Business Innovators Radio - Milk was a Bad Choice

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

Milk does a body good. Or does it? For so long, milk has been held in high esteem but as we take a closer look at its health benefits, we can knock it off the pedestal that clever marketing and big advertising dollars have built for it over the years. As it turns out, in almost every way, milk was a bad choice.In this episode, Dr. Dan and Angela dive into the truth about milk: its true health benefits compared to how it’s marketed, the studies that have been abused in the pursuit of positive media coverage, the problems that dairy can be causing in your body and what you should be reaching for instead. It’s time to unmask the myth that milk is a must.To learn more about this and other hot health topics, follow us on social media and subscribe to our WTH podcast. If you have a specific health question or would like to find out if we can help you with a personal health challenge, check out our office page or contact us at 412-369-0400/ [e-mail] always, our mission is to help you Get Healthy and Stay Healthy for a Lifetime!What the Health?!https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/what-the-health/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/milk-was-a-bad-choice

Welcome to What the Health, where anything health is fair game as we tackle the trends and bust the myths about health and wellness. Here are your hosts, Dr. Dan and Angela Toro. And welcome to another episode of What the Health. I am Dr. Dan here with my co-host. Angela, welcome back, guys. I'll get the disclaimer out of the way, as you know by now. We are here for informational purposes only, in no way offering individualized medical advice. Always talk to your trusted health care provider before making changes to your diet or lifestyle.

So with that being said, let's jump right in. Today's topic of discussion is going to be a fun one. Get ready for a roller coaster ride. We are talking about milk was a bad choice. Which if you know what movie that's from. Are we allowed to say? I don't know. I don't know what the rules are.

It's from Anchorman, right? Yeah. So he's going through a very difficult time and just being completely making completely poor, self-destructive life decisions. Yeah, he's sitting there chugging milk in like the 90-degree heat. And the milk is a bad choice. So, yeah, it's funny line from a movie. If you ever seen the movie, it's worth it, I think.

It'll make you laugh. But anyway, we're talking about literally why milk is probably not the best choice for your health and well-being. You're going to get into an article here in a minute. Yes. And just completely tear apart, you know, some of the research and, Not just the research that the article was referencing, but the article itself and why it's ridiculous. But before we start tearing that apart, I just have to go from the 30,000 foot view because I've said this so many times. And it didn't really dawn on me until I got into chiropractic school.

And again, start looking at things a little bit more holistically. But the most logical advice that I ever got about milk and whether or not we should drink it is starting with the question. is there any other species that continues to drink milk from a different species after they are weaned from breastfeeding? No. And the answer is no, absolutely not. So that makes humans the only species that continues to drink milk from another species after we are weaned from breast milk at a very young age. so there are many you know reasons of why we really should not be drinking milk beyond the time when we're weaved um that being you know and we go into multiple reasons one being that it's extremely

pasteurized the pasteurization process eliminates all the healthy enzymes and bacteria um and really that it's a very very high uh heat index because it's trying to kill all virus and bacteria in the milk That's what ultra-pasteurization is. It's a very high-heat process. So it kills all that stuff. When you heat a protein, you denature it, meaning that you basically change its shape and it changes, therefore it changes the function.

So when you denature a protein, it changes the function of the protein. And that's what is happening when you go through pasteurization. So when you pasteurize milk, you are, yes, maybe keeping its shelf life longer, but you're really eliminating a lot of the healthy components that or in milk.

So that was one, that kind of hit me between the eyes whenever I was growing up. Because again, when we grow up, how many gallons of milk would we go through? There were four gallons of skin milk in the fridge at any given time. Yeah, skin milk, that free milk. Yeah, that was probably what we, weekly if not. Oh, yeah, four to five gallons. Yeah, easily we would go through between three of us, you know, from the time that, you know, I was probably in my teens and you were, you know,

know, you know, pre-adolescent, like, and, you know, there's a brother between us, the three of us, and as a family, we would go for a four to five gallons of week. That's what we drink at every meal. That's what, yeah. And again, and what we found out later is, you know, skim milk is essentially sugar water, right? Yes, I mean, that's been, I mean, that's been even more pasteurized. And, again, had all the fat taken out. Exactly.

