Episode Overview

Is dairy inflammatory? Does it increase IGF-1? Does it raise breast cancer risk? And does the type of dairy actually matter?

In this fourth installment of the Nutrition Just the Facts series, Laura takes a deep and nuanced look at dairy and clears up the confusion that has followed this food category for decades.

After exploring red meat, carbohydrates, and plant-based versus animal-based eating, this episode tackles one of the most emotionally charged topics in wellness circles.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Whether dairy truly increases inflammation
• What the research actually says about mucus production
• The real story behind IGF-1 and breast cancer risk
• The difference between lactose intolerance and milk allergy
• A1 versus A2 milk explained
• The dramatic nutritional differences between conventional and grass fed dairy
• How marketing and policy have shaped public belief about milk

Laura walks through independent research, industry funded research, genetic considerations, and the biology behind growth signaling in a clear and balanced way.

This is not about fear. It is about informed decision making based on science and bioindividuality.

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Read the full transcript:

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Hey there, friends. Welcome to Episode 451

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of better than before breast cancer. I am your host, Laura Lummer, and today we are continuing our talk about the nutrition facts when it comes to supporting our health and clearing up all the confusion about what to eat. So we've already talked about red meat, we've talked about carbohydrates and we've talked about plant based versus animal based eating. And if you've been following along, you know that my whole goal of this series is to help you understand the science and not to tell you what to eat, but to help you sort through the noise so you can make informed decisions that work for your body, your health and your life. And you know why I can't tell you what to eat, because I don't know your body. So today, we're going to start talking about dairy, and this is a big one. I want to start off with a little story. So I had a wonderful friend of mine staying over this weekend, and she and I went to go grab some coffees and go for a walk on the beach, and she ordered a plant based milk in her coffee. And I just asked her if she had an aversion to dairy, if she didn't enjoy dairy, or why she chose that specific plant based milk. And she said, Well, I try to stay away from dairy because it's inflammatory. And I said, Oh, okay, but she's known me for a very long time, so she knew the look on my face, and she's like, isn't it? And I said, No, dairy is not inflammatory, and she's like, it isn't. And so we talked about why dairy isn't inflammatory and why we think it is. And then I am currently in this challenge. So Dr, Gabrielle Lyons, I don't know if you've heard of her, but she's like the muscle centric living lady, and since the treatment that I'm currently on to treat cancer can cause type two diabetes, I'm extra intentional about exercising, and I want to really focus on building muscle. So I joined this challenge. She came out with this new book. She had her first book was forever strong. Her second book is The Forever strong playbook. And if you bought it and she was launching it, you could also be in this six week challenge that she's like, live and answering questions, all that stuff. Okay, so she had a kickoff call for this challenge, and as people are asking questions about the food program, somebody says, Well, why dairy isn't dairy inflammatory? And you know, for a second I held my breath there, because I had already finished this podcast, writing out this podcast and planning it, and I held my breath because I have a lot of respect for her and her work. And she says, No, dairy is not inflammatory. And I was like, Okay, we're aligned. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about all the things about dairy, why it is such an emotionally charged topic in wellness circles, why we hear it creates inflammation, it creates mucus, it can increase your risk of cancer. And you know, honestly, when I received a stage four diagnosis, I was concerned about eating dairy, and I did stop eating it completely until I did some research on it, because I was afraid of anything and everything that might cause more inflammation. And I'm sure everybody listening to this who's had a breast cancer diagnosis or any kind of cancer diagnosis can identify with that. So here's what I've learned since then. Here's what I want to share with you today. The relationship between dairy and health is way more complex and way more individual than blanket statements people put out there about dairy causes mucus and inflammation. So I want to take a look at what the science actually says about