Cow's milk is for baby cows as been proven by many. Goat milk is the closest to the human body other than breat milk of the mother and as most mothers do not market their breast milk goat milk is the next best thing. Dr. Budwig also suggested goat's milk some 55 years ago. Dr. Lam states that the two things that cause diabetes, strokes and cancer the most are cow's milk and sugar. Cow's milk causes diabetes, cancer, stroke, arthritis, asthma, allergies. Do I drink cow's milk. No way. Is goat milk contain more fat, yes it does but health wise it is worth the risk. MS is caused by drinking milk so for me I use only the yogurt. There are many alternatives to cow's milk, one being almond milk. No it does not have the same taste.

Point number 2, many are convinced that cow's milk is the only calcium source and this is false. You can get your calcium from vegetables. A healthy Diet with many fruits and vegetables and no red meats is the diet of choice and health.

Dr. Lam says:

Introduction


Milk provokes images synonymous of home and goodness. It conjures up the warm, fuzzy feeling of being cared for and protected. How often the universal mother of us all has reminded us to "drink all your milk" so we will grow strong and healthy. The white color of milk reminds us of purity and cleanliness. It's no wonder that most of us look on milk as the perfect food.

Contrary to popular belief, this picture is far from the truth. In reality, processed cow's milk is a chemical soup that is highly toxic and a negative fountain of youth for adults. To put it simply, cow's milk is not healthy for humans. It has been linked to a variety of diseases, including allergies, diarrhea, colic, and cramps in children. In adults, it is linked to heart disease, arthritis, autoimmune disease, allergies, and certain types of cancer such as leukemia and lymphoma. Most the world's population does not drink or use cow's milk. The reason is simple - cow's milk makes them sick.


Cow's Milk Is Designed For Cows

Milk is a maternal lactating secretion and a short-term nutrient for newborns. In the animal kingdom, a baby is weaned from milk when its body weight reaches approximately three times that at birth. All animals wean their off-spring at a fixed time peculiar to their species, except humans who continue to drink milk, if not their own mother's, then that of the mothers of other mammals.

The milk of mammals is species-specific. The milk of every species is unique and tailored to the requirements of that animal. Humans, as a species, evolved due to advanced neurological development and delicate neuromuscular control. Essential fatty acid forms an integral part of the human neurological system for memory and intelligence, while protein is the basic building block of massive skeletal growth needed in a calf for survival in the wild. Cow's milk is therefore designed for calves and not for human babies.

The primary type of protein in cow's milk is casein. There is four times more casein in cow's milk than human milk. It also has five to seven times the mineral content, but severely deficient in essential fatty acids when compared to human mother's milk. Human milk, on the other hand, has eight times more essential fatty acids, especially Linoleic acid.


Immune System

Cow's milk contains many proteins that are poorly digested and harmful to the immune system. When protein in our food is properly broken down by the digestive system into amino acids, it does no harm to the immune system. Some food proteins such as casein, however, are absorbed into the blood fully undigested, provoking an immune response. Repeated and persistent exposure to these proteins disrupts normal immune function, leading to a multitude of diseases.

One of the best screening tests and the first line of treatment for allergy and immune system dysfunction is removing dairy products from the diet. This has been shown to shrink enlarged tonsils and adenoids. Reports of marked reduction in colds, flu, sinusitis, and ear infections are commonly reported after discontinuation of milk.


Toxins

The 20th century diet of cows is rife with pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides, and traces of heavy metals, along with chemicals to enhance growth and productivity. Whatever a cow eats shows up in her udders, including grass, silage, straw, cereals, roots, tubers, legumes, oilseeds, oilcakes, and milk by-products, which contain a variety of chemical additives. This is a far cry from the grass fed free roaming cattle of the old days. Breeding methods now produce cows that generates three times more milk that the old-fashioned scrub cow.

Milk is an ideal storage medium for dissolved environmental chemicals. Most environmental contaminants are of the fat-soluble type and milk has about four percent fat. The water-soluble chemicals dissolve easily in the predominantly aqueous part of milk. Therefore, we find in milk all types of chemicals, fat-soluble and water-soluble, because milk offers both environments.

A lactating mammal excretes toxins through her milk. This includes pesticides, chemicals, hormones, and Antibiotics . Chemicals fed to cows are transferred to milk and eventually into our body upon consumption of milk from such lactating cows.

