Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

Question

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Have you re-introduced dairy and seen noticeably (not neutral) positive results?

I don't doubt that there are people who just can't touch dairy, however, I do think that the health-minded have been too eager to extrapolate from there and judged that dairy is not good for anybody. Until recently, I had eaten almost NO DAIRY in 30 years. I was a Junior in Undergrad school when I pretty much eliminated the stuff. From time to time over the years, I have INFREQUENTLY had small amounts of cheese, some yogurt, some cream in my mashed potatoes, but NO MILK!

I became intrigued by this Ray Peat interview, in which he elaborates on the positive benefits of dairy. He also explains how to slowly re-introduce dairy so as accustom the body to it. Not expecting much, I gave it a try.

For me, the results were quick to come and way beyond my expectations. I've mentioned this before, but I have been suffering since October with some inflammation of the soft tissue in my left arm, no doubt due to weightlifting. I have had to put aside some of my favorite lifts (like Clean and Snatch) because whipping the bar aggravated the injury. Also out were my beloved pull-ups. Within a week, at most two after introducing large amounts of dairy, I started noticing an improvement in the arm. Now after about a month and a half, it feels like the arm is completely healed. It might be easy for others to conclude it wasn't the dairy, but I am having a hard time figuring out some other component to this healing (time had not helped much..it stayed pretty much the same for 6 or so months). Now, I suppose it was the additional calcium that did the trick, so there are probably other ways I could have done this. Yet, the ice-cream and milk were delicious, readily available...Had I tried another method of introducing calcium, I doubt if I would have stuck with it.

edited Jul 1 2011 at 15:10

asked Jul 1 2011 at 14:39

Thomas Seay

Just curious - how much is large amounts? – none Jul 1 2011 at 14:51

Well, at first, I started out with the ice-cream. I was eating a quart of Haagen-Dazs. I did this for two reasons. One, I needed to bulk up after too strict of Paleo and two, because my body only tolerated large amounts of dairy fat. As I introduced more and more milk, I have reduced (and will continue to reduce) the HD. Now I am drinking about a quart of milk and a pint of ice-cream. If you haven't had milk in a long time, you need to re-introduce it a very little at a time. I started off with 2 ounces per day, for example. – Thomas Seay Jul 1 2011 at 14:55

Have you tried introducing another form of calcium over the dairy in order to test your theory? Just curious since I'm having somewhat similar issues in my right arm after heavy lifting. – baconbitch Jul 1 2011 at 14:57

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Baconbitch, I would be able to come up with many adjectives to describe you but dumba$$, or anything like it, would not be one of them :) – Thomas Seay Jul 1 2011 at 15:24

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Yeah...next to kamal it is tough not to feel intellectually inferior. I'm with meredith...smartypants. – baconbitch Jul 1 2011 at 17:26

show 5 more comments

Bread-Eating Beelzebub · Answer 1 · 2011-07-01 15:38:08Z UTC

After introducing cheese into my diet, I feel happier and more able to comply with avoiding neolithic agents of disease. It's SO HARD for me to get paleo calories on the go. If I just have some yogurt or some cheese, it helps me avoid the temptation to eat out at a place that might offer things that seem paleo, but which are cooked with sugar and vegetable oil.

I know there are vegetables that are calcium-rich, but almost all of those upset my stomach.

Kamal · Answer 2 · 2011-07-01 15:10:06Z UTC

This is going to sound over-complicated, but I think you just experienced case of "Inverse Berkson's Paradox".

Berksons's paradox, also known as Berkson's bias, happens when epidemiologists do studies on hospital patients with multiple comorbidities. Because of a flaw in calculating conditional probabilities with this type of patient, the odds of death/sickness are skewed. Basically, those with multiple concurrent diseases are not a neutral population to study.

