By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

Our beta test for our new food product is underway. We continue to learn a great deal as we talk with potential users or others who can help us get our product into the market.

But today’s topic relates partly to food and partly to other substances that we have believed to be allergens or other substances to which we believe either intolerances or sensitivities. In the past week, I learned that a friend of ours who will be undergoing hip replacement surgery believed from childhood that she had an allergy to penicillin and antibiotics like it. 

She didn’t. She had adverse reactions to it as a child, but these were side effects, and did not activate the immune system to attack the body. She might even have been allergic to the preservatives used to store and deliver it. Penicillin is the preferred antibiotic, so it is good that she will be able to take it. Her experience prompted me to re-examine a long-held diagnosis that I had a broad lactose intolerance, but that my personal experience seemed to challenge.

I suffered severe gastrointestinal distress on my honeymoon in the South of France at age 30. When I returned to the states, a doctor told me that I had a “lactose intolerance” to all dairy products. The diagnosis made sense because we decided to shop at a grocery store and eat quiche and drink milk. Like my friend, I received a broad-based judgment and did not challenge it for decades.

I believed that I would react adversely to dairy products of any kind, but that belief was wrong. I could have virtually any kind of cheese and often was able to tolerate a scoop of ice cream with dairy products in it. I maintained my intolerance of cow’s milk, although I have used almond milk on my cereal if I ate cereal. I never asked why, but her experience caused me to do so.

By accessing our product, I learned the following:

1. I probably have retained some of the lactase enzyme, but not enough to digest cow’s milk, which, in liquid form, ends up intact and quickly in my small intestine. Because of the speed and volume with which it reaches the small intestine, it overwhelms my ability to digest it.
2. Relative to cheese, the whey, which carries much of the lactose, is drained off. Cheese enters my intestine relatively harmlessly.
3. Dietary fat slows stomach emptying, which enables the remaining lactase to reduce the speed at which lactose floods the colon.
4. Closely related to point #3, consuming lactose as part of a meal reduces the speed of digestion, which makes it less likely to create gastro-intestinal distress. A scoop of ice cream consumed as part of a meal reduces gastro-intestinal distress, compared with going out in the late evening and getting an ice cream cone.
5. Low fat ice cream often creates more distress because of the sweeteners introduced into the mix. High fat ice cream is absorbed more slowly and has less impact. Carrageenan, derived from seaweed, and certain compounds called polysorbates have shown some signs in research of irritating the gut lining or disturbing the balance of gut bacteria in people who are sensitive. But the research on this is not definitive.
6. The type of emulsifier used in particular ice creams affects its gastro-intestinal impact. Some are gentler than others in their impact.
7. I love gelato and have not had problems digesting it, but it is typically served in smaller portions, which reduces its impact. Portion sizes matter in this case, although if I had an allergy, as opposed to a sensitivity, the quantity ingested would not matter. I definitely do not have a lactose allergy.
8. Preliminary research indicates that having the same ice cream cone at night could cause more distress than having that cone during the day because of circadian rhythms and the way our gut bacteria are set up.

This simple example reveals a great deal about the kind of intelligence we need in deciding what to put in our body. It also reveals that many of the ingredients, preparation processes, concurrent eating behaviors and timing issues that we often do not know we need to explore can make a significant difference in our daily lives.

At first, this seems confusing, if not overwhelming, but, over time, we can make small adjustments in our daily habits to improve our state of health. We will not become nutritionists or food scientists, but we can help ourselves considerably.