Drugs such as hormones or Antibiotics given to cows show up in the milk in short order. For example, Antibiotics like penicillin given to cows to treat mastitis is responsible for the failure of milk to have "starter" reaction in cheese making. About one percent of milk today is unsuitable for cheese making due to high levels of penicillin.

The exposure to small levels of antibiotics in milk is also dangerous since it causes modification of "good" bacteria in the intestine leading to vitamin and mineral deficiencies and often "superinfection" - the increased tendency to contract infections.

Long-term exposures to low-levels of antibiotics are extremely harmful to health since these exposures produce drug-resistant strains of bacteria. Such is the case with a class of drugs known as sulfonamides used to prevent infections in cows. Low level exposure to sulfonamides produces resistant strains of bacteria and makes this otherwise useful drug ineffective.

Other environmental hazards in milk use comes from the radioactivity - from the sun and x-rays and, occasionally, from fallouts of catastrophe such as Hiroshima, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl. The fallout is the settling of the fission products of a nuclear reaction, in the air, on the ground, or below the ground. Such radioactive material can be carried by wind for miles and the fallout may last for months or years, dispersing throughout the globe.


Pasteurization

Processed milk from cow is commercially pasteurized to assure safety. Pasteurization also destroys some of milk's valuable nutrition, including almost all vitamin D, half of all vitamin C, and half to three-quarters of vitamin B-complex.

The essential enzymes and growth factors destroyed during pasteurization are irreplaceable, unlike vitamins A & D. For example, phosphatase enzyme in milk is necessary for the absorption of calcium. Pasteurization destroys this enzyme, rendering pasteurized milk a poor source of calcium that can be utilized by the body. Other enzymes destroyed include lactase for assimilation of lactose and galactase for the assimilation of galactose. Milk devoid of such enzymes are much more difficult to digest and acts as a stressor on our body.

In essence, pasteurization of the milk drastically changes the structure of the milk proteins (denaturization) into something far less than healthy than "nature's most nearly perfect food" we have been lead to believe.

Despite the disadvantages, pasteurization is perhaps the only way to assure safety of milk on a bulk-production basis. Without pasteurization, daily bacterial counts, weekly anaerobic tests, monthly bacteria cultures are needed to monitor the milk. In addition, regular blood tests have to be conducted on cows themselves every 60 days, and T.B. skin tests made every six months. It is obvious that this practice is prohibitively expensive.


Milk Promotes Calcium Loss

A major concern of those advised to stop drinking milk is, "What will happen to my teeth and bones?" The answer is astoundingly simple, "They will improve."

The majority of the world's population takes in less than half the recommended daily calcium intake of 800 mg a day and yet they have strong bones and healthy teeth. The notion that continuous ingestion of high amount of calcium in order to maintain strong bones and prevent osteoporosis must be dispelled. Studies have repeated shown that strong bone is more a function of optimum amount of magnesium rather than calcium from a nutrient perspective.

While milk provides calcium, it is ironic that milk also promotes calcium loss in the body. There are two main reasons for this:

1. Excessive proteins intake from cow's milk increase the need for minerals to neutralize the acid formed from digesting animal protein. Such minerals include calcium and magnesium. 99 percent of the body's calcium and 60 percent of the body's magnesium is stored in the bone. To neutralize the acidic environment, calcium are mobilized from the bone to the blood, resulting in a loss of calcium from the bone. In fact, calcium excretion and bone loss increase in proportion to the amount of animal protein consumed.

Milk and diary products are therefore acid forming substances. Acidic byproducts that accumulate in the body is one primary cause of accelerated aging and cancer. It is best for our body to be bathed in a slightly alkaline environment. The higher the diet consist of milk, meat, and poultry, the more protein is ingested, and the more acidic the body becomes. Vegetarians, for example, need about half as much calcium as meat eaters as they lose much less calcium in their urine.

In addition to reclaim of calcium from bone, animal proteins, due to the high sulfur content, alter the kidney's re-absorption of calcium, so that more calcium is excreted. Those on high protein diets such as meat and diary products lose about 100 mg of calcium a day.

2. Cow's milk also contains phosphorous. When calcium and phosphorus reach the intestine together, they compete for absorption. The more phosphorus there is, the less calcium will enter the body. Some phosphate compounds form insoluble calcium salts in the intestine. In addition, excess phosphorus triggers the release of parathyroid hormone, which sucks calcium out of bone. When combined with calcium, phosphorus also competes with and prevents calcium absorption in the intestine.

