why don’t they have a cure for lactose intolerance

2.09K viewsBiologyOther

If I had a small intestine transplant for someone who produced lactase, would it cure it?
I know lactose intolerance isn’t deadly I’m just curious if it’s possible.

In: Biology

32 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The question is backwards. Lactose intolerance in adults is not a disease to be cured, it is the natural default of humans. 2/3 of adult humans are lactose intolerant. If you transplant a lactase producing organ like the small intestine it will continue to produce lactase. I doubt any reputable surgeon would do such a transplant.

Anonymous 0 Comments

There’s a guy on YouTube that used gene edited viruses to get rid of his lactose intolerance. He was doing it as a self experiment because doing a real clinical trial costs millions of dollars.

Anonymous 0 Comments

There are a couple of “cures”.
Taking enzymes to help the process or drinking raw milk that hasn’t been boiled and had all the proteins denatured

Anonymous 0 Comments

I read somewhere that you can lose your lactose tolerance by getting SIBO, the cause of most IBS. Bacteria colonize the brush border, the first section of the small intestines that senses nutrients and signals and produces enzyme production. SIBO is technically curable….they say.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A transplant would make your life much harder and likely shorter.

Even if a transplant procedure for this existed you have to know that transplantation is a drastic measure for extending life and you sacrifice a lot of health to survive.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’d be pretty annoyed if medical researchers used resources on a fix to help humans drink another species milk rather than cures for things like cancer

Anonymous 0 Comments

Would a fecal matter transplant do the trick?

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because that wouldn’t be profitable; people would stop buying the lactose intolerant products/non lactose alternatives so there isn’t much of an incentive.

Caveat: I am in no way an expert on economics or corporate strategies.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Lactose intolerance isn’t actually a fault, it’s how our bodies come by default. We *should* be intolerant to lactose. We don’t naturally drink milk into adulthood.

Humans that drank cows milk over many generations eventually developed a tolerance to lactose, but even people that are lactose tolerant can develop intolerance by simply not drinking any milk for an extended period of time.

Anonymous 0 Comments

There’s two forms of lactose tolerance – genetic and environmental.

Young children are almost always lactose tolerant, in that their bodies produce lactase. Most people have a gene that stops us from producing lactase after a certain age. You can be genetically lactose tolerant if you don’t have the gene that disables lactase production. Human breast milk contains lactose, and producing lactase is not without cost, so you can see why we would have evolved to produce lactase but only in early childhood.

Environmental lactose tolerance is generally obtained from gut bacteria. Shifting your gut bacteria balance can be done with probiotics and drinking milk, feeding the bacteria that eat lactose. Gaining this tolerance can be an unpleasant process. Farmers often have environmental lactose tolerance.

Finally, you can take lactase tablets a while before consuming lactose.