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What if you were told of a simple way to reduce your child’s chances of developing asthma and even allergies by almost half.
Wouldn’t you sit up and take notice?
Wouldn’t you listen very carefully and fall all over yourself to implement that strategy immediately?
Asthma, after all, is a life threatening disease. It is not just a minor inconvenience to everyday life.
An inhaler in your pocket is not comparable in any way to carrying around a pair of reading glasses.
Asthma affects a child’s ability to fully participate in life and may even threaten his/her life if an attack occurs in a place where medical help is not readily and immediately available.
The numbers of children suffering from asthma are staggering. Over 10 million children in the United States alone suffer from this life threatening illness. Any parent would be nuts unwise not to implement such a simple strategy if it could indeed reduce the odds of developing asthma by almost half.
So what is this simple strategy for reducing your child’s asthma risk?
A drug? A vitamin? A supplement or special nutrient of some kind?
None of the above.
Before reading on … remember that just because answers sometimes come in a brown paper bag doesn’t make them any less important or worthy of our rapt attention.
Children That Drink Raw Milk Have 41% Less Asthma
The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology reported on August 29, 2011 that children who drank raw milk had a 41% reduced chance of developing asthma. These same children had a nearly 50% reduction in hay fever as well even when other relevant factors were considered.
The large European study reported by Reuters Health earlier this month included survey results where parents answered detailed questions about their children’s milk consumption. 800 milk samples were collected from the households of those participating in the study.
Researchers linked the protective effects of raw milk to the fragile whey proteins BSA and alpha-lactalbumin which are destroyed by pasteurization.
It is important to note that children who drank raw milk that was boiled before drinking had no less asthma than those children drinking pasteurized milk.
Only completely unheated raw milk from farm to glass provided the protective effects against asthma and allergies.
What if You Are Afraid to Give Your Child Raw Milk?Â
Here’s the bottom line if you find yourself afraid of raw milk due to the tedious and misguided government warnings about this healthy whole food.
There is no record of raw milk ever killing a single child per review of the available literature over the past 12 years.
Did you get that?
Zero deaths.
Nada.
Nil.
Asthma, on the other hand, kills thousands of people each and every year and causes millions of annual visits to hospital emergency rooms.
What seems to be the common sense, obvious decision to you? Most people don’t trust the government about much of anything anyway (and with good reason), so why wouldn’t they be skeptical of government warnings about raw milk too?
As it turns out, more and more people really are ignoring government warnings about raw milk given that raw milk consumption increased by 25% in California alone in 2010 while pasteurized milk consumption shrank by 3%.
Thinking for oneself is truly a beautiful thing.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist.com
Source: The Protective Effect of Farm Milk on Childhood Asthma and Atopy, The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
First of all, I’m going to state that I’m not denying the potential benefits of raw milk. Pasteurization indeed destroys various enzymes and lipid/protein compounds which very may well be beneficial in preventing conditions such as asthma. Unfortunately, you cite limited studies in your posts, and draw far too many conclusions from the limited data available.
You’re only able to make your claim “zero deaths caused from raw milk” because that only involves immediate deaths due to raw milk consumption. What about exposing children to unsafe microorganisms and toxin in the drink?
Don’t try to tell me they don’t exist. The very study you cite in this article states “However, on the basis of current knowledge, raw milk consumption cannot be recommended because it might contain pathogens. (Loss et al, 2011)” Why would a study which reports data, which I assume to be accurate and untainted by fraud (unlike that which started the unsafe vaccine movement), that shows a clear negative CORRELATION (not causation) between increased raw milk consumption and incidence of asthma seek to deter its readers from drinking your proposed “miracle beverage”. Perhaps they’re funded by the Milk Giants who keep us unhealthy with their immoral pasteurization? Well even if they were, you shouldn’t use their work to support your opinions due to your stance on similar corporate giants.
Going back to fatalities from raw milk consumption, a simple search on almost any health-related database reveals thousands upon thousands of cases where dangerous bacterium or toxins have been discovered due to one reason or another. Yes, these might not be potent enough to kill in small doses, but no one knows just what lasting effects they have on the human body, much less in an infant undergoing one of the most critical stages in his or her neurodevelopment. Anything which might alter the oxidative/antioxidative levels in a human body must be viewed with caution.
If you’re not familiar with just how serious the consequences of increased reactive oxygen species levels are, I recommend you do some serious UNBIASED research on one of the most potent findings of modern science. Inflammation is both one of the almost infinite side effects and causal factors of oxidative stress, and has been implicated in common chronic conditions from diabetes to depression. Inflammation is also caused by our bodies immune system in fighting off foreign bodies introduced to our system.
