Raw Milk??

This page is here to help you learn a little bit about the benefits of raw milk so read on to find out more on this wonderful product!

Raw Milk Is Good For You

by Thomas Cowan, M.D.
Published in LILIPOH #6 - The Childhood 1-7
www.lilipoh.com
As many of us might agree, there are very few subjects as emotionally charged as the choice of one's diet. Sexual relations, marriage and finances come to mind as similarly intense subjects and, like diet, each of us is sure we know all we need to know about each of these areas. The subject of milk, as I have discovered in the past four years when properly viewed, will challenge every notion you currently have about what is good food and what isn't.

The story of milk is complex and its history goes something like this: Back in the pre-processed food era (i.e., before about 1930 in the U.S.) milk was considered a highly prized food, especially for children. Not only was there an entire segment of our economy built up around milk, but as I remember, each house had its own direct milk chute for the delivery of fresh milk. It was unquestioned that milk was good for us and that a safe, plentiful milk supply was actually vital to our national health and well-being. It was also a time (now I'm referring to the early part of the century) when many of the illnesses which we currently suffer from were rare. As an example, family doctors would often go their whole careers without ever seeing a patient with significant coronary artery disease, breast or prostate cancer. This is something current doctors can hardly go one month before they encounter such a patient. Furthermore, as scientists such as Western Price, D.D.S., had discovered, there were pockets of extremely healthy, long-lived people scattered about the earth who used dairy products in various forms as the staple of their diets - further evidence that milk and its products were amongst the most healthful foods human beings have ever encountered.

If we fast forward to the 1980's we now find an entirely different picture. For one, there have been numerous books written in the past decade about the dangers of dairy products _ the most influential being a book called 'Don't Drink Your Milk' by Frank Oski, M.D. He is the current chairman of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University and perhaps the most influential pediatrician in this country. In his book, he pins just about each health problem in children to the consumption of milk, including everything from acute and chronic ear infections to constipation, asthma, eczema, etc. Secondly, just about all patients, on their initial visit, proudly announce that they have a good diet and that, specifically, they don't eat dairy (which they pronounce with such disdain). One might well ask here where is the truth in this picture?

Perhaps the experiments of Dr. Frances Pottenger in the 1940's can help to solve this mystery. In these experiments Dr. Pottenger fed similar groups of animals (usually cats) a diet of exclusively milk. Half ate cooked milk (i.e., pasteurized), the other ate uncooked (i.e., "raw" milk). The results were conclusive and astounding. Those that ate raw milk did well, lived long, happy, active lives free of any signs of degenerative disease. Those that ate pasteurized milk suffered from acute illnesses (vomiting, diarrhea) and succumbed to every degenerative disease now flourishing in our population. By the third generation, a vast majority of the cats were infertile and exhibited "anti-social" behavior. In short, medically speaking, they were like many modern Americans.

Since the 40's, the "qualities" of milk have been extensively studied to try to find an explanation for these dramatic changes. We have heard discussed that before heating, milk is a living food rich in colloidal minerals, rich in enzymes which are necessary for the absorption and utilization of the sugars and fats in the milk. We have also heard that milk has a cortisone-like factor which is heat sensitive (i.e. destroyed by heat) in the cream; that milk has an enzyme phosphatase which allows the body to absorb the calcium from the milk; that milk has lactase - an enzyme which allows for the digestion of lactose; and that milk has beneficial bacteria and lactic acids which allow these beneficial bacteria to implant in the intestines.

All of these qualities are lost in the heating of milk. It then becomes rotten, with precipitated minerals which can't be absorbed (hence osteoporosis), with sugars that can't be digested and with fats which are toxic. With this in mind, we can quickly see what has happened in the past sixty years.

Raw milk has been used in therapy, in folk medicine and even in the Mayo Clinic for centuries. It has been used in the pre-insulin days to treat diabetes (I've tried it_it works), eczema, intestinal worms, allergies, arthritis, and other afflictions, all for reasons which can be understood when we examine just what is in milk (e.g., the cortisone-like factor for allergies and eczema). Rarely is anyone truly allergic to grass-fed cows' milk (feeding high protein feeds to the cows changes the milk, making it more allergenic).

Yet apart from all these explanations is perhaps the real key: fresh raw milk is a living, unprocessed, whole food. Compare this to the supposedly "healthy" soy milk which has been washed in acids, alkali, ultrapasteurized, then allowed to sit in a box for some months.

The lessons of studying milk and Pottenger's cats are profound for the American health scene. One of them is also simple: processed, dead foods don't support life or a happy, well-functioning society. This can only happen if people return to eating pure, wholesome, unprocessed foods.

