. I'm just going to be TMI here:

 

Noon: Almost didn't make it to the bathroom in time (I was driving). Extremely soft stool.

5:45 p.m.: Again almost didn't make it to the bathroom in time (I was running). Again with an extremely soft stool.

 

So does this mean I am somewhat intolerant of dairy -- or is this just my body saying "hey we don't recognize this food and we need to adjust?" 

 

 

[LadyM]

Sounds like classic dairy intolerance to me. 

[Dodo Bird]

Yeah, unfortunately.  

 

However, if you really like cheese, you could consider another dairy test with ONLY a hard, aged cheese like the Gruyere - in aged cheeses, all or pretty much all the lactose has been converted by fermentation (not the case in fresher cheeses like feta) and therefore contains either no or extremely little lactose (Gruyere is one of the cheeses that does not contain a detectable amount of lactose), so if you are lactose intolerant, you shouldn't have an issue with aged cheese.  If you do have issues with even aged hard cheese, then it's a milk/dairy allergy/sensitivity, which is not the same as lactose intolerance.

[praxisproject]

There's whey, lactose, casein and the hormones to take into account.

 

Some people have problems with all, some only just one (or none at all).

 

Locally we have some lactose free dairy products, you could try those if you have any near you and see if they're any better.

 

Butter and some cheeses have very low to no lactose.

Milk is high in lactose.

Yoghurt is trickier as it has a lot of lactose, but if it's the right kind of yoghurt the bugs eat the lactose (like Kombucha), BUT a lot of people have trouble with yoghurt of all kinds.

[Tandtbledsoe]

I have done a lot of soul searching about what to reintroduce into my diet. While I have always thought I needed cheese on everything (I attribute this to a convincing ad campaign on television when I was young showing a kid pulling a grilled cheese apart and showing the ooey-gooey goodness dripping out--yum) after being away from dairy for this long I really don't have a big conviction to go back to it. Bottom line is, cows milk is for baby cows who need to get fat and grow really fast to survive. So if I have to eat a dairy product that has been altered for me because I don't want to get fat and grow then I feel that is too over processed to be necessary in my diet. There are other ways to make meals special and even creamy and tasty without putting cheese on everything (sorry dairy council).