For most Asians, lactose intolerance (the ingredient found in milk) is a very common syndrome.
After enjoying milk or dairy products, many people will experience symptoms of bloating or abdominal pain, diarrhea. This is the result of lactose intolerance syndrome . Many people find it difficult to understand because they used to easily digest milk when they were children but later lost this ability.
According to internist Sean Chung, nearly every baby is born with the ability to absorb lactose (a sugar found in mammalian milk). Most children, of all races, use the enzyme lactase found in the small intestine to break down the lactose molecule structure into glucose and galactose, making it easier for them to be absorbed through the intestinal lining.
As with other mammals, lactase stability plays an important role, helping babies digest milk, especially during breastfeeding.
Bloating or abdominal pain, diarrhea when consuming milk or dairy products, this is lactose intolerance.
Doctors in Southern California explain that many of us by the age of 5 will have a drastic decrease in the amount of the enzyme lactase . This phenomenon is known as lactase instability , which leaves the lactose in milk untreated. At that time, this amount of lactose in the intestine will draw water from the body and be turned into unpleasant things by intestinal bacteria, including hydrogen gas.
In fact, humans in early civilizations were lactose intolerant as adults. It was only during the invention of agriculture thousands of years ago that populations of cultures in the Western hemisphere developed the enzyme lactase in a stable manner. Humans evolved to be able to tolerate a new source of dairy foods other than breast milk, resulting from domestication of domestic animals.
This phenomenon is explained from an evolutionary standpoint that citizens of some countries have become more adapted to milk, simply because they consume more milk.
Unlike countries near the equator, people in the Nordic countries need to consume a lot of milk to supplement calcium, due to Vitamin D deficiency from the sun.
That is why the rate of lactose intolerance in the Nordic population can be as low as 5% while in some Asian communities it can be as high as 90%.
To improve the situation, people with lactose intolerance can use small amounts of milk at a time , cheese and yogurt, which contain less lactose than raw milk; or buy processed dairy products that break down the lactose first to avoid this.