Disclaimer: I have not been tested for lactose intolerance; however, I do know that dairy messes with me and lactaid pills help so I’m assuming I have it.
I understand humans aren’t meant to drink milk forever, so I’m more curious about what happens after someone has dairy. For example, when I drink milk, the first thing I notice is that my stomach feels extremely full. Not quite gas bloating or carbonation from sodas, but just full. And there’s a pressure that makes it feel like my body is trying to compress it or push it back up. Then, later, I’ll get a lot of gas rumbling around in my stomach. Eventually it messes with bowel movements and is done.
Now, I don’t know if this is the same process for all lactose intolerant people, but what’s happening here? What creates that almost bloated feeling even though you’re not ingesting air/carbonation/etc? I’m assuming what comes after is all due to the gas I hear rumbling around, so what happens in the stomach that makes the gas and all of that happen?
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So, Lactose is a type of sugar found in milk. To properly digest lactose you need an enzyme called Lactase. All mammals produce this enzyme when they are born, and they gradually stop producing it as they grow and would naturally stop drinking their mothers milk.
Humans are very much the same way. But because humans generally consume a bunch of milk, many people don’t completely stop producing lactase, they will produce it at lower levels, but it is still there. This is why many people notice dairy makes them feel weirder as their older.
only some people truly never stop producing lactase at the levels they did when they were babies, these people never experience any of the issues with lactose.
When you have lactose in your system but either don’t have lactase at all or dont have enough of it, not all of that lactose sugar gets properly digested. Because of this it gets in-properly digested.
When lactose makes it through your stomach and part of your intestines without getting properly digested, it reaches bacteria in your gut that will eat it instead. but when these bacteria eat it they produce a lot of by products, including lots of CO2, which is why it makes people very gassy/bloated. Literal CO2 gas is filling up inside you.
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