dairy and inflammation, about dairy and mucus, about dairy and IGF, one which I'll talk more about in a minute, and about dairy and breast cancer risk. We're going to talk about the real differences between factory farmed, conventional dairy and grass fed, pasture raised dairy, because that matters, and I'm going to tell you why. Okay, we're going to get started, but I want to make something really clear before we start talking about dairy. Eggs are not dairy, and I have to say that, because so many times when we talk about dairy, people bring up eggs to me, and I'm sure that's just because it's in the dairy case at the grocery store, but eggs come from chicken, dairy comes from cows, and dairy can come from goats or sheep or something like that, right? The milk, but in general, and the dairy we're talking about is coming from cows, eggs come from chickens. That's a whole different story. All right, so let's get into the biggest claim about dairy. Dairy causes inflammation. I'm sure you've heard this everywhere. Health influencers, wellness blogs, even many practitioners, will tell you that if you want to reduce inflammation in your body, cut out dairy. But what the research actually shows for most people, dairy does not. Cause inflammation. And I say most people is you may hear this and think, Well, it does for me, and we're to talk about why. I'm not questioning that your body is special and individual, and you may very well experience inflammation. We'll talk about why. So what the science tells us, in many cases is that not only is dairy non inflammatory, but it can be neutral to even beneficial when it comes to inflammation. So before we talk about the studies, I want to talk about something else that's really important that we have to keep in mind, in a balanced way, funding and conflicts of interest in nutrition research, because one of the most frequently cited studies on dairy was sponsored by the dairy industry, specifically the interprofessional dairy organization in Spain. It's called inlac, I, N, L, A, C, and when you hear that, I'm sure alarm bells go off. I hope they do they did, for me, industry funded research. How can we trust that? So here's what I want you to know. The study that I am going to talk about was published in 2019 in advances in nutrition, which is a very top tier peer reviewed journal. It was conducted by researchers from the University of Oslo in Norway and the University of Granada in Spain, and other academic institutions were involved, not industry scientists, and in their disclosure statement, they wrote that the sponsor that dairy industry had no role in the design of the study included in their supplement in the collection, the analysis or the interpretation of the data, in the writing of the manuscript or in the decision to publish the results. Okay, so all of the authors involved in this study declared there was no conflict of interest. So what does that mean? It means that in Lac, the organization that paid for the publication costs, which is actually not an uncommon thing to happen in scientific publishing, that the industry pays for something, but in this case, what this means is they didn't get to cherry pick which studies were included. They didn't get to interpret the data, and they didn't get to edit the conclusions. Now, does that eliminate all concern? No, because industry funding is still industry funding, and it is fair, and I think intelligent to be skeptical, reasonably skeptical, not conspiracy theorists, but reasonably skeptical. And that's why I'm also going to share with you several other studies that were conducted completely independently, with no dairy industry involvement whatsoever, that came to similar conclusions. So we're going to have a little backup. So let's start with talking about that 2019 systemic review. It was titled milk and dairy product consumption and inflammatory biomarkers, an updated systemic review of randomized clinical trials. So this wasn't just one small study. This was a systemic review, which means that the researchers looked at all of the randomized clinical trials, so really high level, good trials that had been published between 2012 and 2018 so six years of research, they evaluated 16 different studies that included healthy individuals as well as people who were overweight, obese, had metabolic syndrome or had type two diabetes. And here's what they found, the consumption of milk or dairy products did not show a pro inflammatory effect in healthy subjects or in individuals with metabolic abnormalities. The majority of studies documented a significant anti inflammatory effect in both healthy and metabolically abnormal subjects. So let me say that again, the majority of studies, the 16 studies showed an anti inflammatory effect, not a neutral effect, not a harmful effect, but an anti inflammatory effect. But like I said, I don't want you to just take one industry sponsored study at face value,

