Seducing Your Brain to Come Back for More
15 Dec 2025 · 3 min
JJ Virgin breaks down why dairy might be sabotaging your health: weight gain, hormone disruption, insulin resistance, acne, and addiction-like cravings. She cites the Nurses' Health Study and Walter Willett's research, then walks through dairy-free swaps that actually work.
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Welcome to the Virgin Diet Lifestyle show with your host, celebrity nutrition and fitness expert and New York Times bestselling author.
JJ Virginia all right, we have been out there going gluten free last couple of years, so we pretty much accepted that we've gotten okay with living without bread. So dairy is now the new gluten and I can already hear it. You know what? I gave up my bread. Come on. But cheese? You want me to give up my cheese? I don't think I can live without it. All right, well stay tuned because I'm going to make the case right now for why you may want to reconsider dumping the dairy. First thing, Dairy makes you fat. So studies show that if you drink more milk, you gain more weight. One study done by Walter Willett at Harvard School of Public Health found that children who drank three servings of skim milk or 1% milk each day as opposed to higher fat dairy products were were more prone to becoming overweight than the kids who drank fewer such servings per day. Now the weight gain was only associated with skim or 1% milk rather than those full fat dairy products. And probably that's due to the cause that when you pull the fat out, what are you left with? All of the milk sugar and also the hormones and growth factors of milk which now are even more concentrated when the fat content is lower. Next, one dairy makes you grow and not in a good way. Dr. Mark Hyman, my pal, wrote in HuffPo blog. Dairy is nature's perfect food. Milk is nature's perfect food if you're a calf. So as a result, every mother's milk is full of natural anabolic hormones or growth hormones such as IGF1 and insulin like growth factor. Now hormone free milk, there's no such thing. It doesn't exist. Even the most organic, pure and natural milk is basically a delivery vehicle for hormones and these are chemicals intended to spur growth. Now that's great when you're little, when you're a baby, but when we're grown up. That same mother's milk can help us become bigger. And I'm not talking bigger in a good way. All right, next one. Dairy can promote insulin resistance. Now, even though it's low on the glycemic index, we know from the sugar impact diet, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good thing. It's medium to high sugar impact because it's high in milk sugar or lactose and can cause insulin secretion. So when people consume dairy products, they can suffer from insulin, elevated insulin and insulin resistance, and that basically is the gateway to diabetes. Okay, next one and one that I know personally is, dairy can cause acne. In fact, one of the largest and longest studies of women's health, the Nurses Health study that looked at over 77,000 nurses over 12 years, found that the women who drank the most milk as teenagers also had the highest rates of severe teenage acne. And once again, skim milk was worse than the full fat milk because again, you get the lactose and then you get the concentration of those hormones and bioactive molecules. Okay, this one will probably be a bit of a shocker for you. Dairy is bad for your bones. Yep. That same Nurses Health study showed that the nurses who had the highest milk consumption had the highest risk of bone fractures. So researchers concluded that the study data didn't support the hypothesis that higher consumption of milk or other food sources of calcium protected against hippoforum fractures. Now, if you look at the countries with the highest milk consumption, they also tend to have the highest levels of osteoporosis. What is going on here? Well, it's probably due to the acidity of dairy, which is, which causes you to leach calcium from your bones to buffer your PH back to normal. Okay, another one that will not be a shocker for you, I am sure. Dairy promotes cravings. So casein is the protein found in milk and other dairy products that can have a morphine like effect on your brain. Now, when you consume casein, your body actually produces casomorphines, which have the same physically soothing properties that morphine and other opiate drugs have. Turns out that a cup of milk contains about 6 grams of casein. Skim milk contains a little bit more, and then it becomes even more concentrated when you make it into cheese. So it's no real surprise that we feel addicted, maybe even bonded to our cheese. You know, when you look at it, gluten, sugar and dairy all work in slightly different ways, but they all release these drug like substances that suggest seduce your brain into Coming back for more. That's why cereal and milk is the ultimate trifecta drug. Trifecta. Okay, next one. Dairy can promote autoimmunity. So Dr. Randy Horwitz is a leading expert, and he argues that dairy can trigger autoimmune diseases. In fact, one recent study linked dairy consumption to multiple sclerosis. Next one. Turns out that 75% of the world's population is lactose intolerance. They're genetically unable to properly