Health & Medical Nutrition

Health Benefits of Drinking Milk

Mankind has been drinking milk for thousands of years.
The ability to domesticate animals and digest milk offered mankind dramatic survival advantages.
It's not surprising.
Milk is after all nature's vitamin pill - designed by nature as the perfect food source for babies - containing every hormone, protein, nutrient and carbohydrate babies need to grow.
Milk has had a bad rap over the ages, but pasteurization solved a lot of the initial issues with the bacteria associated with milk, and it turns out that lactose intolerance is a fallacy for the majority of people.
The lactase gene that enables us to digest milk appears in the majority of the world's population, with only a small percentage of people actually lacking the lactase gene.
Most lactose intolerance is due to a lack of the proper bacteria balance.
The bacteria in our stomachs need to adjust to the milk in our diet.
The problem is when people who don't drink milk, suddenly drink it, without allowing their stomach bacteria time to adjust.
In the majority of cases intolerance to milk is overcome by "training" our stomachs by drinking milk regularly.
In a 2006 report, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended that even children with lactose intolerance should not avoid milk since milk still remains the best source of vitamin D, calcium and other nutrients essential for growth.
Let's look at some of the major benefits of drinking milk: Milk Helps You Build Bones Calcium builds bones and the characteristic white color of milk, illustrates that milk is loaded with calcium.
There are other sources of calcium but none of them come close to milk for calcium absorption into our bodies.
Even soya milk is no substitute to the calcium in milk according to recent studies.
What about vitamins? Most vitamins and calcium-enhanced foods include calcium carbonate, which has been shown to be lest absorbed than the calcium in milk.
Natural is always best.
Milk Helps You Build Muscle Some new research with weight lifters has shown that milk helps them build more muscle and at the same time actually lose fat! Another study showed that milk is more beneficial and effective for recovery after an intense workout than even sports drinks.
High performance athletes are now drinking milk as part of their daily routines straight after intense workouts for muscle recovery and growth.
Milk Helps You Lose Weight Even milk that has not been skimmed or fat-reduced may have a slimming effect.
A number of studies have shown that people actually lose fat if they increase their milk intake.
The studies are still a bit controversial but another study suggested that it may be due to the "filling effect" of milk.
People feel full and tend to eat fewer calories up to and including at their next meal.
Milk Helps You Stay Healthy Other studies have shown milk to be beneficial for kidney and heart disease.
Furthermore, it may help reduce the risk of stroke and colon cancer.
Milk also has some anti-inflammatory properties that may help alleviate the suffering of people with digestive inflammatory diseases.
It is thought that the protein, vitamin D, magnesium and calcium content gives milk these additional health benefits.
Conclusion So milk clearly has some amazing benefits.
In fact, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans identified calcium, potassium, magnesium and vitamin A as "nutrients of concern" and have recommend that we all drink three glasses of low fat milk daily.
So how do we get children to drink milk rather than soft drink and high sugar content fruit juice? All you need to make milk appealing is to give your children flavored milk.
Get rid of those fizzy drinks today and fill your fridge with milk for a growing and healthy family.


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