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even though it was conducted by independent academic research. So we're going to talk about other completely independent studies and what researchers have found. But first, I want to mention a study that was published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition in 2021 now This study also was conducted by researchers at Dairy Management, Inc, which is a dairy industry organization. So again, it had industry involvement. These researchers looked specifically at the effects of dairy products and dairy proteins on inflammation. They looked at 27 randomized, controlled trials out of 19 trials that evaluated. Dairy products, 10 reported no effect on inflammation. Eight reported a reduction in at least one biomarker of inflammation. So all eight trials that investigated dairy protein intake reported no negative effect. So what was the conclusion? The available literature suggested that dairy products and dairy proteins have neutral to beneficial effects on biomarkers of inflammation. So biomarkers of inflammation things we can look at in your blood work that indicate that the body has some inflammatory response happening. All right, so that's two industry, dairy industry connections, one where the industry paid publication costs but didn't control the research and wasn't conducted by industry researchers. So what about completely independent research? Let me share a study that has zero dairy industry involvement. It was a 2017 systematic review that was published in critical reviews in food science and nutrition, and this one was conducted by researchers from the University of Oslo in Norway and several other Spanish universities. They reviewed 52 clinical trials. That is a tremendous amount of research. They looked at inflammatory markers in relation to dairy consumption, and they concluded that inflammatory score was significantly positive for the entire data set, including an anti inflammatory activity in humans. They found that dairy had anti inflammatory effects, except in people with diagnosed milk allergies, and we're going to talk about that. So for people allergic to milk, yes, dairy triggers inflammation. Of course, that makes sense. That's an immune response. But for everyone else, it was either anti inflammatory or neutral. Here's another 120. 20 systematic review and meta analysis. We're looking at multiple studies published in Clinical Nutrition looked at the effects of dairy consumption on inflammatory biomarkers in adults, and this was conducted by researchers at Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran, with no dairy industry funding, they analyzed multiple randomized, controlled trials, and they found that dairy consumption either had no effect or actually reduced certain inflammatory markers. So what's the bottom line on dairy and inflammation? Well, for the majority of people, dairy is not causing inflammation. Multiple independent studies, including those with no industry funding, have shown that dairy is either neutral or anti inflammatory, but the exception is if you have a diagnosed milk allergy. In that case, yes, dairy is going to trigger an immune response is going to cause inflammation, but that's not because dairy is inflammatory. Is because your body is allergic to the proteins in dairy. So let's talk about mucus, which I think a lot of us associate mucus production along with sickness and inflammation. So this is one of those things that people just believe it's something that's been taught actually, for a very long time. You may have heard it from friends. If you drink you don't drink milk when you have a cold, because it'll make congestion worse. I have three of my four children are either asthmatic or had childhood asthma, and I was always told don't give them dairy because it'll produce more mucus. Even when I studied Ayurveda, I was told and taught that milk creates mucus. But does the science show that that is true? No. In fact, it's been studied multiple times, and the evidence says the dairy does not increase mucus production. One of the most well known studies on this was published way back in 1990 in the American review of respiratory disease. Researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia recruited 60 adults and deliberately infected them with a common cold virus, rhinovirus, two some of the participants believed, again, love the mindset. Believed milk caused mucus, and some didn't. So then this the researchers tracked everything. They tracked how much milk people drank, how much mucus they actually produce, and they measured it, objectively measured it, and what symptoms these people reported. And guess what they found out there was no relationship between milk intake and actual mucus production, none. What they found was people who drank more milk did not produce more nasal secretions than people who drank less milk. But here's the interesting thing, here's the power of thought that I love. So much because it's life changing. The people who believed that milk causes mucus before the study reported more respiratory systems when they drank milk, but they were tested objectively and they didn't actually produce more mucus. What they experienced was perception, the creamy texture of milk coating the mouth and the throat felt like thicker saliva and mucus to them. Isn't that interesting? There was a follow up study that was published in 2005 in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. They gave people soy based beverages that had a similar creamy texture to milk, and guess what? The soy drinks produced the same mucusy feeling, even though they contained no dairy proteins. So the mucus

