What is Lactose Intolerance

Lactose intolerance is a disorder most adults in the world suffer from, or can suffer from, to some degree or other. Lactose is a sugar component which is inherent in all milk produced by animals and humans (i.e.: breast milk). Lactose intolerance is the medical term for a person's intolerance towards lactose, or rather a person's inability to process lactose without causing some distress.

For the majority of the world's population, we are most lactose tolerant during our early infancy. This enables babies to be weaned on breast milk which provides many very important nutrients for a baby during the early times. Statistics show most people tend to lose the majority of their tolerance to lactose between the ages of 2 to 5 years, after which, the effects of consuming lactose may begin to be felt.

Inside our small intestines we produce an enzyme called ‘lactase', and it is this enzyme which breaks down ‘lactose'. As mentioned in the above paragraph, we begin to lose most of our tolerance to lactose during early childhood and this is due to the level of lactase production decreasing within our small intestine. When lactase production is low, and a greater amount of lactose is consumed than the lactase enzyme can deal with, symptoms such as stomach cramps, gas, and diarrhoea can result.

The main reason why lactose intolerance levels are so high amongst humans in general is thought to be down to the fact that except during our weaning period, humans were never supposed to continue consuming milk, which is the biggest source of lactose. Due to many long-standing cultures where milk consumption is a big part of a staple diet, such as in many traditional northern European dairy farming cultures, a genetic change has been affected, where production of lactase has continued to remain high into adulthood, allowing adults to consume large amounts of lactose without having any adverse effects.