Healthy Food – Naturally

(For 3 weeks, I did the milk cure, drinking 3 1/2 quarts to 1 gallon of raw milk each day. Except for water, all I had was milk. This is a series of posts (25) keeping track each day. For the entire series, start out on “Trying Something Old“). All links to the series is at the bottom of each article.)

I woke up at 3:30 this morning, because I was hot.  When the alarm went off, GC told me he had been cold.  We had turned the fan off and kept the window open as a compromise last night. Luckily for him, I have a mattress heater on the bed, so he cranked that up, which could have contributed to my being too warm.

Noticing that I seem to be bloated today, which is not fun. But it does seem as if my body has adjusted to the sugars. No other stomach issues at all anymore, I can say definitively that I am not lactose intolerant to raw milk. Pasteurized milk is another issue, but after doing my reading of what pasteurization does to milk, I’m not going to be buying it. Ever.  It just isn’t healthy.

I ended up taking a detox bath in the early evening. I added ginger to it.  While the bath itself wasn’t super hot, I did notice that my face felt as if it were trying to perspire a bit.

I’ve noticed a few other things that seem to be benefits from this raw milk cure, but I can’t definitively say that these things are happening specifically.  I think they are happening, but the observations are subjective.

I seem to be losing less hair

Coming into my mid 40’s I noticed I was losing more than the usual amount of hair. I was finding hair, not only in my brush, but all over my floors regularly.  When I washed my hair, it would come out in clumps. Luckily I have very thick hair, so no one has ever noticed any thinning.  I’d have to clean the hair off my bathroom floor on a regular basis.  I’m still noticing hair on my floors and such, but not as much.

My sense of smell seems to be returning

I used to use Zirtec.  The stuff you inhale through your nose at the first sign of a cold.  Remember that?  Well, it destroyed my sense of smell.  I still have enough to enjoy the taste of food and strong smells are still there, but my smell sense is not very keen.  But last night, I realized that I could smell the steak GC was grilling on the deck when I was in the kitchen.  (It smelled good too, but not good enough to break the cure for).  The smell went away when I retreated further in the house, but I could smell them without being right next to them.  That was different.

Again, I don’t know if these two items are a result of the milk cure, I’m noticing something, but that doesn’t mean anything  on a scientific basis.  These are my observations on myself.  But it’s not something I was expecting and its pretty cool.

Raw Milk is Safe

It amazes me how many people actually believe the dreck that the FDA and CDC put out about raw milk being unsafe. They talk about the amount of pathogens and bacteria that could show up in raw milk Did you know that raw milk contains a number of bioactive components that reduce or eliminate pathogen populations? Because of this it will not support the growth of a wide range of pathogens (Fundamentals of Dairy Science 1935)

Two enzymes are the major components of this. Lactoperoxidase and lactoferrin. Lactoperoxidase uses small amounts of free radicals to destroy bad bacteria. Lactoferrin works by stealing iron from the pathogens and carrying it to the blood stream. So it does double duty: Kills off a large number of iron-loving pathogens and helps in iron absorption.

Raw milk is anti-microbial and contains leukocytes or white blood cells. They consume foreign bacteria, yeasts and molds. It also contains B-lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell that produces specific antibodies, which engulf foreign bacteria, kill infected cells and stimulate the immune system.

Guess what is killed during pasteurization? You guessed it, all of these beneficial factors.

In a test in California, Organic Pastures Dairy Company did challenge tests to their raw milk and colostrum. (A challenge test is where pathogens are added to an item and then monitored through time). Pathogen counts declined over time and in some cases (after a week), could not be detected at all!. The laboratory concluded, “Raw colostrum and raw milk do not appear to support the growth of salmonella, E.coli O157:H7 or Listeria monobytogenes”.

Pasteurized milk won’t pass these types of tests. Pasteurized milk kills the very things that keeps milk safe.

So why with all this does the FDA and CDC insist on lying to us and continue to tell us that raw milk is bad and dangerous? The industrialized dairy industry is large and has a well-funded lobby. Since industrialized dairies are synonymous with confinement dairies (dairies in which the cows are kept in a small enclosed area and fed foods which they would not eat in nature), these dairies would require expensive retrofits and would in reality never be able to come up to the cleanliness and hygienic standards a small pastured dairy could. They simply can’t compete. So the fact is that neither the confinement dairies or the FDA or CDC really care about our health. They care about the industrialized confinement dairy profits.

It wasn’t always like that. At one point in time, there truly were health issues with dairies. It started in the 1900’s with distillery dairies. Distillery dairies were dairies that were next to an alcohol distillery. The cows were fed the slop from the distilleries and the milk was never very clean nor was it very healthful. This led to 2 very different movements both by well-meaning people.

The first was the certified milk movement, started by Henry Coit, who advocated for inspection and certification of small dairies, who agreed to produce and handle their milk required by a legal contract with the Medical Milk Commission which was run by doctors. These doctors agreed to make periodic inspections of the dairies and conduct analysis of the milk. The result was healthy raw milk.