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myth is just that,

15:56
and it's been debunked by multiple well designed studies over the decades. But that still doesn't mean if you're listening, you're like, Well, I react to it. We're going to talk about that. So let's get into something else that I think is a very important and can be a misunderstood topic when it comes to dairy and breast cancer. This is IGF one, so inflammation and mucus are about how you feel day to day. But IGF one insulin growth factor is about long term cancer biology, so we really want to take a look and understand what the science says about this. IGF one insulin like growth factor one is a hormone that is naturally produced in your body, and it plays an important role in growth and development of the human body, but elevated levels of IGF one in the blood have been associated with increased risk of certain cancers, including breast cancer. This is a marker that I look at once a month. I'm very tuned to where my fasting insulin and my IGF one and a couple of other factors that can indicate some kind of growth, where those are in my labs. So this is what where Jerry comes into this milk consumption can appear to raise your blood levels of IGF one, and the concern is that this increase could potentially raise cancer risk. But I want to clarify something very important about the mechanism here, because this could be easily misunderstood, milk does contain small amounts of IGF one, most of that is broken down during digestion, so the increase in circulating IGF one is more likely Due to milk stimulating your body's own IGF one production through its amino acid signaling and insulin pathways, rather than just the IGF one from the milk directly entering your bloodstream. So that's an important distinction, and I want to tell you what the science actually says about it. So first of all, it is true that higher circulating levels of IGF one are associated with increased breast cancer risk. A large Mendelian randomization study published in the Annals of oncology in 2020 looked at data from 206,263 women in the UK Biobank and 122,977 122,977 individuals with breast cancer from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium. That's a lot of women. Now what's important about this type of study is that it looks at genetic variants that affect IGF one levels, and so this helps establish whether IGF one itself plays a causal role in breast cancer, rather than just being associated with breast cancer, interesting, right? So this study provided what researchers called the strongest evidence to date of a causal role of the IGF one pathway in breast cancer development. But here's what's really important, this study shows that genetically higher IGF one increases breast cancer risk. It did not prove that dairy caused breast cancer risk, and those are two very different claims. So the second thing is, it's also true that milk consumption is associated with higher circulating levels of IGF one. So a 2019 study published in the European Journal of Nutrition looked at 526 men and women from the ages of 18 to 80 in Bavaria, Germany. So they use detailed 24 hour dietary recall, and then they measured blood levels of IGF ones. Remember, dietary recall is asking these people to remember what they ate. They found that each 400 gram increment, as reported by the study participants of dairy intake. So that's a little more than one and a half. Cups of milk. Let's be real specific, because there's lots of things that can are considered dairy. This is milk was associated with higher IGF one concentrations. So each 200 gram increment in milk specifically was also associated with higher IGF one, but it was about six milligrams per liter, smaller than the 400 gram increment, okay, so a little less, but still higher IGF. But the important part here is they found, again, no association between cheese or yogurt intake and IGF one concentrations. It was only with milk. So where does that leave us well, here's what we know, higher blood levels of IGF one from many causes are associated with increased breast cancer risk. The IGF one pathway itself appears to play a causal role in breast cancer. So remember, causal is it has a direct effect. It's not just associated. It's not just correlated. We also know that drinking milk raises blood levels of IGF, one likely because it stimulates your own body's production because of amino acid, right? The things we put together in a protein, the components that make up a protein and because of insulin signaling, but cheese and yogurt didn't appear to have the same effect. So what we don't know is whether the IGF one increase from moderate milk consumption is clinically significant for cancer risk, how this interacts with other dietary and lifestyle factors. There's no real evidence saying one way or the other. So here's something else that's really important and honestly frustrating, as I was digging into these studies, when I went through all of these inflammation studies, the systemic reviews, the randomized trials, all of them, I kept looking for one specific piece of information. I wanted to know, what kind of dairy did they use? Were they looking at conventional dairy from grain fed cows. Was it organic? Was it grass fed? And you know what? I found nothing. They didn't specify nowhere. And I mean nowhere did I found where they specified whether this was conventional factory farm, dairy, grass fed, pasture raised, none of it. And this matters, and matters enormously, because, as we're going to talk about in just a minute, the nutritional composition of dairy from grass fed cows versus grain fed cows is dramatically different. And we're talking about completely different Omega three, the anti inflammatory fatty acids, to omega six, the inflammatory acid. So we're talking about the ratio between omega three to omega six, and this is important when it comes to inflammation. So different amounts of anti inflammatory compounds, different vitamin content, different antioxidant profiles, all of that plays a role between these two types of milk. So when a study says dairy consumption showed neutral to anti inflammatory effects, I have to ask what kind of dairy, because it's entirely possible, and I would argue likely, that the quality of dairy matters just as much, if not more, than whether you're consuming dairy at all. And this is a big limitation, I think, in the research that I looked at, and it's something that's really drives me crazy, because we're making blanket recommendations about a whole food category without taking into consideration the massive variation in quality in that category. So when I talk about these inflammation studies showing that dairy is neutral to anti inflammatory, keep in mind, we don't know if that would hold true if we looked specifically at Dairy versus grass fed and so I'm thinking, and this is just my opinion, based on what we know about nutrient profiles, that grass fed dairy would show even more anti inflammatory effects, while heavily processed, conventional dairy might show different results, but we don't have that data, so that's just a guess, and I'm talking about facts, so you can just pretend you didn't hear that. What is it they say in in court trials like the jury, forget that you heard that. Okay, so, but with that in mind, let's dive into what we do know about the differences between grass fed and conventional dairy. And this is really interesting, because a lot of people when we talk about organic or grass fed or pasture raised, and we talk about budgets, which is always a concern,

