There’s nothing worse than being doubled over in pain after eating a bowl of your favorite ice cream. When your body can’t digest the sugars found in milk products, you end up paying for it with stomach pain and other symptoms. Unfortunately there’s no cure for lactose intolerance. However, you can manage your symptoms by using natural remedies and watching your diet.
This blog post explains lactose intolerance and introduces you to natural techniques you can use to manage your symptoms.
1. What Is Lactose Intolerance?
Lactose intolerance isn’t dangerous; however, the symptoms can be annoying and extremely painful. In order to digest the sugars found in milk, your body needs to produce certain enzymes. The less of the enzymes you have, the more symptoms you’ll experience. Depending on your level of intolerance symptoms may be mild or incapacitating.
Symptoms of lactose intolerance include stomach and intestinal discomfort with extreme cases bringing diarrhea, chills and other flu-like symptoms. Many factors go into dictating how severe the symptoms are such as the amount of lactose consumed, the amount of lactase enzymes your body can produce and the speed of gastric emptying.
Fortunately, lactose intolerance is easy to manage by making a few changes to your diet. In addition to natural remedies, you can also take advantage of milk alternatives. Check out these natural ways to manage lactose intolerance!
2. Use Goat Milk Alternatives
Goat milk formula is much easier on your digestive system compared to regular milk. Goat milk contains smaller concentrations of lactose, and the fat particles are much smaller. The difference in composition makes goat milk much easier for your body to digest.
Goat milk is rich in calcium, potassium, phosphorus, and biotin, so you don’t have to worry about missing out on any nutrients. You can find goat milk alternatives in foods such as yogurt, certain desserts, and cheese. Goat milk alternatives are easy on your stomach and taste great.
Goat milk also contributes to strengthening your gastrointestinal tract over time. When you consume goat milk, it becomes easier for your stomach and intestines to produce enzymes that help your body digest food more efficiently. Goat dairy products also contain a high concentration of prebiotic oligosaccharides which prevent inflammation in your stomach and intestinal lining.
3. Use Ginger To Relieve Symptoms
Ginger is an excellent natural remedy that will help you keep your digestive symptoms under control. Ginger has the ability to reduce bloating, gas and lower the amount of unhealthy bacteria in your digestive system. Ginger is also excellent for fighting nausea, vomiting, and intestinal colic.
If you start noticing symptoms from ingesting too much lactose, just chew on a piece of ginger root. It’ll be spicy at first, but you’ll notice the effects within minutes. You can also make ginger tea or buy ginger in capsule format.
4. Include Probiotics In Your Diet
Using probiotics is an excellent way to improve how your digestive system works. Probiotic supplements contain healthy bacteria that help your body with digestion. Adding the healthy bacteria to your body helps your stomach produce more digestive enzymes that make it easier to handle lactose.
Probiotics are also known for their ability to boost your immune system and battle symptoms from conditions like IBS. You can also use probiotics to fight heartburn and relieve pain from taking in too much lactose. You can find probiotics in natural foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut, and other fermented foods.
All in all, lactose intolerance can be tedious, but it can be easily managed. Using milk alternatives such as goat dairy products is a simple way to avoid the symptoms from lactose intolerance while strengthening your immune system. Adding fermented foods and probiotics also make it easier for your body to digest lactose. A few simple changes to your diet will help keep your lactose intolerance symptoms under control.