Milk & diabetes
Thursday September 29 2005 16:36 IST
Maneka Gandhi
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Diabetes is the fastest growing health problem in the world. Type 1 diabetes is the most common kind of diabetes among children but it also appears in adulthood and patients must take daily injections of insulin for the rest of their lives.
The pancreas is an organ that makes digestive juices and hormones. It produces hormones, like insulin, which regulate the use and storage of the bodys main energy sources, sugar and fats in the cells. The insulin-producing cells are called beta cells.
To understand its prevention, you have to understand type-1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is the result of the body attacking and destroying its own insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas. When these beta cells are destroyed, the body
cannot produce insulin. Type 1 diabetes is diagnosed.
When the body cant make insulin after a meal there is no insulin to open the sugar doors in the cells so the sugar cannot get into the cells. So the sugar accumulates n the blood and the blood sugar level gets much higher than it should. But the cells are starving to death in a sea of sugar. So they start to burn proteins and fats instead of sugar for energy, releasing toxins called ketones, which makes the blood acidic. So the person needs injections of insulin to open the doors and let the sugar into the cells for every meal they eat. This is type 1 diabetes.
Diabetes is neither a bacteria nor a virus nor any attacking cell. It is simply the name given to the process in which the body attacks its own beta cells. The obvious question, then, is: Why would the human body attack its own pancreas and destroy those beta cells the keep the body alive?
All scientific research points its finger repeatedly at cows
milk. How does the bodys immune system work? Your immune system is your bodys police force. It is their job to protect you from your enemies, bacteria, viruses, cancer cells, anything that is not part of your normal body. When a baby is born it has a weak immature immune system. The mothers immune system identifies bacteria and viruses and secretes antibodies to counter them. These antibodies are special protein molecules that are coded for a specific virus or bacteria. Her body supplies these antibodies in her breast milk. These antibodies, made of protein, pass through the stomach undigested and are absorbed through the intestinal wall intact right into the babys blood.
The cows proteins, meant for her baby calf, are fed to our children. We are releasing whole intact cow proteins into our childrens blood. However some maturing immune systems recognize that these cow proteins dont belong in the human body and so they start to make antibodies against them. The immune
system directs its immune cells, called T-cells to find and destroy these trespassers.
How can this cause type 1 diabetes? Some childrens beta cells make proteins that are very similar to certain proteins found in cows milk. If they become allergic to cow protein then because their own beta cells are so similar their immune systems become confused and attack not only the foreign cow-milk proteins, but also the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas. Research studies have shown that all people with type 1 diabetes have developed high levels of these particular antibodies. When the beta cells are gone, the body cant make insulin anymore.
What is the proof of what top scientists say all over the world? The incidence of type 1 diabetes in different countries directly correlates to the per capita consumption of dairy products in these countries. Those countries that drink little milk have a low incidence of type 1 diabetes. As the consumption of dairy products in
a country increases so does the incidence of type 1 diabetes.
According to the October issue of Diabetes, early exposure to cows milk may increase the lifetime risk of developing diabetes in infants with relatives who had diabetes. At 3 months of age, infants fed cows milk had a significantly higher immune response to cow insulin than infants who received the other formula or were breast-fed.
The link between drinking cows milk during infancy and the risk of developing diabetes has been strengthened by a study by researchers of the University of Helsinki who reported the findings in San Diego at the 59th Annual Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association. Immunologists found as soon as cows milk entered the body, the immune system would attack pancreas islet cells that make human insulin, which resembles bovine insulin, and would produce antibodies. At 2 years of age, 10 of 89 children getting cows milk had type I diabetes. Johns Hopkins Hospital
for Sick Children in Toronto has reported similar findings.
The evidence incriminating cow-milk consumption in the cause of type 1 diabetes is sufficient to cause the American Academy of Pediatrics to issue this warning, Early exposure of infants to cows milk protein may be an important factor in the initiation of the beta cell destructive process in some individuals. and The avoidance of cows milk protein for the first several months of life may reduce the later development of Type 1 Diabetes or delay its onset in susceptible people. (The American Academy of Pediatrics Work Group on Cows Milk Protein and Diabetes Mellitus, 1994).
The reason this happens in only some people, and not everyone, is unknown. Even though the process of beta cell destruction may take three to five years on the average, the onset of the disease usually appears to be sudden. The lifesaving treatment is very specific: replacement of insulin by daily injections.
Genetics can be
ruled out in an epidemic which is what Type 1 diabetes is. Rather than through genetic inheritance or a transmitted virus, the past 20 years of evidence has shown the tendency to run in families is largely fostered by parents teaching children to consume dairy products. When populations of people who are genetically similar have a different incidence of disease then something in the environment like food must be suspected as the cause. This is further confirmed when people migrate from an area of low incidence to high incidence. This phenomenon has been seen, for example, when Samoan children move to New Zealand and when Asians move to England. Finland, with the highest milk-consuming population, has 36 times more type 1 diabetes than does a country of low consumption, like Japan. A similar relationship has been found within a single country, for example, between 9 regions of Italy regions consuming the most milk have the most diabetes. In Puerto Rico less than 5 percent of
mothers breast-feed their children preferring cows milk formula. Type I diabetes incidence in Puerto Rico is 10 times the rate seen in Cuba, where breast-feeding is universal.
There has been a 10-fold increase in type 1 diabetes in European countries in the past few decades, in children under five years. This rise has been paralleled by an increase in milk intake. Studies comparing populations of people with type 1 diabetes with healthy individuals indicate the risk of developing type 1 diabetes is 5.4 times greater in high milk consumers (3 glasses a day) compared to those who drink less milk.
Dont drink milk. Dont feed your children dairy products. Especially if there is a family history of type 1 diabetes.
Anyone wanting to join the animal welfare movement write to the author at 14 Ashoka Road, New Delhi 110001 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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