Is reducing Dairy helpful?

[663roberta]

Does anyone think that giving up dairy and sticking to soy milk and soy products has a beneficial effect on psoriasis. My friend swears that since she has stopped taking dairy that her p has cleared up a lot. She's been off it for a couple of years now. She doesn't get much protein and is very thin so I'm not sure it is a good thing. I would be worried about loosing out on the calcium and also there is the latest research which says that soy is not all that great after all. I don't know how much of that you can believe though.

[DottieD]

I recently read a book called The Clear Skin Diet which says that the benefits of milk are over-rated. Many cultures do not drink milk after early childhood (or at least didn't until the Western diet became popular) and no other mammal drinks milk after the initial nursing period. However, the major problem (except for those who are lactose intolerant) seems to be the fat in the milk, which is a high percent saturated (52%). Also the fat part of milk usually contains some hormones that could be a problem.

One possbility would be to limit your milk intake to skim milk, fat-free yogurt, and other fat-free milk products.

The problem with the idea of eliminating one item from your diet (like milk) is that you may have a food "sensitivity" to several foods. So if you take the one away and still eat the others, you won't notice any clearing. How will you know you had a problem with the one you eliminated?

I tried soy milk once several years ago and didn't see any improvement. But we're all very different in terms of our reaction to foods.
DottieD

[crowfriend]

I would say it all depends on whether you tolerate dairy or not. I can't handle it - I get earaches and sinus infections almost instantly whenever I try. Soy is a common allergen. I limit my soy usage to a little wheat free tamari, personally, for a variety of reasons. I'm not sure that I'm allergic to it, but I do know that when I have soy milk it bloats up in my belly.

If you're concerned about calcium, you may want to do some research. THere are lots of sources out there. Many say that the greater danger is that excess protein actually causes calcium to be leached from the body, so (if you are relatively young) stopping that from happening by eating only as much protein as your body needs could be more beneficial than working to supplement with calcium later in life, if you see what I mean.

[nina2002nina]

There was a recent thread about milk and milk substitutes that you may want to check out. I took away milk plus a bunch of other foods that I was intolerant to and my PPPP improved a lot! There are a lot of milk sub's. Soy is not a great sub. There is rice milk, potatoe milk (Vances Darifree), and Almond milk (may contain soy but not as much as reg soy milk and someone mentioned making your own Almond Milk. You can also take calcium supplements.

Hope this helps

[Green77]

Crowfriend.... is that true that dairy causes you to have sinus infections??
I've been struggling with chronic sinusitis for awhile.
Awhile ago I've had a homeopathic allergy test with powders. She told me I was allergic to gluten first and dairy second. I've been gluten free for about a year and a half and it has helped my life considerably. But no noticeable difference in my Psoriasis. But I love cheese and didn't really notice any stomach issues with dairy so I kept having milk and cheese. But I still have sinus issues and thought that there was nothing I could do about it. Evrytime I look up chronic sinusitis it basically says I have no choice but to live with it so I take claritin and use saline solution.

I'm was going to cut out dairy anyway to see if it helps my P but I had no idea it could possible help my sinuses.

Actually I just did another search specificaly for dairy and sinus. I guess everybody has known about this except me!!!! I learn something new everyday. And everyday I have to cut something else out of my diet!!!

[crowfriend]

Hi Green77,

It's true for me, that ingesting dairy leads to sinus problems. I was standing next to a giant wheel of room temperature, melting, delicious Port Salut cheese at a wedding on Saturday, and I'm afraid 3 or 4 little knife-fulls eventually slid their delicious way into my stomach. All night long I had all kinds of mucus in my head, but luckily all clear mucus. Hopefully I'll get away with it this time - no earaches yet, and though my nose was blocked during sleep last night I haven't seen any green stuff.

But try experimenting with it. Go off dairy for a week or two and see how your body responds. I love living dairy-free, because I don't have sinus problems anymore. I wish I'd known about it when I was a kid, because I was always sick, always getting earaches, always eating cheese!

Good luck!

