Now you can throw out your bottle of lactase supplement pills and cut up an apple or pour an apple juice instead. Shockingly simple ain’t it, and I’m sure it’s much better for ya 😉 But you’ll find this information hardly anywhere. I learned it almost by accident myself in an obscure book —
A simple online search shows that there is big money being made on the human suffering that is Lactose Intolerance, but this is needlessly so. The simple answers don’t make money, do they. There is even some debate as to whether Lactose Intolerance can even be considered a true ailment. Since more than half the people of the world are lactose intolerant, shouldn’t it just be considered “normal”? The statistics in Wikipedia tell us that except for a small percentage of people of European descent, most non-white people of the world are lactose intolerant. Some races even reach 100%. So who’s “abnormal”? The folks who can’t digest dairy products, or the people who can? What is the real problem? People who can’t digest dairy products, or people who insist on serving dairy products in everything, the way Americans serve cheese in practically everything? (Gawhead — I challenge you to find a sandwich or omelete on any menu without cheese in it, without special ordering it.)
And then you get pediatricians publishing articles recommending parents of lactose intolerant children try to get those children to eat dairy products anyway “for the calcium”. Well, there are other sources of calcium out there, and it is only a cruel parent (or doctor) who would inflict that kind of doubled over pain on anyone, much less their own child. But now there’s an answer worth trying.
If you’re like me, a lactose intolerant person living in a lactose-heavy cuisine-serving society, the odds are good you have a handy bottle of supplemental lactase (probably Lactaid®) rattling around in your purse or glove compartment, just in case you find yourself away from home when somebody serves you cheese or ice cream. But I no longer carry that rattly little bottle. Now I just reach into the nearest fridge for what I need.
A few years ago I stumbled on an answer that is so simple and direct, and frankly, God given, that I thought everyone would figure it out. But an extensive online search has shown that this is not the case at all!
I am just amazed at all the unique ideas and answers that have been bestowed on me by the Higher Power! Why me? Well, really only for one reason — to share them!
So I’ll tell you what happened. About 2-3 years ago, I discovered a book that changed my life forever. I had picked up a grocery store women’s magazine that featured a two page spread article on the next great (but healthy) weight loss plan. It was an intriguing article. It wasn’t just another low carb tracking method. Instead it sorted foods into an “A” category and a “B” category, and as long as you didn’t eat A’s & B’s together in the same meal, you lost weight. They gave you some sample category lists and sample menues, and sent you on your way.
Well that wasn’t enough for me! I wanted to know more, and I wanted to understand why it worked. So I read the fine print at the bottom of the article, realized it was based on a new book at the time, and I went searching on the book-author’s name, Eleonora De Lennart in my favorite online bookstore.
The book arrived, and I’m sorry to say, it is uhhhhhggly (and I don’t usually think of books as pretty or ugly). The cover is a naked male chest with the cold clinical title over it, “The BioChemical Machine”. Just what you want to give your ailing aging mother/grandmother suffering from food and medicine reactions. What were the marketers thinking?
But I opened the book. The first few chapters were absolutely stunning! Why this is not hawked as the main selling point of the book I’ll never know, but the author was a woman who had been crippled in a wheelchair, with rheumatoid arthritis, while still in her 30’s. One winter she found herself trapped in a house by a blizzard for several days with nothing to eat but milk & a large pile of apples, so that is what she ate. Apples & milk, milk & apples, for several days until the snow was cleared and she was freed from the house. But by then, her rheumatoid arthritis was beginning to feel better. She felt so much better in fact, that she continued heavy on the milk & apples after she left the house, and within just a few weeks, she was out of the wheelchair, and within a few more weeks, she was completely over the rheumatoid arthritis!
Say whuuut?
