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Only 7% of children who drink grassfed raw milk have allergies versus 44% of those who don’t consume this healthful traditional food. The asthma rate is lower and overall immunity higher for raw milk drinking kids too.
The Hygiene Hypothesis states that when children lack early exposure to infectious agents, parasites, and symbiotic microorganisms like normal gut flora such as would naturally occur in a rural or farm environment, they are much more likely to suffer from autoimmune disorders such as allergies or asthma.
This hypothesis helps to explain why farm kids tend to be so much healthier and far less prone to immune disorders than children raised in an urban setting.
Now, an international team of researchers has taken the Hygiene Hypothesis a step further by looking at how one raw milk protects against allergies in children. This is but one of the health benefits of raw milk, particularly from grassfed cows.
The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology is reporting that farm children who drink raw milk exhibit a far superior immune response than either farm children who don’t consume raw milk or children living in an urban setting.
Raw Milk Protective Against Allergies
The team of researchers led by Dr. Mark Holbreich MD, an allergy and asthma specialist, compared skin prick tests of mostly raw milk drinking Amish children aged 6-12 years old living in Indiana to non-raw milk drinking Swiss children living in either a farm or urban setting. Amish children in Indiana were chosen due to their genetic similarity to modern-day Swiss children.
The results of the skin prick tests to assess allergic sensitization are summarized as follows:
- Over 44% of the urban living Swiss children exhibited an allergic reaction.
- Approximately 25% of the non-raw milk drinking Swiss farm children had an allergic reaction.
- Only 7% of primarily raw milk drinking Amish children had an allergic reaction.
Reduced Asthma Risk
This study reinforces the results of the 2011 Gabriella study which found lower asthma rates as well.
Exposure to farm milk in early life and consumption of raw farm milk have been associated with a reduced asthma and atopy risk, and it has been suggested that this protection might be mediated through receptors of the innate immune system.
Stronger Immunity Overall
While the results of this large survey combined with allergy testing are very promising with raw milk potentially a very easy way for parents to safely increase the odds that their children avoid the lifelong burden of allergies and/or asthma, further research is warranted.  Dr. Holbreich’s team noted that some of the superior immune response of the raw milk drinking children may be due to the very large Amish families which may provide additional protective factors.
Should parents eager to provide their children with maximum lifelong vibrant health wait for these studies to occur?
While some parents may wish to remain cautious, more forward-thinking parents wishing to provide their children with a health edge today will no doubt seek to source grassfed raw milk immediately based on this information. Â As wisely noted by Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue in her book Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox:
We can’t always wait for science to identify the nutrients and test for them before we go ahead and benefit from them.
References
(1) The protective effect of farm milk consumption on childhood asthma and atopy
(2) Study of Amish children proves raw milk promotes health, boosts immunity
We drive to a farm about an hour away. We freeze about 2 months worth at a time. Thaws nicely. Just shake to mix it up. Super yummy and doesn’t bother my tummy at all!! (My mother and brother say they are lactose intolerant. Maybe they are just pasteuro-intolerant. (Let’s make up a new word!)
And yes, we do raw local honey from a farm 8 miles away too.
We must be in the 7%. We live on a farm and drink raw milk but my 6 year old is allergic to all grasses, trees, pollen, soy, and furry animals. :(. He was also breastfed for 2 years!
Has he been vaccinated at all. Did you consume only organic while pregnant with him…other factors I do believe. Keep up the good work. What you are doing IS beneficial.
I’m sure it happens. My dad grew up in the 1920s on a farm in Kansas, of course drank raw milk, butter, etc. He had hay fever bad.
My grandfather and mother as well as several of my nieces and nephews have asthma. Although I can have wheezing spells sometimes during the year and dust and cigarette smoke are bad news, I only used medication for about 9 months after replacing drywall in my old house. My aunt lives in Springfield, IL. It is in the center of farm country (mostly corn and soybeans) and if I travel there in the summer it is awful for me. My grandfather and mother both grew up there (both before GMO’s). I however, believe that my reaction is directly related to the crops grown there. 3 or 4 years ago I had considered relocating there but changed my mind with my first summer visit. This is directly related to the previous comment and not to the post on raw milk. My daughter is currently testing out a source for raw milk. I was disappointed as it wasn’t the creamy whole milk I remember from going to my grandfather’s as a child. It was thin with what I assume was butterfat specks floating in it. I believe it is only from Jersey cows but they do give grain but no soy, mostly pasture and hay in winter. I know it is filtered but does that mean it then becomes like 2% or something? I prefer the consistency of Horizon whole milk.
