Milk scare

I am not a milk drinker. But I take my coffee with lots of cream, either liquid milk or powdered. My usual caffeine dose is two mugs a day, one for breakfast and one after lunch time. So I was glad with the official declaration by four major food companies in our country — Alaska Milk, Magnolia, RFM Corp., and Kraft Foods Philippines that their respective milk and milk by-products are not tainted with melamine.

The last time I was forced to stop drinking coffee was while I was pregnant. Fifteen weeks into my pregnancy, the ultrasound results showed a single egg broke into two which meant I would have identical twins. The ultrasound, though, failed to determine yet the gender of my twins. Nonetheless, I wanted my unborn kids to be healthy so I had to follow my doctor’s advice to drink lots of milk and juice.

Milk is a healthy food for babies and for old people because of its rich calcium content that strengthens bones. Practically for all ages, milk is nutritious, except again for those people afflicted with lactose intolerance.

I am one of those suffering from lactose intolerance, a medical condition I found out too late. I nearly succumbed to severe dehydration in a matter of a few hours due to lactose intolerance. This was about five years ago when I was rushed to a clinic when I had the combination of throwing up and loose bowel movement (LBM) happening all at the same time. I was covering a breakfast gathering in a five-star hotel where President Arroyo was the guest speaker. I did not have any symptoms at all, not even signs of stomach trouble. After drinking a cup of brewed coffee — which I generously poured with liquid cream milk as I always do — I suddenly burped something acidic-tasting. And the next burp I had, I was throwing up the food that I ate the previous night.

It was a good thing that the hotel table napkin was big enough to prevent what could have been an ugly and nauseating mess on our table. So I had to rush out and went to the nearest powder room. I was already in panic, dizzy, vomiting and having stomach upset all at the same time. It was a good thing I still had my presence of mind to ask for a wheelchair from one of the waiters because I was already feeling weak, with nauseous and smelly water practically coming out of my bottom.

I was immediately wheeled to the hotel clinic and given a first aid of dextrose. The doctor could not give me any medication because I continued throwing up while in bed and I could not even get up to go to the toilet. I was only able to take medicines late in the afternoon. After two hours, the throwing up and LBM stopped and the doctor finally discharged me from the clinic where I really made a smelly mess. The medical cost, of course, was also five-star rate for about eight-hour lying-in at the hotel clinic.  

After this harrowing experience, I was diagnosed to have suffered from lactose intolerance. It was caused by what I ate the previous night where I had some creamy concoction of milk-chocolate drink. It was not a case of food poisoning because it readily kicked off after the food intake that night. Apparently, the last straw that triggered my lactose intolerance condition to finally erupt but I was not aware of, was the cream milk I took with the brewed coffee the next morning.

From my google search, I got this from MedicineNet.com on what this disease called lactose intolerance is. Lactose is something you associate with milk while intolerance is something you cannot tolerate. But from medical definition, lactose intolerance is the inability to digest and absorb lactose (the sugar in milk) that results in gastrointestinal symptoms when milk or products containing milk are drank or eaten.

What causes lactose intolerance? From the same website, it says lactose intolerance is caused by reduced or absent activity of lactase that prevents the splitting of lactose (lactase deficiency). Lactase deficiency may occur in one of three reasons — congenital, secondary or developmental. “It is important to emphasize that lactase deficiency is not the same as lactose intolerance. Persons with milder deficiencies of lactase often have no symptoms after the ingestion of milk. For unclear reasons, even persons with moderate deficiencies of lactase may not have symptoms.” From that medical explanation, I think my lactose intolerance was developmental. So you see why now I am not a milk drinker.

Our late deputy managing editor Alex Fernando even enroled me in a lactose intolerance website that regularly updates persons afflicted with this condition. It comes out with advisories about the latest developments and discoveries in the medical field on how to treat people with lactose intolerance so they could lead normal lives. So armed with such kinds of information, I am able to handle my lactose intolerance without having to give up my daily dose of two mugs of coffee with crème and enjoy eating foods with milk and dairy products.

But the danger posed by the melamine additive found in milk products imported from China is a totally different case. The melamine was added and mixed with the milk product purportedly to enrich the protein content. But as it turned out, not even babies could tolerate such hazardous additive in these milk and dairy products from China. The presence of this chemical additive came out in the open following the rising number of Chinese babies that got afflicted with kidney stones after being fed with melamine-tainted milk products. This included the milk brands of Yili, Sonlu, Jolly Cow and Mengniu. Yili was one of the major sponsors of the just concluded Beijing Olympics.

I was in China for one week in July, or a month before the Beijing Olympics. I am now seriously worried that I might have imbibed quite a lot of these melamine-tainted milk products in my usual daily coffee intake while I was there. I am trying to assuage myself that the babies taken ill with kidney stones have been fed with melamine-tainted milk for quite a long while before they started showing signs of the illness. Talking about being paranoid, the milk scare is certainly affecting even a lactose intolerant person like me!