What Makes (Some Of) Us Lactose Intolerant?
- erudite .
- Sep 12, 2021
- 2 min read
By Velika Freesia
In your household, you’d probably enjoy having milk as an accompaniment for your breakfast. My family, however, failed to adopt such routines. In fact, my mother had always taught me to avoid consuming any foods and beverages containing lactose in the morning – she told me that I'd get my stomach all whirled up and it’ll be a disastrous day from the start. I went against her words once; just by that experience, I realized what she told me was for my own good, and I've never done it again.
The condition of not being able to digest dairy products without feeling inherent gas piling up in the pit of your stomach is best known as lactose intolerance. It occurs when the body doesn't have enough lactase (the enzymes needed to break lactose into smaller monosaccharides) in the small intestines. As a result, the remaining lactose instead passes intact to the colon and, through bacterial fermentation, is converted into several gases and acids. The said phenomenon can lead to severe cases of bloating and diarrhoea.
Infants have a higher amount of lactase than adults, for they acquire the enzymes as much as the necessity of them getting milk from their mothers. As they get older, the percentage of lactase tends to decrease incontinently. Some people still retain their lactose persistence even after this stage, whereas others (like me) fall short and become vulnerable to lactose intolerant symptoms. This, of course, did not occur out of sheer luck for those unaffected. Instead, it has a more complex situation behind it. A rather… evolutionary perspective, to say the least.
Lactase persistence is often cited as an example of recent human evolution. As people in European countries have accustomed themselves to consuming unprocessed milk sooner than anywhere else in the world, they are bound to possess the certain allele that developed lactose persistence. Some speculate why people in the western hemisphere were first to normalize the use of dairy products was because of the local climate that coerces them to search for another source of vitamin D other than sunlight. People who live in tropical environments didn’t have to go through this problem, hence contrasting the two. Lactose intolerance rates in East Asia and other regions near the equator can reach up to 90 percent of the population, a striking difference to Europe’s susceptible minority that only picks up around 5 to 15 percent of the recurring habitants.
So to clear things up, this problem does not only occur in my household but also to a lot of people whose ancestors did not give in to the 'livestock milk craze' happening on the other side of the world. But do not fret! We still can consume small amounts of dairy products once in a while. Switching to lactose-free alternatives is also a favourable way to get rid of such unfavourable symptoms.
Works cited:
https://www.dairy.com.au/dairy-matters/you-ask-we-answer/yawa-29---is-it-true-that-most-asian-people-are-lactose-intolerant
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