Is dairy bad for you?

Ever since our younger years, we have taken drinking milk for granted, either for calcium, or for a good night's sleep, or out of habit. We have never questioned milk as part of our staple diet. While dairy has immense benefits, what with protein and other essential nutrients, you may be surprised to learn that dairy is not for everyone. Your glass of milk every morning may not be doing as much good for you as you had thought. So could dairy actually be bad for you? While there is no correct answer to this question, like many types of food that are in grey areas, you have to see whether it suits you or not. Stalling of weight loss - If you have reached a weight loss plateau and can't seem to go below it, you may want to experiment with taking milk out of the equation. If you are used to downing your protein shake with slim milk, try changing that to water and see if it helps. In many cases, dairy just doesn't agree with a certain body type and removing it from your diet can make a difference. Improves strength and mass gains - if you are a heavy lifter, you could try drinking milk immediately post workout. In many cases it works for gaining body mass. Lactose intolerance - There is a widespread presence of lactose (a type of milk sugar) intolerance in many adults worldwide which seems to suggest that dairy may not be as ideal a food as we thought it was. Worldwide, we see that most people aren't adapted to lactose consumption after age four, when many of us lose the ability to properly digest lactose. Insulin response - Dairy spikes insulin more than most carbs do. So if you are suffering from the metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance where your waist size maybe disproportionately larger than the rest of your body, you could consider giving up milk for a while to see if it makes a difference. The metabolic syndrome leads to deranged metabolisms due to years of poor eating habits. So it cannot be pin pointed to dairy alone. But as it affects normal hormonal functioning it could be the cause of extremely oily skin, acne and other skin problems too. So if you have any of the above problems and you have been eating healthy in other aspects, you might want to cut down on dairy to see if it makes a difference. In the end, personal results matter most. Insulin response numbers mean little if your personal experiences corroborate that full-fat dairy promotes better glucose tolerance, better weight control, and more resistance to chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. On the other hand, there might be others for whom weight loss stalls after a couple of glasses of milk. Try as we might, we can't - nor should we - ignore our own experiences.