Why Organic Milk is Worse for Diabetes
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by: RussellEaton
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Diabetes rates have soared in recent years, particularly in developed countries where junk diets and obesity have reached epidemic proportions. Diabetes is a terrible disease in which the body fails to control blood sugar levels (referred to as 'insulin resistance').
A 2007 study by the University of Cardiff in the UK shows that drinking a pint of milk a day can protect men against heart disease and diabetes. But when you examine the research in detail it is revealed as flawed, and the conclusions as false and misleading.
Jon Barron (of The Baseline of Health Foundation) analyzed the data from the study and his comments are summarized in the five points below:
1. The 20-year study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, looked at how human insulin resistance was affected by the consumption of dairy milk. According to the study, which tracked 2,375 men aged between 45 and 59 over a 20 year period, consuming milk reduces the risk of insulin resistance. The more milk they consumed, the lower the risk of diabetes.
2. In fact, although the study tracked a decreased risk of insulin resistance with increased dairy consumption, it found little actual correlation between dairy consumption and the incidence of diabetes itself. There were only 7 more cases of diabetes among the lowest consumers of dairy versus the highest. The incidence of heart disease was not tracked.
3. An important omission in the research was the exclusion of people who had diabetes at the start of the study. As a consequence, we don't know if their condition improved or got worse as a result of consuming milk. Such data would have helped determine the effect milk consumption on insulin resistance in the human body.
4. A big failing in the research was the lack of references to the overall diet of participants. The data only refers to the amount of milk and dairy products people were consuming, nothing else. If you drink more milk, you're bound to drink less of something else. Conversely, if you drink less milk, you are likely to drink more of something else. If that something else is sweetened tea, coffee, soda pop, milk shake, etc. then that can be a major factor in the incidence of diabetes.
5. In other words, the so-called health benefits attributed to milk in the study may have nothing to do with milk at all. They may instead be a reflection of lowered consumption of more harmful highly-sugared beverages. It sounds likely that the men drinking milk were eating an overall better diet, but the study doesn't tell us either way. In any case, without that information, the study is meaningless.
When you look at the research into diabetes there are many studies (too numerous to mention here) linking milk consumption with a higher incidence of diabetes, and there are virtually no studies suggesting that milk prevents diabetes.
The author Sally Fallon makes the following comment in her book Nurturing Traditions (1999):
'There is some evidence that pasteurization alters milk lactase (a form of sugar), making it more readily absorbable. This and the fact that pasteurized milk puts an unnecessary strain on the pancreas to produce digestive enzymes, may explain why milk consumption has been linked to diabetes'.
Other research confirms this. Lactose undergoes condensation and molecular changes as a result of heat treatment. Lactose in milk converts to glucose and galactose in the bloodstream. Over time, the constant drip feed of glucose into the bloodstream (from daily milk consumption) can create insulin resistance.
The risk of diabetes is even greater for organic milk consumers. This is so because most organic milk (over 80 percent) is sold as UHT milk. In the USA virtually all organic milk is UHT! The ultra high pasteurization temperature of UHT is double that of regular milk. This means that organic UHT milk is more likely to overburden the bloodstream with glucose, increasing the risk of diabetes.
See below for details of a new book 'Organic Milk Myth' which explains this in more detail with supporting evidence.
About the Author
Organic Milk Myth explodes the myth that organic milk is healthier by clearly showing that organic milk is, in fact, much worse for health compared to regular pasteurized milk. See Organic Milk Myth now.
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