[ccarlso]

My acupunturist suggested that I eliminate all cow-milk products from my diet. I did, and my P. did improve. However, I eliminated other things from my diet as well (gluten, poultry, and red meat). I find that the better I eat, the better my skin is, although it has never fully cleared. My acupuncturist also told me that if I wanted to see which foods trigger my P, to go on an "elminiation diet." This consists of eliminating whatever foods you think might be effecting your P. You eliminate the food from your diet for four days, and then continue with your regular diet the 5th day. You should notice some changes the 5th-7th day if it is a trigger.

The difficult part about this diet is that you may have several food triggers and you may have other triggers not food related (for me, stress is a big one). You can also eliminate several foods from your diet, and then add each food item back in one day at a time. She told me that main food triggers are : cow products, sugar, gluten, and red meat. I haven't tried the elimination diet yet, but would like to.

[DanielEW]

It is important to understand what lactose intolerance is and how it works. In a nutshell, it's the reduced ability to produce lactase, which breaks the sugar lactose down and allows it to pass into the bloodstream. The primary result of reduced lactase production is allowing the whole lactose molecule to pass directly into the colon. This results in a a bacterial culture that thrives on a lactose metabolism, and produces large amounts of hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide. Notice these things occur in your colon, not on your skin. Those gases can produce a whole range of side effects, but those would be related to your intestinal tract.
Lactose intolerance is directly correlated to your genes ~ specifically whether your ancestors were dairy herdsmen or not. Lactose intolerance is a recessive genetic trait, meaning that as the human population breeds over time, the trait is becoming less and less prevalent.
Intolerance has been charted for percentages of populations that display it, ranging from 1% for some northern European populations to over 90% in some Asian or African populations. Worldwide average at this time is 75% intolerant.
It is a myth that milk is a 'mucous producing' substance.

[sankar84]

The following is pulled out from an interesting article I came across recently..See the link below to read the entire article...
http://www.naturopathichealth.net/re...icle.php?id=26

Below is the part of the article discussing whether or not human beings need milk..

"....That brings us to dairy, a topic for an essay in its own right. However, I don’t see the need to go on at length about dairy as there are some sensational websites that cover all the issues extremely well. The best of these is the NotMilk website. If you want a relatively quick overview of the issues, check out the following two essays: The Milk Letter: A Message to my Patients and Cow’s Milk is the “Perfect Food” for Baby Calves.

After reading these, maybe you’ll realize how much we’ve been brainwashed by dairy industry PR. I’ll be blunt: anything from cow’s milk, even yogurt, is just plain bad for you. But isn’t milk the perfect food? All those celebrities with milk mustaches! Don’t we need milk for calcium and for prevention of osteoporosis?

Let’s take an evolutionary perspective again. First, no other animal drinks milk after weaning. That’s right, mother’s milk is for infants and that’s it. Calves don’t drink cow’s milk after weaning, do they, so why should we? Someone once asked, during one of Dr. David’s lectures, what humans should drink. His answer was, “Mother’s milk during infancy, and then water!” (He did add that herbal teas and fresh squeezed juices were good, but, really, water is all you need after weaning.) Try to imagine that someone offers you a fresh glass of human milk—what’s your reaction? So why drink cow’s milk—is it that it’s free of emotional baggage?

Which brings up the second observation that no other animal drinks milk “designed” for another animal. The milk of each species is different. Cows are quite anatomically and physiologically quite different from us—just think in terms of size alone. Were we meant to grow like calves? Cow’s milk is simply not a good match for human milk. It’s high in casein, which is used in making paint, and is mucogenic [mucogenic: causing excessive mucus buildup]. Other problems such as lactose intolerance and diabetes only confirm that cows milk is not for humans. If you have to drink animal milk, molecularly, goat’s milk is much closer to human mother’s milk.5

Now these first two objections hold even under the best of conditions, that is, if we have clean, raw milk available. Unfortunately, we almost never get our milk under the best of conditions. Unless the milk is marked otherwise, you can assume that the cows have been treated with growth hormones and antibiotics. There is even a small amount of pus (gag!) in the milk. On top of this, the milk we get has been homogenized and pasteurized. Good things, right? Wrong! Homogenization changes the milk’s structure so that it contributes to cardiovascular problems and pasteurization does a host of bad things: Yes, heating to 145 degrees or so kills bacteria and prevents souring (extending shelf life), but heating also kills enzymes, useful germs (lactic acid bacilli), and part of the Vitamin C and iodine found in raw milk. Heating also turns lactose into beta-lactose, which is far more rapidly absorbed, leading to the reappearance of hunger sooner. Pasteurization also makes insoluble most of the calcium found in raw milk. What’s that? I thought milk was a major source of calcium?