Nathan Straus, on the other hand advocated for pasteurization, specifically for milk coming from distillery dairies. Pasteurization did help with removing the filth that was in the milk then and now to clean up the pus and other problems involved with continuing to milk unhealthy cows coming from confinement dairies.

Keep in mind that the deaths and sickness that came from milk in the turn of the 19th century were tuberculosis, diphtheria and typhoid. Many of the sources of infection were from distillery dairies where the milk was collected in buckets by infected people who could and did cough into the milk (or from sick cows). In today’s modern dairies (including small pastured ones), the milk is not touched by human hands during the milking process. A milking machine collects the milk into covered stainless steel containers. Today, the diseases we have to deal with in contaminated foods are E.coli, Salmonella and Listeria, all of which don’t survive in raw milk.

Raw milk should never come from a confinement dairy. There is too much of a risk of contamination. But it can and does come from small family farms where attention is given to cleanliness and hygiene and the life, health and happiness of the cows that provide it are taken into consideration.

I for one will never knowingly consume pasteurized milk again. It’s not the healthy drink raw milk is.

Where did I get my information for this? From “The Untold Story of Milk by Ron Schmid“. It’s very comprehensive and well worth the read.

Being My Own Human Guinea Pig

Weight is still consistent. Considering that I weighed myself in a full two hours earlier than I had over the weekend, and knowing my body, I’m pretty confident that I would be at my lower weight (at least 195.6) if I weighed myself in at the same time as I did over the weekend. Unfortunately, given work schedules, that is pretty much impossible to do. But I’m happy that the weight is choosing to stay off.

My basal temperature dropped precipitously this morning, but women’s basal temperature follows their cycle, so I’m not worried about that, I’m hoping it goes back up to the 98.1 or 98.2 range in the next few days.

Blood sugars are up again, but not horribly. This could be because of my cycle, but because I’ve never tracked this much, I just can’t say definitively.

Day	Weight	Basal Temp	Glucose: Fasting	Glucose: Noon	Glucose: Bed
Baseline	201.4	97.9	114	104	110
Day 1	200.2	98.2	115	120	103
Day 2	198.2	100.2/99.1	124	115	129
Day 3	197.2	97.9	150	96	119
Day 4	198.0	98.1	151	116	107
Day 5	197.4	98.1	116	105	101
Day 6	198.0	97.8	134	113	106
Day 7	198.2	98.2	134	107	85
Day 8	197.8	97.9	99	102	107
Day 9	197.8	98.1	105	95	93
Day 10	196.6	98.3	94	112	105
Day 11	196.8	97.9	142	114	92
Day 12	196.8	97.9	98	103	103
Day 13	196.8	98.0	112	100	89
Day 14	197.2	98.1	107	107	95
Day 15	197.2	98.1	91	92	81
Day 16	196.2	98.2	97	96	96
Day 17	195.6	98.3	107	110	97
Day 18	196.0	97.8	116	110	106

Series

1. Milk Cure 2012: Trying Something Old
2. Milk Cure 2012: Preparations
3. Milk Cure 2012: The Day Before the Cure
4. Milk Cure 2012: Day 1 – And Here I Start
5. Milk Cure 2012: Day 2 – Why Am I Doing This?
6. Milk Cure 2012: Day 3 – Ups and Downs
7. Milk Cure 2012: Day 4 – Milk as a Health Food Part 1
8. Milk Cure: Day 5
9. Milk Cure 2012: Day 6 and Milk as a Health Food Part 2
10. Milk Cure 2012: Day 7
11. Milk Cure 2012: Day 8 and Milk as a Health Food Part 3
12. Milk Cure 2012: Day 9
13. Milk Cure 2012: Day 10
14. Milk Cure 2012: Day 11 – Halfway There
15. Milk Cure 2012: Day 12 – Milk as a Health Food Part 4
16. Milk Cure 2012: Day 13
17. Milk Cure 2012: Day 14 – Can Raw Milk Go Bad?
18. Milk Cure 2012: Day 15
19. Milk Cure 2012: Day 16
20. Milk Cure 2012: Day 17
21. Milk Cure 2012: Day 18 – Raw Milk is Safe
22. Milk Cure 2012: Day 19
23. Milk Cure 2012: Day 20
24. Milk Cure 2012: Day 21 – The Last Day
25. Milk Cure 2012: The Day After

Links

• Fundamentals of Dairy Science (USDA)

Related articles

• Why we love raw milk… (thebovine.wordpress.com)
• The Rise (and Fall) of Pasteurized Milk (thehealthyhomeeconomist.com)
• CDC cherry picks the data to make case against the safety of raw milk – WAPF (thebovine.wordpress.com)
• Dr. Mercola on “this scary drink” (thebovine.wordpress.com
• Milk Cure 2012: The Day After

Tags: milk cure, milk diet, Raw Milk