Loren Cordain thinks milk is filtered cow’s blood that contains almost all of the hormones and the protein building blocks, bioactive peptides, found in the blood of the cow. It seems possible for these to survive pasteurization and cross the intestinal barrier and enter our blood stream. Milk contains protease inhibitors so that the hormones and peptides are not destroyed by our gut enzymes. This is a good thing for a helpless calf that needs his mother’s hormones to grow quickly but not for humans.
Milk contains bovine insulin that manages to survive our digestive enzymes and cross the gut barrier to finally end up in our blood stream. The bovine insulin is different than the human kind and is flagged by the immune system as a foreign particle. Cordain says, even though the process is not clear, the presence of bovine insulin antibodies in our system is related to an increased risk for type 1 diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes is considered an autoimmune disease, the immune system destroys beta cells in the pancreas so that it cannot make insulin anymore. This means that people with type 1 diabetes must take insulin shots for the rest of their lives. Type 1 diabetes occurs mostly before the age of 10 in children. Milk has been identified milk as a major risk factor in several epidemiological studies. Especially if children have been exposed to milk and milk formula before the age of three.
Source: The Paleo Answer by Loren Cordain.
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Interesting article:
http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall/020700puthepancreas.htm