Well then, where should we get calcium from? The greens of the earth, same as cows (and elephants) do! They have really strong bones and they don’t drink milk past weaning. The websites cited above all mention research that shows repeatedly that milk consumption does not prevent osteoporosis—it contributes to it! Milk has also been implicated in acne, intestinal colic, intestinal irritation, intestinal bleeding, anemia, allergic reactions in infants and children as well as infections such as salmonella, other dangerous viral infections, childhood diabetes, ear and tonsil infections, bedwetting, and asthma; In adults the problems seemed centered more around heart disease and arthritis, allergy, sinusitis, and the more serious questions of leukemia, lymphoma and cancer. Dr. Spock, the famous baby and child care author, said to avoid milk, but even his influence hasn’t been able to override the myths we keep ingesting with our, uh, milk.

Unless you are an infant, then, forget about mammalian milk and drink instead almond milk or rice milk.6 Or stick to water....."

Sankar

[DanielEW]

I've read the article, and to say the least I really don't have a good opinion of Funk. His thesis is ill researched, full of logical errors, based primarily on folk-lore, and has religious overtones. What he's written there, stripped of the hype, could be condensed into 'be a vegan'. I've tried that approach for a year and suffered very bad health effects from it.

For just one example from what you quoted above ~ modern dairy cows are the result of centuries of breeding, the milk is 'designed' for our consumption - not for a calf. Calves are very rarely fed cow's milk, and when that is done, those are free range beef cattle ~ a completely different animal. Nature's 'design' was the aurox. To object to drinking milk based on the number and amount of hormones contained there-in is completely understandable, but even on that count one can buy milk and dairy products readily that is free from them.

I gave thought at one point of pointing out where Funk had made grave errors in his thesis, but decided it might have been too controversial. I really am not interested in disproving it, but it really tears at me to see blatant errors going uncorrected. If a person wishes to try a dietary approach, I'm all for it. But they really need to have good information. Too much of what is popularly considered 'healthy eating' really isn't healthy.

Milk is not the 'devil' that it's made out to be. I concur that it's been marketed far too heavily, and it's subsidy still irritates me. But those are not reasons for not including milk and dairy in one's diet, unless one bases one's diet on politics.

[aphimare]

I have eliminated lactose from my diet and my scalp psoriasis has greatly improved, I would say bordering on cured. I use lactose free milk with my tea and I drink soy milk with my cereal. I also eat soy yoghurt.

I definitely think it's worth a shot.

[Paddy H]

I think our culture as a whole eats far too much animal protein. It is very acidic & acidity is what causes most diseases. However, I have not eaten dairy for 22 years & 2 years ago I got psoriasis. I wish it were that simple or me. Reading through the posts here though shows that many people do find improvements with a closer to vegan diet. Who knows, If I ate dairy maybe my p would be a hell of a lot worse. There is a lot of great info on the web about getting enough nutrition from a plant based diet. Remember, it was the USDA who advised us to eat our meat & dairy. They were being paid off by the meat & dairy industry to say that.

[MadCat]

Does anyone think that giving up dairy has a beneficial effect on psoriasis. She doesn't get much protein and is very thin so I'm not sure it is a good thing. I would be worried about loosing out on the calcium

In 1988, I saw a very renowned and well respected Derm about my P.

He said that if I gave up dairy (along with a few other things) my P would heal up and go away.

At that stage I was a real dairy fanatic, so I dismissed his advice.

Twenty years late I give up dairy (and meat) and my P clears up.

Ho Hum!


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This site is most interesting:

http://www.notmilk.com/


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Too much dairy is actually very bad for you. Excess animal protein (meat and dairy) makes the body extremely acidic.

When the body is in an acidic state, calcium is leeched from the bones and you basically lose it by weeing it out. Also when the body is in an acidic state, you open yourself up to all sorts of diseases.

You can fulfill your daily calcium requirements from calcium enriched soy milk, calcium enriched rice milk, soy yogurt, wholegrain bread, seeds, green leafy vegetables, broccoli, bok choy, spinach, bean curd, dried organic figs etc….

