milk (Page 2)

We’ve all seen billboards with movie stars wearing milkmustaches, bearing the slogan “Got Milk?” The absorption ofcalcium requires the activity of specialized cells calledosteoblasts, which move calcium into your bones, andosteoclasts. If too much calcium gets into your bones, heosteoclasts move it back out again. Drinking lots of milkand eating foods with lots of calcium in them causes thecalcium-absorbing osteoblasts to have to constantly bereplaced, which eventually wears out your body’s replacementmechanism. Since only osteoblasts can add calcium to yourbones, not making new ones leads to brittle and weak bones.In other words, drinking too much milk can be BAD for yourbones.
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Leena Peltonen of UCLA has discovered the genetic basis for lactose intolerance. Her study supports the theory that retaining the ability to digest milk evolved only in some peoples during the past ten thousand years, as an adaptation to dairy farming.

For the majority of people in the world, including most southern European, Asian and African populations, lactose intolerance is normal. It sets in at weaning or shortly after, when the body stops producing lactase, the enzyme it needs to digest the milk sugar lactose. Without lactase, lactose passes through the stomach undigested and reaches the bacteria in the large intestine. There bacteria feed on it, producing by-products that can make people feel gassy and nauseous.
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