Milk allergy or lactose intolerance?

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Milk allergy or lactose intolerance

You may tire of hearing it, but it’s true: mother’s milk is best for babies up to two years. Not only is mother’s milk tailor-made to give your baby all the nutrients she needs, it is also perfectly suited to her young digestive system, which needs time to mature to be able to digest all the food she will need later in life.

But what if your baby can’t take milk?

Sometimes, a baby can have a condition called milk allergy, which means that her body reacts to the proteins in milk which don’t normally cause that kind of reaction.

This isn’t usually a problem with mother’s milk, which is hypoallergenic, meaning it has very small concentrations of allergy-stimulating proteins called allergens, especially compared with other kinds of milk.

However, proteins from these other kinds of milk–such as cow’s milk–can be transferred into mother’s milk from the mother’s diet, causing a baby with milk allergy to react even to mother’s milk. In such cases, the mother needs to restrict or even avoid dairy products in her diet.

Such a baby can be given one of the available milk substitutes, including hypoallergenic (HA) formulas.

The protein and carbohydrate (lactose) in breast milk are well-tolerated  by an infant because their quality and quantity are suited to an infant’s developing digestive and immune systems.

Lactose intolerance is another condition that can restrict a baby’s intake of milk. It results from defective production of a substance called lactase, which is necessary to digest the main ingredient of milk, a kind of sugar called lactose. The undigested milk sits in the baby’s gut and is fermented by bacteria, filling the gut with gas, giving the baby colic and causing vomiting or diarrhea or both.

In babies, lactose intolerance is usually secondary–that is, it is usually caused by a primary condition like gastroenteritis or malnutrition. This type of lactose intolerance should resolve after the primary condition has been treated.

Much less common in babies is primary lactose intolerance, in which the digestive system simply cannot produce lactase. A baby with primary lactose intolerance will have a negative reaction to any milk product from birth–including mother’s milk.

Fortunately, this condition is very rare.

A baby with this condition needs to be given lactose-free nutritional substitutes to maintain growth and development.

Hypersensitivity or allergy?

Hypersensitivity or a hypersensitivity reaction is the immune system’s exaggerated response to foreign substances. These “foreign substances” can include germs, certain drugs, or the proteins in certain foods

As the body’s defense mechanism, the immune system is designed to recognize and destroy these substances which may be harmful to the body. However, a hypersensitivity reaction is so violent a reaction that it can be as bad for the body as it is to the foreign substance.

What’s more, particularly in one type of hypersensitivity reaction called an allergy, the immune system can react to substances that don’t normally cause an immune reaction. For example, a baby with milk allergy will have a bad reaction to the proteins in milk that don’t usually cause such a reaction. Normally, the immune system doesn’t react to these proteins because it does not recognize them; usually, the immune system never comes into contact with them. Instead, these proteins are broken down by the digestive system into their basic components such as amino acids before they are absorbed. These amino acids no longer have the “foreign” identity of the original proteins.

However, in the immature digestive system of a newborn, whole protein molecules are not broken down but are absorbed and allowed to come into contact with the immune system. The immune system is thus “sensitized” to the milk proteins–it learns to recognize the proteins and thus identify them as foreign. This will trigger an allergic reaction the next time the immune system encounters them.

This doesn’t happen all the time; it is likely that a baby who develops a milk allergy was already at risk for it because allergies run in the family. However, this does show how important it is to follow the advice of your pediatrician when it comes to your baby’s diet.

This is also one of the many reasons why mother’s milk is so perfect for the newborn baby. The protein and carbohydrate (lactose) in breast milk are well-tolerated by an infant because their quality and quantity are suited to an infant’s developing digestive and immune systems.

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