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Lactose intolerance linked to ancestral environment [Darwinian medicine]
Medical News Today ^ | 02 June 2005 | Staff

Posted on 06/01/2005 5:15:57 PM PDT by PatrickHenry

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To: Xenophobic Alien
Pure and Simple B.S. My family is from Poland, They came to America and settled in Wisconsin, owned dairy farms. If I drink a glass of milk I cramp and (other things I would rather not mention) for days.

Which part of this do you imagine contradicts the article? Being dairy farmers for a few generations isn't long enough to pick up and fix a mutation.

61 posted on 06/02/2005 1:47:21 AM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: etcetera; PatrickHenry
A similar Darwinian explanantion should apply to the effects of alcohol on Native Americans.

Not only that, but it also explains why the Native Americans were nearly wiped out by exposure to the European's "native germs", but not vice versa.

A chapter or two in "Guns, Germs, and Steel", by Jared Diamond, is devoted to that issue.

The reason is that most of mankind's epidemics have been acquired from our domesticated animals -- they are pathogens which, during thousands of years of close assocation between men and their domestic animals, had the opportunity to "jump species" and begin to specialize in infecting humans (much as the SIV virus recently jumped from chimps to humans, becoming the HIV virus causing AIDS).

People in the "old world" (Europe and Asia) had domestic animals for thousands of years, and many diseases (including smallpox which was originally cowpox, etc.) had adapted to infecting humans. Also during those thousands of years, the humans, through constant exposure to the diseases, had developed innate resistances to them (via evolution, you'll note, since the more susceptible humans died out early, while the less suscpetible ones survived and passed on their resistant genes to future generations).

So the Europeans arrived in the Americas carrying many diseases, and they were diseases which the Native Americans had absolutely no inborn resistance to. The results of that were predictable -- the diseases ran rampant through their populations, killing large percentages of them.

Conversely though, the Native Americans had far fewer domestic animals of any sort, and had had them for shorter periods of time. If they had any native diseases acquired from animals at all, and they may have had none, they must have been mild ones. Another factor which would have limited the acquisition and spread of any "New World" diseases is the fact that the Native Americans lived in smaller groups and were more widely spaced than the Europeans (many of whom had been living crowded together in huge cities and nation-states for many centuries). Any virulent diseases originating in the Americas had a good chance of dying out after killing only the tribe which first contracted it. The Americas were never the home of any far-spreading disease like the Black Plague of Europe -- the Americas never had the large, close-packed populations necessary to sustain the spread of such epidemics.

62 posted on 06/02/2005 2:06:06 AM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: PatrickHenry

Gee. God thought of everything didn't he?


63 posted on 06/02/2005 4:25:46 AM PDT by Twinkie (Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. Yes, that's all of us.)
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To: ET(end tyranny)

I think the protein molecules in goat's milk are smaller than in cow's milk and more compatible with the size of humans and their ability to absorb the molecules.


64 posted on 06/02/2005 4:28:14 AM PDT by Twinkie (Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. Yes, that's all of us.)
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To: PatrickHenry

I am of Comanche descent...and very lactose intolerant.


65 posted on 06/02/2005 4:59:47 AM PDT by I got the rope
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To: BearWash
I've been a lacto-ovo vegetarian since I was 14

I've been the same plus poultry meat and fish for about 10 years

I've been on the same plan, myself. Plus beef and pork, of course.

66 posted on 06/02/2005 5:23:21 AM PDT by WildHorseCrash
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To: Ichneumon
I recall reading somewhere about the role that alcohol played in the development of civilization. If I remember correctly, there wasn't much of it in the Western Hemisphere before Columbus. Elsewhere in the world there was wine, mead, Saki, beer, etc. But no native american alcohol. Thus their lack of any evolved tolerance. But I may be remembering this all wrong.
67 posted on 06/02/2005 6:49:16 AM PDT by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. The List-O-Links is at my homepage.)
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To: PatrickHenry
Perhaps this also explains why corn, chocolate, and tomatos used to give me migraines (got better). They're all new-world plants.

There was an article in the Los Angeles Times in 1992 describing the effects of new-world plants on old-world cuisine. (At that time, the French were better cooks than the English and had been for centuries.) Corn, chocolate, tomatos, potatos, vanilla, chili peppers, Jerusalem artichokes, avacados, cassava, sweet potatos, etc., are all used worldwide now.

68 posted on 06/02/2005 7:22:35 AM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: Doctor Stochastic
I once announced that I would be a hemisphere Chauvinist, and would henceforth limit my diet solely to New World foods: corn, squash, turkey, potatoes, etc. But my resolve didn't survive the day. I now consume such a limited menu only on Thanksgiving.
69 posted on 06/02/2005 7:35:33 AM PDT by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. The List-O-Links is at my homepage.)
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To: GloriaJane
I had no problem drinking all the fresh milk I could hold when I spent a year on my grandparents dairy farm.

I used to love staying with my cousins; they got "real" milk, straight from the dairy farm. I once was dating a gal whose parents had jersey cows. The milk from those cows is something like 50% cream. Yummy! You have to keep stirring it or it will separate out into two layers. That stuff was like a meal in a glass. It also made the best chocolate milk in the world.

70 posted on 06/02/2005 9:21:22 AM PDT by wyattearp (The best weapon to have in a gunfight is a shotgun - preferably from ambush.)
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To: cyborg

"Middle Easterners drank goat milk...it's not as mucus forming"

Goat milk and goat cheese is good stuff. And you are right about the 'mucus forming'. I like milk and drink it - a couple of glasses some days. I do not have a mucus problem. I know some folks do - my granddaughter did, but with the raw whole milk we have now she no longer has a problem. The raw, whole milk we drink is from a herd that is about as organic as it can get. No meds of any kind. Fed grass or hay, special sea salt (RealSalt), kelp, diatomasous earth, potassium chloride, coconut oil, hydrogen peroxide in their drinking water and maybe a few other things I have forgotten. It is all offered to them 'free choice'. Other than what is available 'free choice' to folks like us, the farmer's customer is a company that makes cheese.

I have a five gallon container that I use when I go get the milk, every 2 or 3 weeks. I wash the empty jug, rinse it well with water, than put about half a cup of concentrated (50%)hydrogen peroxide in it to keep it sterile. I dump the peroxide out just before filling it with the fresh milk. The milk keeps really well. I have some now that is 3 1/2 weeks old and it still tastes and smells fresh. Unlike pasteurized, homogenized milk, when it sours it is still great for cooking.

Yesterday we made yogurt out of this weeks fresh supply. I do not like store bought yogurt, but this is really good! This morning we made ice cream, part yogurt, part fresh milk, honey for sweetener, and our own free range chicken eggs. Mmmm! Good stuff! And by the way, we do not 'cook' the ice cream mix before we freeze it. That way we get all of the good, wholesome, healthy stuff out of the milk and eggs - everything 'raw'.


71 posted on 06/02/2005 7:26:25 PM PDT by GGpaX4DumpedTea
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To: GGpaX4DumpedTea

excellent post!


72 posted on 06/02/2005 7:28:30 PM PDT by cyborg (I am ageless through the power of the Lord God.)
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To: ET(end tyranny)

that would be an alergy to the Protein in Cows milk not lactose intolerant, Goats milk has a different protein.


73 posted on 06/03/2005 6:01:45 AM PDT by flevit
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