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it's important. And I address with my clients all the time, let's look at quality so you can decide where you want to shift your money so you can purchase the products that are maybe cleaner and bigger influence on your health versus whether you're buying grass raised past your fed organic or non organic. Okay, so we don't have definitive proofs, again, that modern dairy consumption increases breast cancer risk, and we have. To balance that against the fact that dairy products, especially fermented ones like yogurt, can give us nutrients that are beneficial for bone health, gut health and overall nutrition. So if you have a strong family history of breast cancer, if you have genetic mutations like brocco one, brocco two, or a few snips that we're going to talk about in a minute, if you have specific genetic variants that up regulate, that increase the production of IGF one and that can be tested, you might want to be more cautious with milk specifically. Well, potentially, you can still include things like yogurt and kefir, but if you don't have these risk factors, and you do find that your body tolerates dairy well, and your labs look good, you're not showing inflammation, then moderate consumption of dairy, especially grass fed, organic fermented dairy, is probably not something you need to worry about or lose any sleep over. So let's look at why some people genuinely cannot tolerate dairy, and it has nothing to do with inflammation or mucus. It comes down to genetics and immune function. So I think we're pretty much all familiar with the term lactose intolerance. It's very common. About two thirds of the world's adult population has lactose intolerance, and it's almost entirely genetic. So the simple version, lactose is the natural sugar found in milk. To digest it, your body needs to produce an enzyme called lactase. Lactase. Think of it like a pair of scissors. It cuts lactose into smaller pieces so your body can absorb it. When you're a baby, your body makes tons of lactase because milk is your main food. But when most of us grow older, when we're done breastfeeding, our body makes less and less lactase. So by the time you're an adult, many people don't make much lactase at all, and that's when you start getting bloating gas or stomach cramps after drinking milk or consuming dairy. But some people, especially those with Northern European ancestry, have a genetic variation that keeps their body producing lactase into adulthood. It's like their lactase off switch never fully turns off. So this happened because 1000s of years ago when certain populations started farming and keeping dairy animals being able to digest milk as an adult became a survival advantage. So over many generations, the people who could digest milk had better nutrition and more children. So that genetic trait became more common in those populations. So the distribution looks like this. Northern Europeans, about 5% are lactose intolerant, whereas East Asians, Native Americans and many African populations, 70 to 90% are lactose intolerant. So I think it's interesting how we talk about emotional things. And we say, you know, it didn't start with you, and how emotions and trauma and stress can be carried now through generations. Genetically, we know this, but the same thing with way we can eat. So depending our genetics developed, they didn't just start with us. So wherever our ancestors came from, for generations, different food was eaten, and different bodies can tolerate it better for that reason. But anyway, here's what matters. If you're lactose intolerant, it isn't because dairy is bad for everyone. It's because your ancestors did not historically consume dairy, so your body never developed a genetic adaptation to keep producing lactase into adulthood, and that's okay, because you have options. Now. You have lactose free milk, you can avoid having dairy hard cheeses, most of the lactose is removed during the cheese making process. Yogurt and kefir, the bacteria have already digested a lot of the lactose, and plant based alternatives are abundant, you know, in our societies today, or just, you know, skip dairy entirely. But in addition to lactose intolerance, there's also a milk protein allergy. So this is completely different, and it's much less common. It affects two to 3% of young children and less than 1% of adults. Milk allergy is an immune response to the protein in milk, primarily Cassian or whey. So when you consume these proteins, which lactose is different, right? It's the sugar in milk, and these are proteins your immune system can mistakenly identify them as threats, and so it mounts an immune response, and it releases histamine and other chemicals. So the symptoms of a milk allergy can range from hives to digestive upset to really severe anaphylactic shock in rare cases, thank God. And here's where it gets really interesting, because there's two different types of beta Cassian that one of the proteins. In milk, and the two types are called a one and a two. So most commercial dairy products contain both a one and a two. But some people find that they react to a one milk, but they find that they can tolerate a two milk just fine. Very interesting. So there was a 2009 hypothesis published in medical hypotheses that suggested that a certain peptide from a one milk might stimulate mucus production from respiratory tract glands in people with existing inflammation. But again, this is just a hypothesis. It hasn't been definitely proven, and definitely not in large scale human studies. But again, like I always say, you know you, if you hear that, you're like, that's me, then that's you. So what we do know is that some people genuinely do feel better on a to milk, and whether that's due to the enzyme or the peptides in that milk or some other component, or just a placebo effect. The reality is, if it works for you and you can tolerate it, good for you, right? So let's talk really briefly. I don't want to go into too much science heaviness here, but genetic variants that can affect dairy tolerance. So we've got a milk allergy, we've got lactose intolerance, and even though that's the most common, it's not the only thing. So several genetic variants called snips or single nucleotide polymorphism so like little spelling error in the in the text of DNA, can affect how your body responds to dairy. So depending on which version of these snips you have, you might have a stronger or weaker inflammatory response to certain foods. So maybe you're thinking like, I have no idea. I've never had my genetics tested. It's easy to do. It's a cheek swab. You can do it with nutrition genome. I think, yeah, nutrition genome is the name of the company. 3x four is a company I use all the time with my clients, both offer great information, but you don't necessarily need to know what your genetics are. If you're having a response, you're like, I have a response. So probably you have one of these things, but maybe this is some interesting information that might give you an insight into your own body. So there's a snip that's called TNF alpha. It is called, it is a inflammation amplifier, and there's a specific variant. So there are variants they have, like an RS number. They have different homozygous so the different variants you can get from one parent or both parents. I'm not going to go into all of that, right, but there is a variant of this TNF alpha that can code for major inflammatory signaling molecules in your body. So if you have a certain genotype of this snip, you may tend to have higher baseline inflammation in your body, and that will make you more sensitive to inflammatory triggers from food, including dairy. If you have this variant, you may notice that dairy makes you feel inflamed. You may get joint pain, skin issues, brain fog, and that doesn't mean you're making it up just because science says, Hey, dairy doesn't cause inflammation. Your body is genuinely responding differently to dairy than someone else with a different variant of this snip. So Quality Matters, especially in this case, grass fed dairy with its anti inflammatory Omega three and conjugated libnolic acid. The CLA might work better than conventional dairy for you, but you know, when it comes to this kind of thing, if you've had an uncomfortable experience with dairy, and you're listening to me now, you're like, Oh, I might have, you know, one of these genetic