Not all calcium in the food enters the body. Many components of food such as phosphates, vitamin D, fiber, proteins, and hormones alter absorption of calcium in our diet. For example, Cow's milk contains 1,200 milligram of calcium per quart; human milk contains only 300 milligrams. But the total calcium absorbed in breast-fed babies is higher than in babies fed cow's milk. The phosphates and palmitic acid in cow's milk reduce absorption of calcium.

The calcium/phosphorus ratio is important for optimal use of all bone-building minerals. The ideal ratio is 2.5 to 1. Too much phosphorus will upset the balance, which could lead to progressive bone loss. The ratio in cow's milk is only 1.3 to 1.

You can get an ample supply of calcium from green leafy vegetables. Supplementation with calcium is an easy and inexpensive way to assure that you get enough. About 500 mg of calcium a day is all that is needed for strong bones, provided that you take 500 mg to 1,000 mg of Magnesium. The ratio of magnesium to calcium should be one to one (1:1) or even two to one (2:1) for strong bones, according to many researchers in the forefront of anti-aging medicine.


Bovine Growth Hormone

The approval by the FDA to use recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST- better known as bovine growth hormone or BGH ) to increase milk production by 20-30 percent since 1994 is a cause for alarm. BGH is banned in Europe and Canada. Cows so treated have high levels of IGF-1 (the serrogate marker of growth hormone in the blood), from 2 to 10 times higher than normal cow's milk. While BGH milk contains no more IGF-1 than human breast milk, very few adults continue to drink human breast milk throughout life. Furthermore, pasteurization not only does not destroy IFG-1, but actually increases its concentration in BGH-milk.

BGH's other action on the cow includes decreasing the body fat and increase its lean body mass. This bodily composition is characteristic of a young and strong cow, and the intake of BGH is designed to mimic this state of health. Unfortunately, when BGH is given to adult and mature cows, the body fat is already contaminated with a wide range of toxins from grain-fed, hormone-enhanced, and antibiotic-laced diet since these toxins are normally stored it the fat. When the fat mass decreases, these toxins are transported into the cow's milk.

Once taken in orally by humans, IGF-1 from BGH enriched milk can enter the blood stream from the intestine and increase the risk of breast and prostate cancer. The widespread use of this genetically engineered product has been linked to the proliferation of breast, prostate, and colon cancer cells in humans. Selected studies have shown that men with an IGF-1 level between 300-500 mg/dl have more than four times the risk of developing prostate cancer compare to those with a level between 100 to 185 mg/dl. The risk is more pronounced in men over 60 years of age, where the risk of prostate cancer is eight times higher than control. The elevated IGF-1 levels were present several years before an actual diagnosis of prostate cancer.


Cancer

Studies have confirmed that milk fat is a recognized source of carcinogenesis. It is easy to understand how milk can become carcinogenic. First, the use of saturated fat in diet increases the incidence of cancer and milk fat is mainly saturated. Second, milk is an ideal carrier for chemical carcinogens. A French study (September 1986) conducted in over a thousand Breast Cancer patients also found that the use of butter is not a cause of Breast Cancer in women, and that yogurt actually reduces the incidence of cancer.

Take ovarian cancer as an example. Its incidence parallel dairy eating patterns around the world. The culprit seems to be galactose, the simple Sugar broken down from the milk Sugar lactose. Animals fed galactose develops ovarian cancer at a much higher rate than control groups. About 10% of the U.S. population lacks the enzymes to metabolize galactose. Unfortunately, the body does not sent us a signal us of such deficiency. This is unlike lactose intolerance, in which there are clear signs of digestive upset. You can be galactose deficient and not know it. It is much more simple to just avoid dairy altogether. This include yogurt, cheese, and other fermented dairy products.

The bovine leukemia virus is found in the majority of dairy cows in the United States. This virus is killed during the pasteurization process. Accidents do happen. An accidental "cross connection" between raw and pasteurized milk in a milk processing plant in the Chicago area in 1985 results in severe salmonella outbreak, killing 4 and causing over 100,000 ill. Virtually all animals expose this virus develop leukemia, including primates.

very interesting. Thank you, I'll check it out.

i just remembered he'd taken a good-quality B supplement from a naturopath for a few moths, and I didn't notice any significant change--but I honestly think he wasn't really able to absorb it.

thanks, Boatman. I will add all these things up, and sift them through the inner eye. :-)

take care,

Chiron