why are certain people lactose intolerant?
In: 0
Humans and many mammals are only designed to drink milk as babies. The body stops making the enzyme needed (lactase) in childhood and adults can’t eat milk.
Some cultures that grew cattle evolved to still make lactase as adults and still be able to drink milk as a survival technique. Everyone else, not so much.
The enzymes in your gut that process lactose die as you get older. In some people it lives longer than others. Most people eventually become lactose intolerant to some degree before they die.
If by certain people you mean the majority of the human population then the answer is because that’s how mammals work. Milk is food that mammals produce for their offspring before they’re ready for adult food. Once that happened then they would eat the adult food and their mother would stop producing milk. Without having an intake of milk they no longer needed to produce the enzymes needed to break down lactose.
The small % of the human population that isn’t lactose intolerant is the result of a genetic mutation that occurred quite recently in our evolutionary past.
Most people are lactose intolerant. However it is a genetic trait so it is heavily dependent on the race. Everyone is able to drink milk at birth because of an enzyme being produced in the digestion system called lactase. However as children grow up they would normally stop drinking milk and there is therefore no need to dedicate resources the body needs elsewhere to make lactase. And as lactase stops being produced people become lactose intolerant. However in some cultures in northern Europe it have become common to drink milk long into adulthood. This means that a genetic mutation that enables lactase to be produced the entire life have spread around in those areas. The added protein and fat from being able to drink milk have outweighed the lost resources spent on making lactase.
About 68% of global population has some form of lactose intolerance.
So it’s actually the people with lactose tolerance, who are strange
Latest Answers