digest milk and other dairy products. Symptoms of this include gas, bloating, cramps, diarrhea, and also itchy skin, eczema, wheezing, congestion, runny nose, and watering eyes. Now, that is only one way, though, that you can be intolerant to dairy. When I did food sensitivity testing, I looked at IGG food sensitivities. I found that 70% of those I tested didn't tolerate dairy. Well, what that means is that you've got leaky gut and that when you eat dairy, some of that sneaks out into circulation and triggers an immune response that gives you a lot of those symptoms. I just talked about with lactose intolerance, very similar symptoms as well. Okay. Of course, most commercial dairy is pasteurized. By law, just about all of our milk is pasteurized. And that kills bacteria. And while that destroys bad bacteria, it also destroys the good bacteria. Basically creates a dead product as well as some other vital ingredients in milk, like the probiotics, the vitamins, and the enzymes. Dr. Mercola doesn't recommend drinking pasteurized milk of any kind, because once milk has been pasteurized, it's more or less dead, and it offers little in terms of any real nutritional value to anyone, whether you show signs of intolerance to milk or not. And finally, dairy comes from discontented cows. Now, pasteurization exists to counteract the ill effects of keeping cows in close confinement and then feeding them genetically modified corn. When you do that, corn actually creates this acidosis that can produce ulcers and bleeding in the stomach. And then the cows have to be treated with antibiotics, which then go into our systems. So now we become more resistant to. To antibiotics. So they don't work when we need them. Now, of course, besides antibiotics, cows are also often given something called RBGH recombinant. Let me see if I can say that correctly. Recombinant bovine growth hormone. And this is a genetically modified hormone that basically forces the cows to produce far more milk than nature ever attended. This is where it gets really gross, because this extra milking gives cows infected udders, and, and that requires antibiotic treatment and then it also creates more pus in the milk. So you get this really kind of gross, ugly point. We're looking at a liquid with extra hormones, lots of dead pus cells and a whole load of antibiotics. I mean, that alone should make you think twice about all this got milk propaganda. So here's the deal. There's all of the big reasons, quite the case for why you're going to want to dump the dairy. But the thing is there's loads of easy swaps that you can make. So you're not even going to miss your milk. Just cheese or yogurt. So for cheese, try nut cheese. I love making my own cashew cheese. Or try Kite Hill brand makes some amazing cream cheese and regular nut cheeses also milks. This has never been easier. So delicious Dairy Free makes, they make cashew milk, they make almond milk, they make coconut milk. They also make these great culinary milks that you can make whipped creams and creamers out of. So delicious Dairy Free also has almond milk and they have coke or almond yogurt and they have coconut yogurt and coconut Greek style yogurt. Of course they have ice creams. 1 gram of sugar ice cream. And you can make your own ice cream. And again, use those culinary coconut milks to make your own ice cream. Whipped cream, yes. So delicious. Came out with coconut whipped cream and it is as great as it sounds. And if you love mousses and pudding, you can make your own. Here, just use an avocado, use my all in one protein powder and grab that culinary milk from so delicious Dairy Free. Buy the full fat one and you will make the most amazing mousses. Literally. You are never going to miss the dairy. This is the easiest thing that you can swap in your diet. But what you will also not miss is the throat clearing, the acne, the gas and bloating, the brain fog, the fatigue and the cravings. I challenge you to take a three week dairy free trial. And you know the best test is your own chemistry lab. You pull it out for three weeks, you do the simple swaps I told you about and then you, and you probably won't even want to do this by the way. You go back and you try a little bit and see how you feel. Because you know what, if you have that dairy and you get a big zit or all of a sudden you're like, you get really gassy and bloated, you're going to think twice before you ever go reach for the cheese again.
When it comes to Dairy Free Delights. JJ chooses so Delicious Dairy Free with so many delicious dairy free beverages, desserts and toppings, creamers and more, you might wonder how you lived without it. In fact, JJ recommends using so Delicious unsweetened coconut milk in your virgin diet shake or try so Delicious Coconut Milk ice Cream for a delicious low sugar impact win you and your family will love. If you want delicious Dairy free options, visit www.sodeliciousdairyfree.com today and explore life's delicious possibilities. Visit www.so delicious dairy free.com hello listeners.
This is Anne Boeckle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So so join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshould I read next podcast.com to find out more.
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