My guess is that either the diet is insufficient for good cream production, or else they are skimming the cream off the milk before selling. We have a Jersey cow, and while we don’t get as much cream as we might (because the calf is still on her), we still get a fair amount of cream (a 2 inches on top of a gallon of milk). Filtering is just done to remove any “floaters” in the milk, such as a hair from the cow’s udder. The cream goes through the filter.
I would not drink raw milk from a cow fed grain, personally. The milk isn’t as high in quality vitamins, and also the gut bacteria in the cow isn’t as healthy as in a cow who is grass-fed. And, if the cow has e-coli, it’s a kind that can make a person sick. But, if the cow is grass-fed, the e-coli isn’t dangerous to a person (because grain makes a cow’s gut acidic, like our guts are, so any pathogenic bacteria in their gut will survive in ours, and potentially cause issues for us, but a grass-fed cow has an alkaline gut, and their gut pathogens can’t survive in our acidic gut environments).
My suspicion was that they were keeping the cream. Thank you Christie for your comments. My sister was here last week from Missouri and brought me a gallon of her raw milk. She found a source about 6 weeks ago. It was delicious. I gave my daughter some and my son in law insisted it was spoiled and sour. I tasted it again and it was fine. Very creamy like I remember from when I was little. The info about the gut bacteria helped as I had heard things before but did not really understand. Now I do.
Hayfever can allegedly b treated with very local unpasturized honey!!!! I get ours from a farm about 60miles away.
Realmilk.com has unpasturized dairy’s listed. I joined a coop that delivers unpasturized eggs and cow/goat/camel milk to my door. 100% organic. 100% grassfed beef. 100% perfect reputation. And it’s all delicious!!!! I give my 2yo the raw egg yolks to eat and he loves it.
How local does the milk have to be. After close to a year on raw milk, my daughters hay fever is worse. We get our milk from several hundred miles away. Does that matter?
Have you tried RAW local honey? Check out her other posts on that. And the kefir, kombucha, and yogurt posts. You’ll find more info on Dr Mercola’s site & the WAPF site.
Praying for your little one!
My hay fever and “seasonal” allergies almost completely disappear when I don’t eat grains. I hope to start drinking raw milk soon so I can testify to how that affects my nose. I will say that regular dairy (especially ice cream) has me feeling cloggy and mucous-y within minutes (but not sneezy/drippy which is the primary symptom of my grain sensitivity.) I know it seems like a huge change, but my whole family feels so much better when we don’t eat grains. And it really isn’t any more labor-intensive than a WAPF-style diet, just maybe a bit more expensive because of the lack of cheap “filler.” Eventually I’d like to implement the GAPS diet for a good long while and then see how we react to grains, but for now we’re just grain-free most of the time (and then we pay for our “treats” through the nose, literally ;))
I agree with Lindsay 100 percent. Same situation here. Grains are usually the culprit.
Have you tried local honey and raw goats milk? Many children have an allergy to cows milk.. Goats milk is closest in composition to human breast milk and is easier to digest.
Makes sense!! I look at my children compared to others and not only are they much healthier as far as no allergies (well, youngest gets a rash from certain strawberries,) but they LOOK SO healthy! They drink lots of kefir and eat raw milk yoghurt, and I attribute that plus lots of butter, coconut oil, eggs, cream, wild pork and grassfed beef to their health. At the end of the day, I’m exhausted, but looking at my three angels every night makes every minute of work in the kitchen worth it. 🙂
@sara–that’s exactly how I feel. Some days, 90% of my “free” time are spent in the kitchen cooking real food for my family. It is a difficult task some days (even though I LOVE cooking!) but the payoff is SOOOO worth it!!
Now to find out how to get raw milk legally lol
This is great! My husband told me we’d have to buy a share of a cow to even consider getting raw milk, so we’ll have to get on that!
That doesn’t surprise me!
The reason we initially made the switch was because of skin allergies and my banishment of all things processed or far from its natural state. Thank you for the article.