And now you have a higher sugar content with no fat. So if you've lost probably the one good nutrient you could get from it. And so, yeah, you're essentially getting milk-flavored sugar water. Right. And as delicious as it is, you know, we come to find out that it's just really not very beneficial for you. And, you know, we were just looking at other alternatives. So I stopped drinking milk, you know, years ago. I mean, probably, I don't think I have drank milk regularly since, you know,

I was in college. Yeah, I was going to say, I can't think of the last time I had just, like, a glass of milk. You know. And so fast forward today, because, you know, a lot of parents then ask me, it's like, well, what do I feed my kid? Because, you know, don't they need milk to have a lot of calcium and strong bones? And, you know, again, I go back to, well, in the example of my own children, my children don't drink milk on a regular basis. Now, again, they all breastfed up until about three years old. But my kids do not drink milk beyond that within a kid.

occasional exception of like, hey, we're going to get, you know, half gallon to have with, you know, half with the dessert or something, because Aaron's cooking with it. But, um, but we really don't drink it. So it's like, well, Dr. Dan, what do I take for calcium? And, you know, I always use the example. Well, let's look at some other animals in the animal kingdom who have really strong, you know, muscular skeletal systems. You know, let's look at a horse, you know. And, uh, farmers would say, you know, you could, you know, hit the horse on the ass with a shovel and it would not break a hip, right? Or do that to a cow and it would not break a hip. I wouldn't recommend doing that.

Don't do it. But you could. You're not going to break their bones. They might break it worse. And they don't drink milk beyond, you know, breastfeeding from their mothers. So, you know, this idea that we need milk to grow strong bones and to get our calcium is just really a fallacy. Yeah.

Because we should be getting it from, you know, healthy greens. You know, that's where a large con. consumption of our calcium comes from or should be coming from. But this idea that you need to drink milk to get calcium is really a fallacy. And we're the only species that, again, continues to drink milk from a different species after we're winged. So with that being said, if you do consume a lot of milk and or dairy, especially pasteurized stuff from personal experience. And there's research showing that, you know, you can actually have, you can be more sensitive. You know, more allergens.

Yes. Um, you know, stuffiness, uh, mucus, uh, reddy nose. I remember when I think, was I in call, I was probably an undergrad when you were in chiropractic school, right? Maybe I was still in high school. I don't know. I would, um, but I remember, like, I was, I had chronic science infections growing up. And this is obviously when you started getting into, yeah, getting into your, you crazy's,

what are you doing? And I remember the one time you, you're like, well, stop drinking milk. And I was like, okay, whatever. You crazy, crazy brother. You crazy chiropractor is like, what the heck is drinking milk to do with the science infection? And it wasn't until years later, I actually had a massage therapist that was like, yeah, you know, she was massaging kind of my sinuses and stuff. She said, do you do a lot of dairy? I'm like, I mean, not a lot.

She's like, cut it out completely for a couple weeks and just see. And, I mean, it was unreal the difference. Life changed. And yeah, I mean, to this day, I don't do, again, I mean, I don't really, like, unless it's, something that somebody else prepared. I mean, I have no, I don't keep cheese or milk or any, I mean, I don't think I have anything dairy in the house. And it's not that I'm

lactose and tolerance, not that I can't eat it. It's just that I don't do it on a regular basis. And yeah, I feel better when I don't. I feel less inflamed. I feel less stuffy. I just, yeah, so I mean, I, yeah, I personally noticed a huge, huge difference with it. And, and yeah, I mean,

it is. It's just, it's incredibly inflammatory. It can really mess up your gut, which is funny, because people think, you know, know, you know, some dairy, you know, you think of that like probiotot. Oh, isn't it good for the, isn't it good for the gut? And that goes back to what we just discussed. And I had a very similar experience, by the way. You know, when I cut the dairy specifically the milk out, that's when I noticed a huge

improvement in my sinuses, my watery, itchy watery eyes, especially when the seasons changed, just completely melted away. And I just, I don't get irritated in my eyes, my nose, sinuses. anymore, it just doesn't happen. You know, so if we look at, you know, what is causing that inflammation, going back to that pasteurization, you're changing the chemical makeup. You're changing the protein content. So now you're having these proteins that are denatured, right?

They've changed their shape. So the body doesn't necessarily know how to, because it's not a natural protein anymore. It's changed by heat. So now the body's getting all of these artificially altered proteins. and it doesn't know what to do with them. So now they just kind of float around on your bloodstream and the body's on high alert. Your immune system starts to recognize these foreign proteins. And so you have an immune response.

Essentially, yeah, the same, like an allergy response. Correct. Correct. Like it's very similar to that histamine. Yes. The histamine response, that's absolutely correct. Which for those, the histamine response, that's when you're having allergies. That's why the allergy medications are anti-histamines.

