7 Things You Need to Know About Lactose Intolerance

Probably as a child everybody drunk litres of milk, but with the passage of time you might have noticed how dairy is no more a pleasure to drink. For some lot more than a vague, unpleasant feeling and also many people experience symptoms like bloating, stomach cramping and diarrhoea. These are all signs of lactose intolerance.

In order to increase your awareness of the problem, here are seven things you must know about this common digestive ailment:

Research reveals that about 75% of the world's population loses the ability to break down lactose at some point, which means that many people naturally become lactose intolerant over time. The occurrence of lactose intolerance in South Africa is an approximation at 11.03%. A big sorry for the ice cream lovers!

Lactose intolerance is most widespread among the people of East Asian ancestry. It affects more than 90% of adults in some communities, as NIH reports.

The circumstance is also frequent among people who are of Jewish, Arab, West African, Greek and Italian descent.

People with lactose intolerance have different reactions to consuming the offending dairy products. Small amounts of lactose cause powerful symptoms such as abdominal cramps and diarrhoea and some other might only suffer from gas.

However, this is not completely clear why such symptoms vary from person to person. Sometimes, it may also result to gut bacteria.

In various case, it is seen that being lactose intolerant doesn't mean you have to bid farewell to your favourite dairy products. It is mostly seen that people cannot digest much it much while others have no trouble digesting yoghurt, that contains fermented milk, or cheeses such as Parmesan or cheddar. But here is a solution to your problem. By following these steps you will be able to detect which cheeses have low lactose levels:

Firstly check the nutrition label. As lactose is the sugar that is available in milk, the fewer grams of sugar on the label and thereby the higher your chances of being to digest the product.

The symptoms of lactose intolerance generally occur within 30 minutes to two hours after consuming milk-based products. And the more milk products you ingest, the worse you feel.

There are many cases of babies being born lactose intolerant. This occurs when the baby has a mutation of the LCT gene, which commonly delivers directions for making that key enzyme. This results in the baby's small intestine producing little to no lactase. And it makes dairy complicated.

It may sound like a horrible experiment for anybody with lactose intolerance. Researches have revealed that consuming small amounts of milk on a full stomach two to three times a day can help to clean your digestive system. It breaks down dairy with ease.

Nevertheless, if your small intestine does not make enough lactase, it will not start to do so suddenly. Therefore, one should experiment and discover which one works best for you rather than cutting dairy out entirely.