I made up the "inverse" part, but it makes sense. You are a clever and seasoned eater/lifter. For six months your arm did not get better. When you take up an intervention (ice cream), it is coupled with a few things that, combined, affect your odds of getting better. One is that you are still doing fewer olympic lifts. Another is that you are eating more calories. I think there are a couple more of these factors. Also, there is a regression to the mean--people get better randomly. With all these factors combined, your odds of getting better are higher than you would think, even without dairy. Now my laptop battery is dying a

Phoenix · Answer 3 · 2011-07-01 15:15:52Z UTC

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After re-introducing butter and raw aged cheddar, my skin definitely looks smoother and seems to glow ever so slightly. And I actually seem to get less acne when eating (lactose-free) dairy. K2, possibly?

answered Jul 1 2011 at 15:15

Phoenix
4,731●1●6●23

	I won't argue the point, just offering up information. In the above mentioned interview, Peat suggests that people who eat dairy need to pay attention to get proper Vitamin A in their diet. Those who have a dearth of that sometimes suffer acne when eating dairy. – Thomas Seay Jul 1 2011 at 15:25
	Interesting. Definitely going to check out that interview. Is his reasoning that dairy contains estrogen and estrogen is antagonistic to vitamin A? – Phoenix Jul 2 2011 at 20:25

bittykitty · Answer 4 · 2011-07-17 20:18:22Z UTC

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I've found that having grass fed dairy+k2 supplements has actually caused my teeth to start straightening back out.Really starting to believe it's not so much dairy that bothers people as it is the way most of it is produced.Everything beneficial gets ultra pasteurized and homogenized right out if it.

answered Jul 17 2011 at 20:18

bittykitty
1,668●5●11

	You actually think that drinking milk is physically straightening your teeth? – ben61820 Jul 18 2011 at 1:34
	Sounds crazy,but after starting grass fed butter,cheese and raw goat milk(with occasional grass fed cow milk when the latter isn't available),plus supplementing with D and K vitamins,I can see a difference in both the appearance and alignment of my teeth. – bittykitty Jul 19 2011 at 13:48

Mr. T · Answer 5 · 2011-07-17 21:19:35Z UTC

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Only real benefit I've noticed is in the body composition department. After going dairy free for about 12 months and reintroducing it I found myself hitting my protein/fat/calorie targets much easier and gaining muscle (and fat) mass pretty quickly. For bulking up, dairy can't be beat. I try to stick to goat's milk to limit inflammation.

answered Jul 17 2011 at 21:19

Mr. T
573●6●15

After just not eating enough calories while lifting for months, after I added cottage cheese and yogurt in to my eating I successfully gained, too. I still think most people are better off sans-dairy but for a specific goal like a mass-gain it's helpful surely. – ben61820 Jul 18 2011 at 1:35

Matt · Answer 6 · 2011-07-17 22:20:38Z UTC

I regularly eat quite modest amounts of cheese and butter with no noticable effects as well as the occasional pint of ice cream. Drinking milk always seems to cause some acne though.

When you look at what is contained within a quart of Haargen Dazs there could be all sorts of reasons for you feeling better :) That is a lot of calories, fat, sugar and protein to add to your diet as well as the calcium and vitamin A.

One quart of Haargen Dazs vanilla ice cream contains according to my calculation based on the nutritional information roughly:

2300 calories

324 grams of fat

4.5 grams of trans fat - this will be naturaly occuring conjugated linoleic acid (CLA)

178 grams of sugar

42 grams of protein

1000 mg of cholesterol - about the amount in 5 eggs.

127% of your daily vitamin A

127% of your daily calcium

Karen · Answer 7 · 2011-07-01 15:27:54Z UTC

could time have been the biggest factor here? Soft tissue injuries can take a while to fix, especially if you are not completely resting but re-aggravating it over and over. Muscle strains can take 3 months to heal and that is with rest and actively allowing it to heal, rather than working out despite the discomfort.

the interesting part of this, to me, is the good news that you didn't see anything negative from re-introducing the dairy.

I sent you an email like 2 days ago.

mallory · Answer 8 · 2011-07-18 01:28:59Z UTC

for one, ray peat and his writings are very questionable. the guy makes sense some of the time but others contradicts himself, like with tryptophan. i think there is something to what he says but not orange juice chugging and ice cream eating as the end all be all to health.

following peats recommendations as a whole i have no doubt will work for some people as they are based around a need for proestrogen in an estrogen heavy sided body. so they are more hormonal. however, you need to dose preglenone, thyroid and a bunch of other crap and when you read his writings, his way of eating is very limited by most people standards

is dairy the reason you got well or the added nutrients you could have been getting but were not from paleo? also i agree about the calories. dairy calories are hormetic and VERY hard to replace on a paleo diet. its not like saying switch avocado for cheese b/c the nutrients are a 180 difference

Any Positive Stories From Re-Introducing Dairy?

8 Answers