Sure, pathogens in raw milk might not cause your child to die immediately, a month, or even 20 years later. But what happens if they do develop a disorder. Would you really be able to turn a blind eye to prevalent scientific evidence because of a few articles you read on a blog? If you feed your child raw milk and something does happen, would you truly be able to say “oh I did absolutely nothing wrong”? I know for a fact that I couldn’t. I know that I would wish that I had truly given both sides a chance and interpolated my own facts.
You pick and chose only what you want to get out of these studies, and refer to research done by a handful of institutions who share your same moral philosophy. While I am not saying everything you say is incorrect, I will say it is untruthful due to your blind eye towards anything you don’t want to hear.
The article, “Antibiotic Overuse: stop the killing of beneficial bacteria”, which you cited as your source of evidence for permanent antibiotic intestinal flora damage, advocates immunizations in its conclusions. How can you, in good conscious, focus so much attention on the drawbacks of vaccinations and the researchers who are proponents of them, yet cite articles that advocate their use?
Please don’t take this as me purely defacing your ideas and personally attacking you. I am completely for changing the careless way Americans use antibiotics, and truly believe that the path we’re on in this regard is headed for disaster. In terms of saturated fat consumption, I could absolutely care less what you put into your body.
But to convince so many of your readers that fats copious amounts of fat is great for the body, based off research from the early 1900’s and select studies offering sketchy evidence with no implied causality, means that you are not only putting them at risk, but their CHILDREN. Children who know nothing more than what their parents tell them. Saturated fat is not good for you. It has repeatedly been linked to colon carcinogenesis (cancer) amongst other things. If you need help finding scholarly articles on this subject, or that of anything similar, you have no business giving health recommendations to others (I recommend taking a good hard look at oxidative stress). Show me proof. Don’t give me theories that can’t be proven by science. Don’t tell me that science can’t be trusted because of their second agenda given to them by big corporations purely out for money. If you truly believe this, than don’t use their research anymore. If you don’t use research, than don’t tell people things like “Reduce your child’s asthma risk by 41%”. In no way can you state such definitive statements without it being an outright lie. I can do it to.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/c1x2582x12706447/
Here’s an article that shows an animal model showing increased risk of breast tumors with high levels of dietary fat, as well as information about the human implications. Well, I guess that means that we should eat absolutely NO fat at all. Wrong. Science shouldn’t be taken at face value. Neither should it be dismissed as false information because of your own personal views.
Hi Sarah – I feed my baby the WAPF cow milk homemade formula and I’ve been concerned about warming it up just prior to feeding him. He won’t take it cold and I’m wondering how that affects the live properties in the milk? He is 7 months old and I plan to transition him eventually to just plain raw cow milk when he is eating plenty of other foods for the nutrients, but for the time being the homemade formula is all he is really getting. So if I warm the milk before he eats it, is that bad? How does that affect the live properties in milk that prevent the asthma/allergies?
What is your child is severly asthmatic and allergic to dairy?
Reduce Your Child’s Asthma Risk by 41% – The Healthy Home Economist http://t.co/uU21SyLu
Want truth? Try this… http://t.co/M561InRy
"The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology reported on August 29, 2011 that children who drank raw milk had a… http://t.co/vQISGNBh
Let’s face it though, not everyone has access to raw milk. So all this is just frustrating to hear.
Reduce Your Child’s Asthma Risk by 41% – The Healthy Home Economist http://t.co/dTHWT6H3
Worked to heal my allergy-induced asthma!
How about giving our children human milk instead of cow milk and when they are past weaning age stop giving them milk altogether? Why do we feel as a society that we need to consume milk throughout childhood and adulthood? No other mammal on the planet drinks milk past infancy/toddlerhood. I would love to have seen this study with a control group of children who were breastfed as infants and drank no milk at all during childhood. I imagine they would be the healthiest of all. Breastfeeding has been shown to lower asthma risk along with a whole host of other illnesses.
I breastfed my first daughter until she was 9 months ( I added soy formula at 6 months, now I know better). She is now 7 and the Dr. told me she probably had asthma when I took her in cause of wheeezing (she was about 4). He gave me puffers to put her on and I didn’t like that at all! I started giving her cod liver oil and stopped the puffers after 1 or 2 uses. She has never wheezed again after starting her on the cod liver oil! She also has a dairy allergy which is prob only to pasturized dairy. Anyways she has never had a glass of pasturized milk and very limited amounts of cheese and yogourt which were given to her by grandparents. I just recently tried her on raw milk and she loves it. So far she has had no reaction and I hope it stays that way.
Your daughter is fortunate to have such an attentive Mother as you.