Wow, this was stunning. I couldn’t put down the book. Not content to merely cure her own rheumatoid arthritis, the author expanded her research into other fruits and food categories. She began sorting foods into the “A” group, Acidic, and the “B” group, Base. Her belief is that by never combining these foods in the same meal, you will never confuse your digestive system into chemical chaos, throwing your body off kilter into all kinds of chronic ailments, including obesity.
As an offhand comment, on just one line, she mentioned that her own mother no longer had her lactose intolerance after joining her on her diet plan.
Wellllll, that was the hook for me. Except for LI, I was in good health, as long as I stayed away from serious junk food… and definitely all cheese, milk, & ice cream.
I wondered….
Suppose I slice some cheese into a breakfast omelet, and have an apple on the side? (I like breakfast 🙂 but I had long ago given up the toast to the low-carb philosophy…) I gotta tellya, it took a lot of guts for me to try this, because the consequences were so dire if it didn’t work. But it did work! Wow! No side effects at all! I expanded my experiment – suppose I put two slices of cheese in my omelet, and have it with an apple on the side? Wow, it worked just as well! So the next time we ordered pizza, I tried it again. I hadn’t had pizza without checking my lactaid stash in years. But voila! It worked like a charm again. Again and again and again. And ya know, the taste of apples really complements pizza well.
Then I expanded – if it worked with plain raw apples, would it work with apple sauce, apple pie, or apple juice? Really, this part of the experiement began out of necessity, because a dish in a restaurant came smothered in cheese that I hadn’t expected to have cheese on it at all, so I scoured the menu and ordered a side of apple sauce. Phew! That worked too. Terrific! Ice cream on pie, as long as it was apple pie? Check. Glass of apple juice with two slices of pizza? Check. Sliced apple with a bowl of cereal and milk, something I hadn’t dared eat since my teenage years? Checkalooza!! Wow, this is so much fun! I have a part of my life back! A part of my youth! Memories of eating bowls of cereal are not just a memory anymore.
One caveat — a grilled cheese sandwich made from plastic-wrapped “American” over-processed cheese slices sometimes needs more than one apple. Perhaps a big glass of apple juice instead. I don’t know what it is about American processed plastic-wrapped cheese slices. And only one apple empenada after eating Taco Bell’s big taco salad with cheese & sour cream, doesn’t quite cut it either – I need at least two apple empenadas. ….Heh, so who’s complaining 😉
I am not the only one this information has helped. I have several friends I have shared this with who have come back later to tell me that apples worked for them too. Life feels good when you can help your friends with something so simple. One was an older gentlemen who, like me, took weeks to work up the nerve to try a sliced up apple in his bowl of cereal and milk. But he was happy to report it worked for him. He also returned the favor by explaining to me how to use garlic to avoid getting the flu, information that spared me within weeks that season, when I’d gotten exposed to someone with a severe case.
Another friend I had told my apple story to, came back a few weeks later and told me how her teenage niece had come to visit from out of town, and they were prepairing homemade ice cream for her son’s birthday party. The girl started moping around the house until her aunt asked her what was wrong. She explained that here they were making all this ice cream, and she wouldn’t be able to eat any of it. The woman thumped her head for forgetting that this girl had been severely lactose intolerant since early toddlerhood, but being they normally lived far apart, she had forgotten it. I don’t know why this girl didn’t normally carry lactase pills with her, but she didn’t. The aunt, my friend, told her, “I’m not telling you to do this, buuuut…. a friend told me how she eats apples to get rid of her lactose intolerance.” The girl, being young and brave, went right for it. She ate an apple, ate the ice cream, had no reaction, and had a wonderful time at her cousin’s birthday party.
Oh, who else has told me it worked for them…? I can’t remember off-hand, but there have been a few and when I do remember, I’ll come back and edit this post. I just love hearing & sharing these stories.
You could of course, experiment yourself and then come back and tell me if it worked for you. I think you’ll be very pleasantly surprised. And you could just read the book and see what other ailments apples will treat 🙂
‘Till next time,
PS – Since I first read the book, a second edition has come out, so now you have a choice.