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snips. Do we really

33:45
want to try a two compared to an A one, right? I see what my daughter goes through if she gets dairy in something that she didn't know dairy was in. I wouldn't risk that, because it can be horrible. So some people are brave enough to test and test the waters, because they like milk enough to see which kind they can drink. But, you know, just be mindful. This can be a genetic thing. There's another one, that's called Il six. This is an inflammatory messenger. This snip affects what's called interleukin six, which can create inflammation in the body. Certain variants can make you a very high responder to things that trigger inflammation. There's a type that has a low inflammatory response, one that has an intermediate and one that has a very high one, you know, if it's in your body, if you have this variant, you might find dairy, especially conventional grain fed dairy, triggers inflammation in your body. Again, grass fed dairy, with its better Omega three to omega six ratio and higher anti inflammatory compounds might work better for you, but do you want to risk it? I wouldn't. There's another one that's called fats. One and FA DS two. These are Omega three processors. These genes control how efficiently your body converts plant based Omega three, which is called ALA, into an active form that your body can use, called EPA or DHA. You probably heard those before. So there's one type of variant of this snip that gives you better conversion of omega threes, and there's another type that gives you poorer conversions, and then there's another type that's right in between. So if you're thinking, What does omega threes have to do with dairy, remember, there's a huge difference in Omega three content between conventional and grass fed dairy. So if you have the genotype that makes you a poor converter conventional dairy with its awful Omega six Omega three ratio, which is basically almost six. So it's a 5.7 to one, meaning 5.7 Omega six, inflammatory fatty acids to every one omega three. Okay, so you can see why that's going to be particularly inflammatory for you. But if you look at grass fed dairy with 147% more omega threes, grass fed dairy has nearly a perfect one to one omega six to Omega three ratio that might actually help reduce inflammation in your body, right? And maybe it's not acting as the anti inflammatory, but it's reducing inflammation because it's reducing consumption of omega six. All right? So there's something else that you can think about. If you switch to grass fed dairy, you might be getting much more beneficial, omega threes in a form that your body can use, especially if you have this snip Okay, so last one I'm going to talk about, I could talk about snips forever. I love genetics. It's absolutely fascinating, but I know not everybody does. So F, U, t2, Fu, two. It's a gut microbiome modifier, and it's really interesting. This gene affects something called your secretor status, and that influences the composition of bacteria in your gut and how you absorb certain nutrients. How cool is that? If you're what's called a non secretor, meaning you have a certain genotype in this snib, you tend to have different gut bacteria than people who are secretors. Secretors have what's called the Ag or GG genotype, and this can affect how well you digest and tolerate dairy. Interesting, because the bacteria in our gut is going to have all of the make all the difference on what we're actually able to digest and absorb non secretors often have lower levels of a very common bacteria called bifidobacteria, very beneficial bacteria that helps us digest dairy and produces anti inflammatory compounds. And so these people may also be prone to gut dysbiosis, which you know in all kinds of issues in their gut, and that can make dairy much harder to tolerate. So if you're a non secretor and you struggle with dairy, it might not be the dairy itself again, but it might be your gut microbiome that isn't optimized to handle it. So in this case, working with your gut health with probiotics and prebiotics. Fermented foods, if you can tolerate fermented foods, might even help you tolerate dairy better. So choosing fermented dairy, yogurt kefir that can already that already contains beneficial bacteria that may work for you better. What do you do with this information? You're like, oh, I don't even know. Well, you can get tested, you know, you can go to somebody who does work with nutrition genomics. There are companies out there, like I said, nutrition genome and 3x four, just two of them that I use, and you can find out that for yourself. Or you can just listen to your body, and you could just say, hmm, I tend to feel bad if I consume dairy. You know now it maybe isn't just because of the dairy. It may be because of your genes. It doesn't matter why? I don't think so. If it doesn't work for your body, don't put it in your body. Okay? If you want to know why, if you're super curious where you stand with all these genes and go for it and get tested and find out, but if you know it doesn't work, I think that's the answer to your question. So you may be wondering, from everything I've already said, is like, what? What is the deal with conventionally farmed animals? Why is the nutrient content in milk so different while most US dairy cows are raised in what are called confinement operations. Their diet is typically a total mixed ration that includes corn silage soy mill hay and grain concentrates, food waste byproducts may even be included in. Some of their food gross. These cows may even be given antibiotics to prevent disease, because the conditions they're raised in are so crowded and historically, some operations you may have heard of BST or rBST, some organizations used to use that to increase the milk production in cows, but I want to note that our BST has use has declined dramatically in the United States, and most major brands now forbid its use. But grass fed dairy cows, on the other hand, eat a diet that is nearly 100% forage based fresh grass they graze during grazing season. Maybe they eat dried or fermented forages like alfalfa or Clover during the winter, but they get no grains and they get no byproducts, things that cows were never naturally meant to consume. This makes a massive difference in the nutrient profile of the milk. So one of the largest studies on this was published in 2018 in the Journal of Food Science and Nutrition. It was researchers from Washington State University, Virginia Tech and the organic center analyzed 11 163 milk samples collected over three years from across the United States, Midwest, Northeast and California. They compared three types of milk, conventional, grain fed cows, organic. So they had some pasture access, but still had supplementation with grain. Grain was about 20% of their diet, or completely grass fed grass finish 100% forage out there, eating grass year round. Here's what they found, Omega six to Omega three ratio, if it was conventional milk, rain fed, it was, as I said a few minutes ago, 5.7 Omega six to every one, Omega three. Organic milk, 2.2 omega six to every one, Omega three, much better, much closer. Grass milk point nine, five, Omega six to one, Omega three, nearly a perfect one to one ratio, and in fact, more omega three than omega six. So total omega three fatty acids in grass fed milk were 147% higher than conventional and 52% more than organic. That's pretty impressive. And another thing that they found in milk conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA for every 100 grams of milk, grass fed milk. Grass fed cows had 125%