You can fulfill your daily protein requirements from seeds, pasta, soy, oats, raw nuts, lentils, red beans, soy beans, chickpeas, wheat bulger etc…

I would personally avoid soy, as most soy is grown from GMO crops and also the jury has yet to make its mind up about the health benefits/dangers of soy.

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Do a google search on Storm Talifero and Shannon Oliver from The Garden Diet. They are both raw vegan bodybuilders. And basically prove that you can get all the calcium and protein you need from a plant based diet and still build well defined muscle.


Hope this is helpful to you?


.

[MadCat]

is that true that dairy causes you to have sinus infections??

I think it is a common well known fact that dairy causes a build up of mucus. This in turn can lead to sinus infections.

I have read a few “reports” on the internet to say that dairy does not cause mucus but I think these must be undercover false reports from the dairy corporations because from my own experience and other people’s experiences, I know it does.

A friend of mine has a toddler. This child is in kindergarden and constantly - along with the other kids - use to have a seeming permanently snotty nose.

She put it down to “one of those childhood issues”.

She then took him off dairy (in an effect to help his eczema) and not only did his eczema clear up, his snotty noses went away too.

I use to have constant sinus infections but not had one since I gave up dairy.

Recently I ate a teaspoon of cheese (as a little experiment) and for the next few days I had a runny and snotty nose, plus I was coughing up loads of mucus.

Also, my husband use to suffer from terrible hayfever and had done for 40 odd years and since he gave up dairy, he has not had one single hayfever attack.

If you are going to give up, you need to give yourself a good 3 - 6 months to get it completely out of your system.

.

[DottieD]

And don't forget - we can get calcium and magnesium from supplements.

[starqlty]

I has P my whole life and noting the derm gave me helped. But I gave up dairy and sugar and wheat and my P was gone in a month. I still cheat once and a while, but when I do I pay for it with a scaly scalp!

[kinga]

There was a post above by DanielEW stating the importance of understanding lactose intolerance. While his post is not incorrect, it is also important to understand the difference between lactose intolerance and milk allergy, which is far more important when we're talking about psoriasis and inflammatory mediators. Allergies to a specific protein, casein, which is found in high quantities in milk, is actually quite common in the general population (including the Caucasian population, in which lactose intolerance is low relative to other populations as DanielEW pointed out).

An allergy is defined as an inappropriate immune response by the body to a non-harmful substance, and manifestation of casein allergies can range from full blown anaphylactic shock to chronic, low-grade irritation. Some people feel that psoriasis can be aggravated by their allergies (if you are a nerd like me, you may be interested to know this is thought to be caused by delayed hypersensitivity mechanisms). So it stands to reason that an unidentified casein allergy may be causing aggravation of symptoms. Unfortunately, many medical doctors ignore the importance of diet when treating chronic problems and disease. A food trial is an excellent and easy tool to use to determine if and what foods may be exacerbating your psoriasis. Of course, eliminating milk won't work for everyone, since some people may not have a casein allergy. But some people have reported that eliminating gluten or red meat has also helped. For me, eliminating all milk products helped a lot.

Finally, I just had to address DanielEW's post about the domestication of cows and subsequent changes in milk composition. While it is true that older breeds of cow (eg. guernsey, jersey) have higher butterfat composition and a different type of casein protein (A2 vs the usual A1 type) than the more modern holstein cow, to suggest that this proves that milk was designed for human consumption is simply erroneous. The separation of the calf from the cow is a relatively modern idea that came out of intensive farming, and the cow's milk is indeed designed to suit the calf's growth needs, being filled calcium, very high levels of protein, and lots of growth hormones like IGF-1. Adult human beings have no need for extra growth hormones, and recent studies suggest that these growth hormones may accelerate growth of IGF1 responsive tumors, such as breast and prostate tumors. The protein levels found in milk are far higher than those required by the average adult human diet, and may accelerate the development of osteoporosis. The studies are out there; if you don't agree with Funk, look them up for yourself. I recommend pubmed.com. Drink milk because you like to, but don't falsely believe that it is necessary for good health as we are taught to do by the dairy industry. (sorry, this last bit has nothing to do with P, but I had to respond).

