PAIN ON MY LFT SIDE WHERE PORT IS - HELP??

Okay, so here is some general information about dairy.  When a cow produces milk, it has all these great vitamins and minerals in it.  But all of those great things are very hard to digest.  So natural enzymes are also created that help the body digest all those great nutrients.  But then the farmer takes the milk to the corporate owned dairy and it is pasturized (a form of cooking).  The pasturization kills all the bacteria but it also kills all those enzymes that help the digestive process, making most dairy very hard to digest.  I have been bying raw milk for the last two years from a cow share program, and neither my wife or kids (or me) have any problems with digestion.  My wife ways always lactose intolerant before she started with the raw stuff.  Now she's fine.  When I eat cottage cheese from the store, it is much harder for me to digest (it is made from pasturized milk).  Unfortunately, the corporate dairies are very powerful in this country, and buying raw milk or dairy is hard to do, but possible.  Since we are going through a sensitive time with our new bands, anything that is difficult to digest, is twice as hard for you and I.  I don't have much difficulty with more solid cheese, and no problem with the raw milk.  I would try finding a source for raw milk in your area.  I think you'll see that it is much easier to digest.  There is a website www.realmilk.com that has a listing of sources.  As for soy milk, I have no experience.  I tend to avoid soy products so I don't know much about them.

I am going to have to respectfully disagree with the raw milk promotion. pasturization has saved countless thousands of lives.   http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01576.html while I grew up drinking raw milk ( grew up on a farm - we had our own cows and goats and drank milk still warm from the animals) that was more years ago than I care to admit to,  :-)  I would not ever do it now knowing the health risks. I will say though that my son who has had terrible gut aches  & gas from regular  milk  has no reactions at all to organic milk, so maybe the difference is in the diet of the cows and things that they eat that pass into the cows milk.  I am weird in that I tolerate dairy better since my rny than I did before it.  I also think that taking acidophilus and bifidins (? spelling) probiotics has done a world of good for my intestines and  some people feel they decrease lactose intolerance.  I think they are helpful with my IBS symptoms.

I would never argue that under less than sanitary conditions, disease can flurish in raw milk.  After all, bacteria is nothing but a very tiny animal and it stands to reason that those guys would benefit from milk too!   However, raw milk farmers are generally under much higher scrutiny than average dairy farmers, and there have been very few disease outbreaks in raw milk circles in the last seventy-five years.  In fact, every major outbreak of smainella and/or ecolli in the last 30 years has been in pasturized milk plants!   The profitability of commercial dairy's brought on by the doubling of shelf life from pasturization has led to some very powerful propaganda.  Most commercial dairy farmers struggle to survive since they are forced to sell their milk to commercial dairy's at very low prices.  Those dairy's then pasturize the milk and sell it at high prices to the public.  If raw milk were legal (without all the hoops we currently have to jump through), the farmer could sell direct to the public and keep all the profit.  Needless to say, the billion dollar middlemen have lobbied hard to keep the laws that made sense seventy-five years ago (before refidgeration was common!), in place.  There are millions of people who have discovered the benefits of raw milk in this country.  They along with whole parts of the society like the Amish, drink clean and fresh raw milk and are speaking up to try and change these dated laws.  The opposition is high due to the control that the current laws give the American dairy council over the individual farmers.  The FDA is made up of people sought from industry.  They tend to follow the information that is supplied from the industry.  That's why very dangerous foods that are processed and tyhen sold to the public, stay on the shelves for years before they are identified.  I respect your fears and choices, but I've been feeding my children raw milk (and drinking it myself) for almost two years now.  We have seen very major positive changes in our health, and absolutely no negative fall out.  I am in contact with thousands of people who are into the raw milk movement, and I have yet to hear of a single reported case of illness.  I contracted sominella many years ago when the Jewel Foods dairy had their outbreak, and was amazed at how little control of sanitation goes on in commercial dairies.  I've seen Amish farms (where my raw milk comes from) and was very impressed with how clean and safe things were kept.  Organic milk is made from cows that are neither fed growth hormones or given antibiotics.  This is half the battle, and a good thing.  However, the pasturization process still destroys all the good enzymes in the milk.