It's trying to suppress that histamine response, which is your body, fighting off, whatever that allergen is, that irritant. Yes, histamines are released by a type of white blood cell, which is part of the immune system. What makes you feel itchy and uneasy and all those fun allergy side effects. Yes, but again, it's a natural normal immune response released from eocinophils, which are a type of immune cell, and they release histamines. And, you know, that's your body trying to recognize that there's a foreign invader, and it's trying to use those histamines to label and label,

target those proteins so that it knows they can recognize them and then come and eat them up and destroy them and recycle them. So that's your body's natural, normal immune response. Now, flip that back to the only time that I would say that milk could be a positive. And there is some, you know, documented success of people actually improving allergies or improving their immune system by drinking raw milk. Okay. Because if you, again, if you're drinking raw milk, No, straight from a cow or a goat. It has all of the immune, the good, healthy immune, you know, proteins and, you know, and antibodies, you know, because if you think about it, that milk was made for the young animal of the young cow or the, or the goat. And, you know, so when you look at offering that in a very basically, basically,

straight from breast to consumption, you are getting the benefit of those healthy antibodies and those healthy proteins. And again, you're getting it in the correct concentration of carbohydrate, you know, sugar, fat, and protein. And again, milk has all three of those in there in its natural state. So that would be the only time. But again, I, you know, we talk about the same thing with, you know, with fats, where you take something, you know, healthy natural fats, then then get processed and changes the natural, you know, what our body is able to recognize and break down. And then that's when we get into like the trans fats and those are so highly inflammatory. So essentially it's the same idea with the milk and with the dairy.

The more you change the natural structure of it, the less the body's going to recognize and know what to do with it. So instead of seeing it as, oh, hey, this is a nutrient. This is something that's good for me. It's seen as, whoa, for an invader, this is something I need to fight off. And so it's, I mean, you can have that response to anything. That's why we were seeing, you know, you see these like food intolerance tests and food allergy tests and things like that. Because, again, food in this country is becoming less and less food every day.

Yeah. So it's just, I mean, that's why we're going to continue to see this increase. And really, this whole podcast was prompted because so if you're saying they're like, wow, why are they really fired. Yeah. They're really fired up about this milk. You should have heard us before we started. Yeah.

If you've been on, you know, Facebook or any social media in the last month, you've probably seen, it's popped up probably at least three or four times that I've seen, a news article from May 2023. I think it was a CNN article. And the title was, quote, milk is a better drink for hydration than water. Study fines. Oh, Lord. So the study, milk is a better drink for hydration than water. Study finds.

And I'm like, without even reading the article, I'm immediately irritated. So we, you know, I read the news article quickly when I first came out. And then when we were talking about this podcast, I'm like, you know what? I want to see what is the study that found? And, you know, again, because research background, I'm like, immediately, I'm like, you got to go to the research. You got to, you got to critique the research. So I go in, I find, um, I click, they have linked to the study.

So I, uh, I click. It is, so again, this, this news article was just in May of 20, 23. Yep. The study they are referenced. saying is a randomized control study from the UK from 2016. It was published in 2016. So research was done in probably 2015 with the preliminary. I saw 2014. Okay, I was going to say. And like, so with the preliminary, they've probably been working on the funding for it since, you know, probably the early 2010s. So we're talking a decade and that ago. And again, from the UK. So right away, everything on

Not just same as the US. Yeah, everything over there, less processed. And then again, I'm like, so I look, so I pull up the name of the study. Again, the news article, milk is a better drink for hydration than water. Study finds. Sponsored by the very. That's right. The name of the research study that they are referencing, a randomized trial to assess the potential

of different beverages to affect hydration status. Development of a beverage hydration index. Has absolutely nothing to do. Anyone hear the word milk? Nope. Nope. And then conclusion, I was like, okay, well, you know, maybe. Conclusions, BHA, which is what they call the beverage hydration index,

may be a useful measure to identify the short-term hydration potential of different beverages when ingested in a U-hydrated state. I didn't hear any, I didn't hear the word milk. Nope. I'm not here. So just, again, that was just looking at the title of the article and the abstract. I'm quickly realizing, okay, this clearly was not a study about milk. They're nowhere exclaiming that, you know, proclaiming that milk should be your drink of choice.