In my practice I always start there. I encourage, insist and even beg people to eat real foods, no matter what the problem. Often with just this intervention the results are gratifying. So, find a cow, find a farmer, make sure the cow (goat, llama, or whichever other milk source) is healthy and start your return to good health.

www.raw-milk-facts.com

What, exactly, is raw milk? Well, that's a tough to answer because there's an incredible amount of variation in the product.

Ideally, it's cow's milk taken straight from animals fed only fresh, organic, green grass, rapidly cooled to somewhere around 36-38 degrees F., and bottled. That's it. No processing, just filtration, and cooling. Most milk produced today undergoes some form of processing before it reaches the consumer.

Diet is a major factor in the quality of raw milk. Studies have shown that over-feeding starchy grains can affect the acidity of the cow's stomach environment and change fat and nutrient levels.

This is NOT to say there's anything wrong with raw milk from cows fed a large component of grain, it's just not as optimal a food as grass-fed and lacks many of milk's self-protective properties. Milk like this, potentially more easily contaminated, should be tested regularly, as should all raw milk, for that matter.

Many non-grass foods (such as soy and alfalfa) contain compounds that mimic the actions of the female hormone, estrogen. While these can cause cows to produce more milk than they normally would (and thus increase profit per animal), some studies have called into question possible impacts on animal health and nutrient content of the milk.

Cows are ruminants, with a complex digestive system designed to break down cellulose, a type of sugar, and other substances found in the cell walls of grasses and other green plants they're likely to encounter while grazing.

Prior to the advent of organized agriculture about 10,000 years ago, there simply weren't fields of grain growing wild, upon which animals could munch. As mentioned above, a heavy starch load of grain can alter the usual conditions in a cow's rumen (stomach) and affect the composition of its milk.

Milk from grass-fed cows has amazing properties, one of which is the presence of naturally produced antibiotics in solution. Another is the production of a beneficial fatty acid known as CLA, short for Conjugated Linoleic Acid.

Countless studies have shown that CLA has many potential health benefits. For comparison, grain-fed cows have as little as one fifth the CLA in their milk as grass-fed.

Some raw milk can make you very, very ill. Drinking milk destined for the pasteurizer before it's sterilized can be like playing Russian roulette, but with ALL the barrels loaded. Why? Mainly because cleanliness standards are far lower for milk which will eventually be heat treated.

In large operations, there simply isn't enough open pasture land to contain and grass-feed hundreds of animals, so they're often confined in manure-laden pens.

Supercows, bred for hyperactive pituitary glands or injected with stimulant hormones (such as Posilac) produce an elevated quantity (as high as 13 gallons) of milk daily, leading to inflamed teats. This condition, known as mastitis, pumps high numbers of white blood cells, or pus, into the milk.

Supercows don't live nearly as long as naturally bred animals- perhaps they're lucky in that respect...

Add the potential of toxic drug residues, antibiotics, larvicides, pesticides, fertilizers and heavy metals and you have quite a witches brew. Many of the outbreaks of food related illnesses blamed on raw milk can be traced to just such product somehow bypassing the pasteurization process.

You can see why humans have no business consuming raw milk produced by the large factory farm complexes that dominate the industry today. It's simply not safe for human consumption before it's processed.

www.raw-milk-facts.com

The Health Benefits of Raw Milk

There's little mention in the mainstream media these days, of traditional foods having healing properties. Sure, there's a ton of hype touting unfermented soy products, vegetable oils and supplements as modern saviors, but in reality, these items have risk-to-benefit ratios like many drugs do.

Few people are aware that clean, raw milk from grass-fed cows was actually used as a medicine in the early part of the last century. That's right. Milk straight from the udder, the "stem cell" of foods, was used as medicine to treat, and frequently cure some serious chronic diseases. From the time of Hippocrates to until just after World War II, this "white blood" nourished and healed uncounted millions.

Clean raw milk from pastured cows is a complete and properly balanced food. You could live on it exclusively if you had to. Indeed, published accounts exist of people who have done just that. What's in it that makes it so great? Let's look at the ingredients to see what makes it such a powerful food.

Proteins

Our bodies use amino acids as building blocks for protein. Depending on who you ask, we need 20-22 of them for this task. Eight of them are considered essential, in that we have to get them from our food. The remaining 12-14 we can make from the first eight in the chemical factories of our bodies.

Raw cow's milk has all 20 of the standard amino acids, saving our bodies the work of having to convert any into usable form. About 80% of the proteins in milk are caseins- reasonably heat stable but easy to digest. The remaining 20% or so fall into the class of whey proteins, many of which have important physiological effects (bioactivity). Also easy to digest, but very heat sensitive, these include key enzymes (specialized proteins) and enzyme inhibitors, immunoglobulins (antibodies), metal-binding proteins, vitamin binding proteins and several growth factors.