[kinga]

One more thing to respond to DanielEW, about the hormone-free milk he mentions; actually, you cannot buy hormone free milk. You can buy milk from cows that were not treated with exogenous hormones, such as rBST (a growth hormone), however, progestagens and estrogens are always present in milk. A cow must become pregnant very quickly after calving in order to be worthwhile to the farmer, as her pregnancy is 290 days long (over 9 months), and she only produces milk if she calves. So, the cow calves, becomes pregnant again, and is milked throughout pregnancy. During pregnancy, levels of progestagens and estrogens skyrocket, and they come out in your delicious milk. So buying organic milk, or milk from cows that were not rBST treated makes no difference to the amount of these endogenous hormones in the final product. This is also why some people have improvement in acne after eliminating milk from the diet.

[nocam1334]

I have recently started experimenting with removing dairy. I haven’t gone cold turkey (I still eat a small bit of cottage cheese mixed with flax oil at night), but I’ve replaced cow’s milk with almond milk for about 2 weeks now, which has been my main source of dairy for the past few years. I don’t use butter or any other dairy products other than once or twice a month.

I think I am seeing a difference. My level of inflammation/redness is down considerably. Generally my winter pattern is a few days or a week of increased redness and scaling. When it gets bad enough, I apply the topical steroid I use once or twice to reduce the redness and scaling. The relief lasts usually for about a week. Summertime I am able to sunbathe and control my lesions and redness mostly by sun exposure, with the occasional use of my topical steroid when I am not able to sunbathe or life is particularly stressful.

Since I’ve cut out my cow’s milk in my morning breakfast cereal, I’ve noticed the redness and scaling all over is considerably less. It’s been about two weeks and I haven’t had a major increase in the redness and scaling that I usually see (which is promising). I don't know if it's the elimination of cow's milk or the addition of almond milk. Almond milk does contain a high % of vitamin E, which from what I have read has strong anti-inflammatory properties.

I will update in a few more weeks.

[Brandi]

It seems that so many different things work for different people. Removing dairy may help one, but not another. If you haven't found what works for you then just make a list of things to try and check them off as you go if they don't work, and move on to the next thing. I didn't find removing dairy to be helpful for me.

[NIlla]

yes.. but watch out for Soymilk as well... not as cracked up as the hype says..

[abuabdallah]

hello!

for what its worth, i got off of milk entirely, which was difficult especially since i needed it for protein drinks, ANDDD in my experience , it has helped

dr. M Heng said we are all lactose intolerant to a degree because our mom's werent cows lol, but some people more so than others!

Anyhoo, im on soy and im diggin it

Wishing everyone all the best -

Abu

[sharka]

This a quote from CCARLSO
"The difficult part about this diet is that you may have several food triggers and you may have other triggers not food related (for me, stress is a big one). You can also eliminate several foods from your diet, and then add each food item back in one day at a time. She told me that main food triggers are : cow products, sugar, gluten, and red meat. I haven't tried the elimination diet yet, but would like to. "

Earlier this year I tried several things but I did eliminate cow products, sugar, gluten, and the results were pretty astounding. However it is very difficult to keep it up when you are the only one that has to have special foods and you still need to cook "regular" meals for the rest of the family.

If any one out there would be interested in trying this with me, we could be long distance cheerleaders. I could let you know what I did and you could try it too. I would be so pleased if someone would. Even though I was really making progress, It's just so hard when you feel like you are all alone.

[Cparkinson]

hello all,
I do think a dairy free diet is the way to go, even soy may be too much. Try the almond or rice milks instead, soy is becoming a huge allergen for many as it is in everything.

You can also add some salmon oil capsules to your vitamin regime, very important for skin issues----excema or psoriasis too.


blue cross blue shield of north carolina

[nocam1334]

Earlier this year I tried several things but I did eliminate cow products, sugar, gluten, and the results were pretty astounding. However it is very difficult to keep it up when you are the only one that has to have special foods and you still need to cook "regular" meals for the rest of the family.

If any one out there would be interested in trying this with me, we could be long distance cheerleaders. I could let you know what I did and you could try it too. I would be so pleased if someone would. Even though I was really making progress, It's just so hard when you feel like you are all alone.

sharka,

PM me if you would like. I have experimented and tried a number of dietary manipulations and am still trying new ones. I'd love to share what I've had success with and what I haven't had success with.

From my experiences so far, I do believe I can manage my P quite a bit through dietary modifications.