Now, again, they do go into, you know, without going too much. We can actually, we can link the study if anybody wants to look into it themselves. Yeah, if you come from a research background, definitely goes right out. Yeah, because eventually, yeah, we were sitting here looking through this before we started recording. And really, you know, again, they were looking at, they were looking at a wide range. of types of drinks. It was in, again, it's a randomized trial. So we have, we've talked in other podcasts about, you know, the difference between research

and then being able to generalize that. And the thing with research, the more controlled the research, the more, I guess the more accurate your, the more you have control over, so the more you know what you're testing is affecting what you're looking at. Yeah, and the more you're trying to isolate the variable. Yes. But the less generalizable it is. Correct.

Because essentially, so for a randomized trial, you know, there's a lot of control. This was done in a control setting. There were a lot of factors that they were that they were looking at and controlling for, which is great. But we don't, so yes, in this study, milk that was full fat and skin milk and an oral rehydration solution. So essentially an electrolyte rich solution.

Yeah, which probably had sugar and electrolytes in it. Yes. Those were the three things that they found with this beverage hydration index, hydrated significantly when I say statistically significantly more than still water, which was the comparison. In the short term. In the short term. Nothing immediate in the first one hour, but in like two to four hours post. That's what they found.

In the short term, in this very controlled setting. But then let's also go into that because this is the other discussion that we talked about. And again, this is where you have to dial in. How is the body actually functioning versus where they measure? Exactly. Because they were measuring. essentially the volume of urine output, you know, after you drank these certain beverages. Oh, yes.

It was, yeah, a certain amount of beverage over a certain time. Over certain time. And then they were testing. Yeah. So that was controlled. And they were basically measuring the participants, you know, excretion of urine after, you know, a certain amount of time with each one of these different drinks. Now, they were then claiming that less urine output would have been a reflection.

of better hydration. The challenge with that, just right there off the top, is that water can be in two places in your body. It can be in your cells or outside yourselves. Okay? So it could be, first of it. Or it can be in your digestive tract, which actually in your digestive tract is actually outside of your body.

It has not gotten into your bloodstream yet. So you can have, if you do not have water that gets in, to your cells, it is useless to yourselves. Yes. Okay. So it is not measuring, you know, water, whether it's, you know, increased actual, you know, volume or hydration of the cells.

It could be in the interstitial fluid. It could have remained in the blood, you know, as water. It could have remained in the digestive tract and not actually even gotten into your system yet. Based on how quickly or rapidly, you know, the body uptake of that fluid. in the digestive tract happen. And the majority of your water intake happens in the small intestine. So it goes through the stomach into the small intestine. And a lot of how rapidly water gets into the bloodstream has much to do with how already hydrated you are.

And that's something that they can't actually control for. What they tried to do is say, hey, you know, we want you to drink this much fluid before you come in, which they did. They said an hour before you come in, we want you to drink this much fluid. And then they told everyone, well, we want you to void your bowels and your bladder before you then take the test to drink. Well, you, and we talk about this beforehand. You're like, I was like, that's a superpower I want is to be able to avoid my baths on demand. You know, most of us can say, okay, going to the bathroom and you could, you know, get straight a little bit of urine.

But like, you know, to say, oh, go in and void your bowels. Like, so you may have about half the participants void their bowels versus, you know, not with their bowels. And again, you know, that's not... Exactly. Are you tracking like how regular? Because again, if, you know, that's absolutely going to affect, you know, the hydration state they're coming in. If one of those participants, you know, if one of those participants had a, went on a binge and was drinking a lot of alcohol a couple days before, they could have been significantly dehydrated leading up to the study. And then all of a sudden, now you, now all of a sudden their bodies holding on to this stuff. I don't

know of medications. I didn't see if medications were taken into account. The amount of medication that you're on and what you're taking has a significant impact on that hydration status. And these are all things that I think they tried to account for some of that, but I didn't even get into the details. But these are the things that just Angela and I are trying to bring the light that you're taking a study that's trying to, you know. And this was again, this was this was a worthy study development. Yeah. In the title, development of a beverage hydrogen. And they're saying they were trying to. They were trying to. They were trying to. to create an index that could be used to then maybe delve in deeper.

Deeper, yeah. So then this article, again, funded by the cough, cough dairy industry, pulls. Wait, wait, just differentiate that. The article, which is the article about the study, two different things. The news article that referenced the study. Yeah, so again, they went, so somebody was obviously put on this project, hey, go find, go find a study that shows milk is better than water. or milk is, or that you should go drink milk.

Yeah. And again, found, you know, delve through this and it goes, oh, okay, well, technically in here it says milk hydrated more than water. Yeah, in the immediate two to four hours after drinking. So that, taking this, this very controlled study and exclaiming that milk is a better drink for hydration than water is just. It's just, that's like, do you have Brian's my gear. God, it really drives my ears. Oh, and the best part was, so then I don't, so then I'm, you know, obviously going down the Google rabbit hole.

