Your Childrens Health

Lactose intolerance is the term given to the body’s varying degrees of inefficiency in the digestion of lactose. Inside the small intestine an enzyme called ‘lactase’ is produced, and it is this enzyme which is needed to digest lactose. For reasons which shall be explained in a moment, when lactase is in short supply within the small intestine, and the levels of lactose input overwhelm the levels of lactase, there can be symptoms of lactose intolerance which result. Symptoms of lactose intolerance in infants and adults can be stomach complaints, stomach cramp and diarrhoea – perhaps even nausea.

Whilst lactose intolerance is one of the most widespread complaints suffered among adults, lactose intolerance in infants tends to be much rarer. A reason of genetic evolution exists for this. In most cases, when we are in our infancy, our body’s levels of lactase production are at their highest. This is because babies are weaned on breast milk (which also contains lactose, as does all milk) therefore a baby can tolerate a high amount of lactose.

When the breastfeeding period is over, levels of lactase production begin to drop significantly in most people. This occurs around the age of 2 to 5 years. Before humans begin to domesticate animals such as cows and drink their milk, for the vast time of human history milk has never been drunk beyond weaning as part of a staple diet as it is now.

This may sound like drinking milk is hammering a square peg into a round hole, especially for those most affected by the toil of lactose intolerance, but there are many solutions to this problem. By far the best solution is to replace any products which are regular dairy products with a lactose free variety. Remember, there are many different brands, and you may need to try out a good few before you find which the best are.

The most obvious ways of discovering if an infant is lactose intolerant is by checking stools, but also heeding any complaints or cries which may indicate distress being caused by lactose intolerance.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 13th, 2006 at 3:18 pm and is filed under Lactose Intolerance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.