Current research is now focusing on fragments of protein (peptide segments) hidden in casein molecules that exhibit anti-microbial activity.

Lactoferrin, an iron-binding protein, has numerous beneficial properties including (as you might guess) improved absorption and assimilation of iron, anti-cancer properties and anti-microbial action against several species of bacteria responsible for dental cavities. Recent studies also reveal that it has powerful antiviral properties as well.

Two other players in raw milk's antibiotic protein/enzyme arsenal are lysozyme and lactoperoxidase. Lysozyme can actually break apart cell walls of certain undesirable bacteria, while lactoperoxidase teams up with other substances to help knock out unwanted microbes too.

The immunoglobulins, an extremely complex class of milk proteins also known as antibodies, provide resistance to many viruses, bacteria and bacterial toxins and may help reduce the severity of asthma symptoms. Studies have shown significant loss of these important disease fighters when milk is heated to normal processing temperatures.

Carbohydrates

Lactose, or milk sugar, is the primary carbohydrate in cow's milk. Made from one molecule each of the simple sugars glucose and galactose, it's known as a disaccharide. People with lactose intolerance for one reason or another (age, genetics, etc.), no longer make the enzyme lactase and so can't digest milk sugar. This leads to some unsavory symptoms, which, needless to say, the victims find rather unpleasant at best. Raw milk, with its lactose-digesting Lactobacilli bacteria intact, may allow people who traditionally have avoided milk to give it another try.

The end-result of lactose digestion is a substance called lactic acid (responsible for the sour taste in fermented dairy products). Besides having known inhibitory effects on harmful species of bacteria, lactic acid boosts the absorption of calcium, phosphorus and iron, and has been shown to make milk proteins more digestible by knocking them out of solution as fine curd particles.

Fats

Approximately two thirds of the fat in milk is saturated. Good or bad for you? Saturated fats play a number of key roles in our bodies: from construction of cell membranes and key hormones to providing energy storage and padding for delicate organs, to serving as a vehicle for important fat-soluble vitamins (see below).

All fats cause our stomach lining to secrete a hormone (CCK) which, aside from boosting production and secretion of digestive enzymes, let's us know we've eaten enough. With that trigger removed, non-fat dairy products and other fat-free foods can potentially help contribute to over-eating.

Consider that, for thousands of years before the introduction of the hydrogenation process (pumping hydrogen gas through oils to make them solids) and the use of canola oil (from genetically modified rapeseed), corn, cottonseed, safflower and soy oils, dietary fats were largely saturated and often animal based. Healthy cultures all over the world thrived on the use of butter, lard, tallows, poultry fats, fish oils, tropical oils such as coconut and palm, and cold pressed olive oil.

Now consider that prior to 1900, very few people died from heart disease. The introduction of hydrogenated cottonseed oil in 1911 (as Crisco) helped begin the move away from healthy animal fats, and toward the slow, downward trend in cardiovascular health from which millions continue to suffer today.

CLA, short for conjugated linoleic acid and abundant in milk from grass-fed cows, is a heavily studied, polyunsaturated Omega-6 fatty acid with promising health benefits. It certainly does wonders for rodents, judging by the hundreds of journal articles I've come across! There's serious money behind CLA, so it's a sure bet there's something to it.

Among CLA's many potential benefits: it raises metabolic rate, helps remove abdominal fat, boosts muscle growth, reduces resistance to insulin, strengthens the immune system and lowers food allergy reactions. As luck would have it, grass-fed raw milk has from 3-5 times the amount found in the milk from feed lot cows.

See my Fat Primer for a better understanding of saturated fats and fatty acids and their impact on our health.

Vitamins

Volumes have been written about the two groups of vitamins, water and fat soluble, and their contribution to health. Whole raw milk has them all, and they're completely available for your body to use. Whether regulating your metabolism or helping the biochemical reactions that free energy from the food you eat, they're all present and ready to go to work for you.

Just to repeat, nothing needs to be added to raw milk, especially that from grass-fed cows, to make it whole or better. No vitamins. No minerals. No enriching. It's a complete food. Heated milk must have destroyed components added back in- especially the important fat soluble vitamins A and D.

Minerals

Our bodies, each with a biochemistry as unique as our fingerprints, are incredibly complex, so discussions of minerals, or any nutrients for that matter, must deal with ranges rather than specific amounts. Raw milk contains a broad selection of completely available minerals ranging from the familiar calcium and phosphorus on down to trace elements, the function of some as yet still rather unclear.