I find a similar article. So also from CNN, from 2019, with a similar title about, you know, milk's hydration status. They referenced the same article, the same study, the same study from 2016. So again, we have now referenced this study twice, but published two separate news articles about it. Yeah. Four years apart. And still referencing research as a decade old. So clearly know there's nothing newer that's come up that we could be linking.

All they're doing that is just recycling that news article around so that it scrolls through your social media feed. Because they know by putting those words, study finds, people are going to go, oh, see, research. Smoke is good for me. I'm going to go drink milk after my workout. I need to go do that. So it's, yeah, it's just really, really comes back to that. We talk about all the time.

an informed consumer because it's, I mean, that, like I said, that's popped up on my news feed. I don't know how many times. And it would be so, I mean, again, it's good clickbait. It would be easy. The news article itself is very easy to read, but without actually going back to that research and understanding what it's really saying. And again, maybe in the short term, I learned that in my, you know, in my master's, that milk actually is used a lot for athlete, high endurance athletes.

Chocolate milk actually is one of the best post workout because it has the electrolytes, it has the sugar, it has everything that you need to replenish. Yes. But that's, again, a controlled environment. High performing athletes who are working out hours upon hours a day. And even the news article, so again, the news article, if you read through that, even said, the average person doesn't have any difficulty staying hydrated throughout the day. So we're talking about, so you're talking about, there's three levels here.

You could read the article, the title and go, oh, there we go. Milk's better than water. There we go. You could actually be one of the few who click on the article and read the article. And then if you read in there, you'd be like, okay, yeah, I see what they're saying. Milk, you know, milk could be good. But, you know, they're also saying the average person probably has no problem saying hydrated. And then you could be the crazy person like me, which I'm sure is even less,

that actually click on the study, go to the research, and read the research. So it's just so important to, especially in this day of social media, where you can literally go find anything. You could any, go type in anything. You'll find somewhere somebody. Yeah, you can prove. Yeah. So you really, really have to be careful because, again, in this country, I mean,

people are trying to make money. The food industry wants your money. the food that is available, they say it's like, don't quote me on this, I'd have to find the exact numbers, but it's something where like, over the last couple decades,

the increase in the number of products available is like 80% more. It's like some ridiculous astronomical increase. So it's not because we have a need for that many more products. We don't have, it's like our biology, did you change? And all of a sudden,

we need these protein bars and snack bars and, you know, all this different stuff. It's just, the products were created and the people want your money. And that's, you know, again,

we talked about breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That was Kellogg's that came up with it. That was people trying to sell you milk and cereal. That's where that came from. And people are like, oh, breakfast is the most important meal a day. Says who?

Says who? Says the people trying to sell you breakfast cereal and milk. That's, so it's just, yeah, really, really important to make sure that, yeah, you're just, you're being informed consumers because at the end of the day, these people want your money. They don't care if you're healthy. They really don't.

It's the sad truth. They want your money. And they do their incredible marketing teams that do a great job of getting it. You know? Yeah. Well, and so again, it just goes back to what we always talk about, become your single greatest health advocate. And, you know, you can do that by listening to. you know, this and these podcasts, this information, and having health professionals on your team

that you can trust and they have experience working with patients and individuals like yourself who can, you know, you can take that information as, you know, from studies, putting it into clinical practice and say, hey, what makes sense? What doesn't make sense in terms of how my body is actually functioning? And, you know, putting in a plan that actually makes sense for you and your health goals, not just clicking on title and going off of, well, I guess I just need to drink more milk because. I got to go talk about milk. All right.

Let's do it. Yeah, obviously there's been a decline in milk sales lately that prompted that article to come out. Oh, time to re-post it. Well, our eggs bad or good today? That high. High. The question is, are they affordable?

So with that being said, if any of this made sense or resonated with you, we welcome you to check out more of our podcasts. We welcome you to check out information on our website, Toro T-T-U-R-O-Family Chiropractic.com. And again, if you just, if you have questions for yourself or a family member, do not hesitate to reach out. We love answering questions and just being a part of your discussion and your, you know, health journey. So with that, thanks for joining us on why milk was a bad choice. I'm not. Dr. Dan here would. Angela, thanks guys.

We'll see you next time. See you next time. You've been listening to What the Health with Dr. Dan and Angela Toro, brought to you by Toro family chiropractic. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.w.w.com.