Dr. Mark Hyman argues milk lacks scientific support as a health food and may harm your health. He recommends eliminating dairy to see how you feel, and suggests trying goat or sheep dairy instead.
Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to my weekly house call, your chance to ask me your questions. This week's question is, is dairy a health food? What about raw? What about organic? What if I'm lactose intolerant? Should I be eating dairy? Well, you know what? If you believe the government, you should. You should have three glasses of of milk a day if you're an adult. And if you're a kid that's over five, you should have three glasses. If you're under five, you should have two and a half. Is there any scientific proof for this? Well, I recently read a blog called Got Proof? the Lack of Evidence for Milk's Benefits. And this was based on a research article that came out in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which showed that, in fact, there is a lack of evidence for the government's recommendations. And the scientists from Harvard said, Look, We don't have the data to show number one, that it works for what we say it does, like better bones, weight loss, health, etc., etc. And two, there are some serious risks of taking it. It increases potentially weight gain. It increases cancer risk. It may increase fracture risk. It may actually cause other problems in children like constipation. It may affect people by causing irritable bowel syndrome. bloating and gas and diarrhea from lactose intolerance. It may cause allergies and eczema and all sorts of skin problems, acne it's been linked to. So is this nature's perfect food? Yes, but only if you're a calf. So I recommend that you not have dairy as a staple. Now some people can tolerate it. Some people from Northern European backgrounds, some people who don't have lactose intolerance, who don't have a leaky gut, who don't have allergies, they may be able to tolerate dairy in small amounts. But it should not be a staple of our diet. We should not be putting it on everything. In fact, dairy has very big allergenic proteins. One of them is called casein. And the casein that's in our modern dairy, the modern dairy cow, which is a hybridized cow, it's been genetically changed from its original heirloom cows, creates much more likelihood of inflammation, autoimmunity, even type 1 diabetes. So minimizing those dairy forms is really what I recommend. If you want to have dairy, try goat dairy. Try sheep dairy. Try sheep cheese, goat cheese, goat yogurt, sheep yogurt. They're available now. And make sure when you do you get organic because often there's a lot of pesticides and chemicals that concentrate in the fat in dairy. Also organic, is that good? Well, when you have an organic cow, they're often milked while they're pregnant and it's full of hormones. In fact, the average glass of milk has 60 different hormones in it and they're also anabolic hormones, which means they help you grow, but you don't want to grow. You don't want to grow cancer cells. You don't want to grow big bellies. You don't want to grow in ways that actually may be harmful. So what should you do about dairy? My recommendation is to take a dairy holiday for two to four weeks, see how you feel. Does your postnasal drip clear up? Your sinuses clear up? Does your acne go away? Do you stop having bloating and gas and diarrhea? Do you have more energy? Do your eczema clear up? Do your allergies get better? Very simple things you should notice when you eliminate dairy. And then try it again and see how you feel. Next, if you want to try it and you feel okay, stick with sheep or goat dairy, cheese or yogurt, and try to avoid the rest of the dairy most of the time. It's really not a staple. You should definitely not be having three glasses of milk a day as our government recommends. So don't listen to Uncle Sam on this one. Listen to your body. You know what's best. So now I'd like to hear from you. What have you noticed? Has dairy caused problems for you? Acne, eczema, allergies, bloating, gas? What have you noticed? Have you eliminated it? What happened? Share your story with us in the comment section on our website. Sign up for our newsletter and share this with your friends and family because you know what? They might have problems with the area too. And lastly, submit your question so that next week I may make a house call to you.