A sampling of the health benefits of calcium, a 'macronutrient' abundant in raw milk includes: reduction in cancers, particularly of the colon; higher bone mineral density in people of every age, lower risk of osteoporosis and fractures in older adults; lowered risk of kidney stones; formation of strong teeth and reduction of dental cavities, to name a few.

An interesting feature of minerals as nutrients is the delicate balance they require with other minerals to function properly. For instance, calcium needs a proper ratio of two other macronutrients, phosphorus and magnesium, to be properly utilized by our bodies. Guess what? Nature codes for the entire array of minerals in raw milk to be in proper balance to one another thus optimizing their benefit to us.

Enzymes

The 60 plus (known) fully intact and functional enzymes in raw milk have an amazing array of tasks to perform, each one of them essential for one key task or another. Some of them are native to milk, and others come from beneficial bacteria growing in the milk. Just keeping track of them would require a post-doctoral degree!

To me, the most significant health benefit derived from food enzymes is the burden they take off our body. When we eat a food that contains enzymes devoted to its own digestion, it's that much less work for our pancreas. Given the choice, I'll bet that busy organ would rather occupy itself with making metabolic enzymes, letting food digest itself.

The amylase, bacterially-produced lactase, lipase and phosphatase in raw milk, break down starch, lactose (milk sugar), fat (triglycerides) and phosphate compounds respectively, making milk more digestible and freeing up key minerals. Other enzymes, like catalase, lysozyme and lactoperoxidase help to protect milk from unwanted bacterial infection, making it safer for us to drink.

Cholesterol

Milk contains about 3mg of cholesterol per gram - a decent amount. Our bodies make most of what we need, that amount fluctuating by what we get from our food. Eat more, make less. Either way, we need it. Why not let raw milk be one source?

Cholesterol is a protective/repair substance. A waxy plant steroid (often lumped in with the fats), our body uses it as a form of water-proofing, and as a building block for a number of key hormones.

It's natural, normal and essential to find it in our brain, liver, nerves, blood, bile, indeed, every cell membrane. The best analogy I've heard regarding cholesterol's supposed causative effects on the clogging of our arteries is that blaming it is like blaming crime on the police because they're always at the scene.

Seriously consider educating yourself fully on this critical food issue. It could, quite literally, save your life. See my Cholesterol Primer (also still under construction) to learn the truth.

Beneficial Bacteria

Through the process of fermentation, several strains of bacteria naturally present or added later (Lactobacillus, Leuconostoc and Pediococcus, to name a few) can transform milk into an even more digestible food.

With high levels of lactic acid, numerous enzymes and increased vitamin content, 'soured' or fermented dairy products like yogurt and kefir (made with bacteria and yeast, actually) provide a plethora of health benefits for the savvy people who eat them. Being acid lovers, these helpful little critters make it safely through the stomach's acid environment to reach the intestines where they really begin to work their magic (Above right, Lactobacillus casei).

Down there in the pitch black, some of them make enzymes that help break proteins apart- a real benefit for people with weakened digestion whether it be from age, pharmaceutical side-effects or illness.

Other strains get to work on fats by making lipases that chop triglycerides into useable chunks. Still others take on the milk sugar, lactose, and, using fancy sounding enzymes like beta-galactosidase, glycolase and lactic dehydrogenase (take notes, there'll be a quiz later!), make lactic acid out of it.

As I mentioned way up yonder in the Carbohydrate section, having lactic acid working for you in your nether regions can be a good thing. Remember? It boosts absorption of calcium, iron and phosphorus, breaks up casein into smaller chunks and helps eliminate bad bugs. (I told you there'd be a quiz!)

Raw milk is a living food with remarkable self-protective properties, but here's the kick: most foods tend to go south as they age, raw milk just keeps getting better.

Not to keep harping on this, but what the heck: through helpful bacterial fermentation, you can expect an increase in enzymes, vitamins, mineral availability and overall digestibility. Not bad for old age!

A Word About Diet In General

Use common sense and stick with whole, unprocessed foods, free from genetic tweaking (there's still just too much conflicting information out there on that topic), and you'll likely be ahead of the game.

Cook your foods minimally, and you'll be even better off. Learn about sprouting and fermentation. Question everything before letting it past your lips.

Explore what worked for countless generations before ours, and put it to work for yourself today. You can achieve great health by diet alone. I've done it, and so can you!

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Raw Milk??

www.raw-milk-facts.com

The Health Benefits of Raw Milk

Send mail to realfood@brunosorganics.com with questions or comments about this web site, or please call us (219) 881-0212. Copyright 2008 Brunos Organics Last modified: 03/01/08

Send mail to realfood@brunosorganics.com with questions or comments about this web site, or please call us (219) 881-0212.
Copyright 2008 Brunos Organics
Last modified: 03/01/08