Six months without milk

As a lifelong milk drinker, I decided, at the suggestion of the Auckland naturopath I visited back in May, to do a six month trial without milk.

I’d read for years, how cow’s milk is only ‘good for calves’ and is not good for human adults. I’ve yet to come across scientific evidence for this and the arguments appear to be mostly emotional.

So anyway, I decided to give up milk for six months and see for myself if my health improved, especially my forehead hairline skin irritation.

I normally buy two litres of raw milk a week from an organic farmer in Rotorua, so to replace this I’ve been using coconut cream (Kara brand, 26% fat), diluted 50-50 with water. It actually tastes nicer than milk and keeps longer in the fridge.

I continued this for four months and the skin on my forehead seemed to improve somewhat, but my weight steadily increased by three kilograms.

However, I became more concerned that my average saliva pH had dropped from its normal 7.0, to 6.6. So after four months I decided to end the trial early and go back to milk. Within two weeks my pH had risen back to a healthy pH 7.0 again.

Another reason for my decision to return to milk, is that milk is far richer in nutrients than coconut cream.

However I strongly believe our milk should be natural full cream and unhomogenised (i.e. silver topped).

Pasteurisation is not too bad. Even though it destroys probiotics and enzymes necessary for baby calves, it does not significantly diminish the proteins, vitamins and minerals useful for human health.

If you have trouble digesting milk, try a course of Health House’s Probiotic Multi 9 – each capsule contains more of the lactobacillus family of probiotics (necessary to digest milk) than a whole tub of yoghurt.