All I know is that I am lactose intolerant and my stomach hurts very badly every time I eat a dairy product. That the only thing I know is I can’t have dairy but I don’t know the direct science behind it. Why am I affected but not my sister? Why not my best friend? Is it genetic? Why does this happen? Is there a certain age when it typically happens? Why do some dairy products affect me more than others? These are all questions that I have wondered about but never got the answers to.
According to The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease lactose is a sugar that is found in dairy products. One of the tasks of the small intestine is break down good and where food digestion and nutrient absorption take place and because of that it produces and enzyme called lactase. That breaks down lactose into glucose and galactose. Lactose intolerance is when someone is unable to digest lactose normally so they typically have stomach issues because the lactose gets broken down by bacteria instead.
Genetic home reference it is uncommon for infants to become lactose intolerant. “Approximately 65% of the human population has a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy. Lactose intolerance in adulthood is most prevalent in people of East Asian descent, affecting more than 90% of adults in some of these communities. Lactose intolerance is also very common in people of West African, Arab, Jewish, Greek and Italian descent.” I really didn’t think that lactose intolerance was genetic, but it actually can be inherited by genes from your parents. If an infant has issues it is because of they have something called congenital lactase deficiency and that is inherited by recessive genes of LCT. If someone became lactose intolerant in their adulthood it is typically due to the MCM6 gene that they inherited from their parents.
Become lactose intolerant isn’t something that a person can control, just we start to slowly not be able to break down lactose and why that happens is something that scientists are still looking into according to The Wall Street Journal. People just start to stop producing large amounts of the enzyme, which causes the pain. I use the Lactaid pills that make my stomach settle much better, but I try to stay away from any dairy so the Berkey Creamery is torture for me. It is annoying that I have these problems and my sister doesn’t, but because I have had it for so many years I have adjusted my diet and even my sister has adjusted her diet to stay away from dairy because she doesn’t want to risk any future stomach pains.
It is terrible that you can’t eat such a common food group without feeling sick. You did a really great job of explaining the incidence of lactose intolerance and how people develop it. Since much of my family is also lactose intolerant, I was wondering if later in life I will develop it, so I did some research. According to the Boston Globe, it is extremely rare to develop lactose intolerance after the age of five. However many people get symptoms that resemble those of lactose intolerance later in life, and they confuse them with lactose intolerance.