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more than conventional cows and 90% more than organic. Remember, organic is part grass, part grain, so most Americans consume a ratio of 10 to one, or even 15 to one, Omega six to Omega three, which is so inflammatory, the ideal ratio is one to one or two to one. We try to target a two to one. Grass fed milk gets you much closer to that ideal ratio. So if you're going to drink milk, I highly suggest you look for grass fed and CLA conjugated linoleic acid has been shown in studies to have anti cancer properties to help with weight management and to support metabolic health. Here's a super interesting thing. Researchers modeled what would happen if a typical 30 year old woman switched from conventional dairy to grass milk and about three servings a day. That seems like a lot of milk to me, but you know what a lot of people drink, lattes and cappuccinos and all of these things that have a lot of milk in them, right? So even if you're not grabbing a carton of milk, you may be consuming milk. They found in this model that this simple switch could reduce an average 30 year old woman's Omega six to Omega three ratio from 11.3 to 8.6 a three and a half point decline that achieves about a 39% reduction needed to reach a heart healthy target. That's pretty impressive, and it's not just the fatty acids. It's research from the University of Minnesota found that grass fed milk has four times more beta carotene than conventional milk, 50% more vitamin E, higher levels of antioxidants and beneficial bioactive compounds. So when we talk about whether dairy is good or bad, we absolutely must talk about which kind of dairy we're discussing, because the difference between conventional grain fed dairy and grass fed and Pastor Ray's is enormous. If I haven't already driven that point home, it's like they're not even the same food nutritionally speaking. So check your labels, 100% grass fed, or grass fed and grass finished. If you can find that organic is better than conventional, but grass fed is the best. Now we're going. Wrap up here in a minute, but before I get to the bottom line, I want to talk about something else, because so far, we've looked at the science of dairy and what happens in our bodies when we consume it. But here's the thing, just like we've talked about in previous episodes, science isn't the only force that shapes what we believe about dairy and shapes what we actually consume. Policy and marketing play a huge role. So let's start with talking about official recommendations. What do the US Dietary Guidelines for Americans actually say about dairy? Those guidelines are updated every five years by the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services. They're based on, supposedly the most current nutrition science, and they influence everything from school lunch programs to WIC benefits to what your doctor might even tell you about nutrition. So the newest version, I'm sure you've heard, because it was quite a ruckus, the 2025 to 2030, dietary guidelines was released in January 2026 and dairy continues to have its own food group with specific recommendations. And the recommendation is three servings of dairy per day for adults and children, ages nine and older. For younger kids, it's two and a half servings for ages three to eight, and two servings for two year olds. So think about this, if we're giving all this dairy and we're not paying attention to the kind of dairy in two year olds, we could be giving a huge amount of inflammatory fatty acids to young children. So we need to be mindful of what we're feeding our kids and what may be fueling inflammation in a body from a very young age. So something else interesting in these new dietary guidelines is that now it includes whole fat and full fat dairy, whereas before it was always low fat and fat free. So the new guidelines say that Americans can choose dairy at all fat levels, whole milk, full fat, yogurt cheese, as all of it is a part of a healthy eating pattern. Now, according to myplate.gov about 90% of Americans don't get enough dairy to meet these recommendations. But here's what I want to ask you, to ask yourself, are these recommendations based purely on nutritional science, or are there other factors at play, because here's a very interesting fact, these guidelines have recommended two to three servings of dairy per day for decades, and during that same time period, milk consumption in the United States has been steadily declining. We're drinking about 47% less milk now than we did in 1975 so why do the guidelines continue to emphasize dairy so strongly? Well, it is a significant part of agricultural economy, and the dietary guidelines do not exist in a vacuum. They influence federal nutrition programs, like I mentioned, school lunches, SNAP benefits, WIC programs, these programs are major purchasers of dairy products. And I'm not saying that the guidelines are wrong. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy theory, but what I am saying is it's important to understand that nutrition policy isn't created in a purely scientific bubble. That even that being said, it's interesting to think about the influence of the decline of milk consumption, because even in one of the most successful, memorable advertising campaigns in history, got milk with 90% reported brand awareness, could not even reverse The fundamental shift in consumer behavior, and that advertising campaign did not increase milk intake, and yet we are still receiving the message that it's essential. We need it. It belongs at every meal. But drinking milk is not some ancient human tradition for most of human history, as I alluded to earlier on here in this episode, adults didn't drink milk at all. Lactose intolerance was the norm. And it wasn't until refrigeration and pasteurization in the early 20th century that fluid milk, liquid milk, became widely consumed in the United States, and then that was because the government got involved during World War Two, milk was pushed as a cheap solution to malnutrition among young men being drafted into the military. School lunch programs created in 1946 made milk a staple. Then came the check off programs in the 1980s where farmers were taxed to fund marketing campaigns like got milk and milk does a body good. So we've been told for generations that milk is essential. It's the best source of calcium. We need two to three servings a day, but it's not an essential food. You can absolutely get calcium, protein, vitamin D, which is usually fortified in milk, and the other nutrients in dairy from other sources. So when you're thinking about whether dairy belongs in your diet, I want you to separate the science from the marketing and ask yourself, does dairy actually make your body feel good? Do you have the genetic variants that let you digest it well? And are you choosing high quality grass fed dairy? If you do choose to consume it, don't eat dairy just because you've been told you should and don't avoid it, just because some wellness influencer says you shouldn't make the decision based on your body, your health and the actual science, not the marketing. All right, let's wrap this up. What do we actually know about dairy? We know that almost all nutrition research has some kind of funding. Source. Universities need grants. Researchers need salaries. Studies cost money, lots of money, and sometimes that money comes from the industry, whether it's the dairy industry, the soy industry, the beef industry, the pharmaceutical industry or the supplement companies. Does that automatically mean the research is bad or biased? No, that doesn't mean we need to think critically and understand the truth of what a study says. Yes. So here are some questions I like to ask myself when I'm hearing about a study, when I'm looking at a study, who funded it, did they even disclose who funded it? If it is industry funded, does the disclosure statement say that the sponsor had no role in the research design, data collection or interpretation? Who conducted the study? Are the researchers from independent academic institutions, or are they employed by the company that makes the product? Does it align with other research? If one industry funded study shows dairy is anti inflammatory, but 10 independent studies show the same thing. Well, that's some good evidence. That's more credible than one study in isolation. Does it make biological sense? Are the findings consistent with what we know about human physiology?

