My guess is that you are sensitive to the yeast that is highly abundant in all dairy, especially so in cheese. The yeast content of dairy seems to be the missing piece in the mystery of why dairy is so potentially allergenic - it's not just lactose, casein etc. but the fact that the stuff is a yeast-magnet. I was trying to figure out my own sensitivity at one time and after relentless searching finally found a PDF online of a study in which the exact quantities of yeast in various dairy products were determined, and it was stunningly high in all products, but sky-high in cheese. Unfortunately I'm not finding it upon searching now, and will have to dig up an old flash drive to find the PDF I saved - but I swear the evidence is out there, albeit difficult to find. However, consider how readily dairy ferments and that fermentation tends to occur via yeast. Yeast would seem to be massively allergenic.
Cheese was the first culprit in my search - all I knew is I felt like hell afterwards with itchy bumps here and there; sneezing and nasal drainage; pink, glassy, itchy eyes with angioedema as well as nervous system issues including something similar to what you describe - tingly numbness, especially when sleeping (would wake up with painful numbness in my hands/arms etc.). I knew that I had a yeast intolerance and that my first breakthroughs in personal health included yeast-killing protocols (not to get all anti-candida cultish here, but it worked). Meanwhile I never ceased eating cheese, butter, yogurt... the supposedly safe dairy products. However the study I'd found indicated that higher fat content also meant higher yeast counts, aside from fermentation's yeast-proliferating-ness (and yogurt's beneficial bacteria do not beat out their yeasty competitors but sadly share the spoils). Seems counter-intuitive to me but what do I know.
Meanwhile, based on what I've pieced together and from my non-scientifically-educated understanding of the data, it sounds like yeast breaks down into glutamate - that lovely excitotoxic amino acid added to everything processed. Parmigian cheese is particularly loaded with free glutamate. Glutamate's the other mind-killer - aside from fear - that turns me
into a semi-comatose, irritable zombie with numb, tingly limbs. To end, some quotes from my scientific source, Wikipedia:
"Parmigiano is also particularly high in glutamate, containing as much as 1.2 g of glutamate per 100 g of cheese, making it the naturally produced food with the second highest level of glutamate, after Roquefort cheese. The strong presence of glutamates explains the strong umami taste of Parmigiano."
"all inactive yeast contains a certain amount of free glutamic acid because when the yeast cells are killed the protein that comprises the cell walls begins to degrade, breaking down into the amino acids that originally formed it. Glutamic acid is a naturally occurring amino acid in all yeast cells, as well as in many vegetables, fungi and meats."
Anyway, to attempt to answer your question - my yeast, and therefore dairy, intolerance has not improved but rather worsened over time. In fact I think I might have managed to curb the onslaught of autoimmune issues when I first began ridding myself of yeast, but since I continued to think of butter and yogurt as health foods and availed myself of them daily, I eventually became highly intolerant. Sad state indeed... hope that helps.
