MILK – what you must know about it

Highlights:

-Cow milk has the most powerful combination of proteins: whey protein and casein

-Most humans are suffering by lactose intolerance

-Cow milk is the most common food allergen

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Why we are talking about the milk at all? One reason is that milk (and here we mean cow milk, not milk from other animals and not the various milk products) is a very common part of our diet. The second reason is that milk contains two extremely powerful types of protein: casein and whey protein.

Since the two protein types have significant benefits for muscle growth and especially since they were found to be most effective when used together (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16937979 ), milk is a food worth consideration.

Well, at least so would it seem.

The dark side of milk

About 75% of all humans are suffering by lactose intolerance and this number is even higher in some groups (80% of Asians, 90% of African Americans). What does it mean? Those people are lacking the enzyme lactase necessary to break up the main milk carbohydrate lactose.

This is not so strange. Why should we be able to drink and digest milk of other animal species in the first place? No other animal in the world is doing so.

How come some people actually can tolerate lactose? Those are mostly people of North European origin who apparently developed the ability to digest cow milk out of necessity. Or rather, those who had this peculiar ability did survive in the harsh North European climate with little other food resources.

However, even people whose bodies are producing lactase enzyme well into adulthood may experience problems with digestion of cow milk.  The lactase availability is decreasing with the age. Also, the long casein protein chains are hard to break down and require much energy just for the digestive process.

Lactose intolerance can cause digestive problems like diarrhea, constipation, nausea, bloating and many others.

What is worse, lactose has been also associated with auto-immune diseases and diabetes mellitus.

Unfortunately, milk is also not a good source of calcium, although it contains so much of it. The calcium from milk is not well absorbed by the human body and other calcium sources (mostly plants) are far superior to milk considering the absorption issue.

How to tap into the huge potential of milk

The logical answer to all the side effects described above is to remove the lactose and break down (hydrolyze) the long protein chains.

While hydrolyzing casein will not completely prevent the allergic reaction to this protein (about 3% of population is believed to suffer casein allergy), it will save a lot of energy that would have to be invested in protein breakdown (some proteins might not be digested at all).

The combination of hydrolyzed whey protein and hydrolyzed casein is (along with creatine) the most powerful mixture for muscle growth exceeding the effects of both of those two proteins used on their own.