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Is the finding extreme, or is it nuanced? Be skeptical of research that makes sweeping claims like dairy cures cancer. Dairy causes cancer, because real biology is not that simple. So with all of that in mind, let's wrap this up with a summary. One, the inflammation claim about dairy is not supported for most people, the mucus myth has been thoroughly debunked. The IGF one concern has biological plausibility, but it isn't definitive. Genetics matter enormously. Quality matters enormously policy and marketing have shaped our belief almost as much as science has. So let's ask ourselves good questions. Not is dairy good or bad? Does dairy work for your body? Pay attention to how you feel. Do you get bloating gas, digestive upset? That may be a lactose intolerance. Do you get skin reactions, respiratory symptoms, allergic responses, that may be a milk protein allergy? Look at your labs if you're consuming dairy. How are your inflammatory markers, your ESR, your CRP, LDH, your cholesterol, your blood sugar. If your labs look good and you feel good, that is important information. So prioritize quality. Consider your genetics, which, if you don't know your genes, just think about how you feel, and don't let fear or dogma or Instagram headlines make the decision for you. Dairy is not a magic food. I don't think we've come across a magic food yet, but it's also not poison. It's a food that works well for some people and not for others. And most importantly, you can get all the nutrients and dairy from other sources. If you choose not to consume it, you will not be harming yourself. Calcium, protein and actually more bioavailable vitamin D than what is usually fortified in milk are available through other foods. So the goal here again is to inform you, and I just want you to remember this is episode four. So of each episode, what's the takeaway, personalized decision based on science, your unique biology and how you actually feel, because I don't care if a study had 52 people or 52,000 people. If it didn't study you, then you have to be mindful of how your body is impacted by that food. Bottom line, all right, my friends, that's what I've got for you today. I hope this episode helped you sort through some of the noise around dairy and gave you a framework for making decisions that work for you, so you don't have to be fearful if you want to go get a latte or a milkshake. I hope you found it helpful, and if you do want to dig in to more behind your metabolic health, by understanding your labs through a metabolic lens, by understanding your nutrition genomics, the. Way the blueprint of your genes is designed to predispose you to things and how you can adjust and build your lifestyle around it. To optimize your wellness. It's all about optimizing wellness has nothing to do with fighting disease. Optimizing wellness so your body, your immune system, your digestion, everything helps you feel as well as you possibly can. That's what this is all about. If that's interesting to you, go to my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com check it out under coaching and programs, and let's do some metabolic health coaching. My friend also come and ask me your questions. Let me know your thoughts on this episode. Join me in the living well after breast cancer community, you can join it right on my website. It's totally free. The breast cancer recovery coach.com All right, friends, until next time, take good care of yourself. Take care of your body. Remember you know your body better than anyone else. Be good to yourself and expect other people to be good to you as well. Take care you.