Well, it's a subscriber only document but I plugged in Mclachlan BCM-7 into google and came up with some interesting things like this:
European Journal of Clinical Nutrition - A critique of Truswell's ...
The fact that BCM-7 is not just an opioid but an exceptionally powerful opioid .... McLachlan CNS (2001). beta-casein A1, ischaemic heart disease mortality, ...

And

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition - Further research for ...
The presence of BCM-7 and grain-derived diabetogenic factor(s) is likely reflected in ..... Rosenbauer J, Elliott RB, McLachlan C, Erhardt G, Giani G et al. ...

And then there's this... bet the references are very interesting.
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache...lient=firefox-a


More names to glean out of this for references:

Hi Ysabella, lots of interesting stuff here that I will have to read later - got to get ready for work.

With regards to A2 milk - there was a lot of stuff in the media but I don't think it got off the ground commercially. I will check. Being a budget shopper when it comes to milk I don't tend to look beyond the bulk 3 and 4 L bottles.

Yes, that was my meaning. I'm not saying I'm going to stop looking and stick my fingers in my ears and hum LALALALALALA at this point.


I can't say they have for me, either. But there are two I think have a very good place in my current diet, which are whey protein powder and cottage cheese.


Indeed. I don't worry about the dairy in the household. I've been considering dropping the half-and-half from my decaf Americanos, but that's because of calories.
And the thing is, even if we find that casein definitely has negative effects, there are so many other questions to understand how important it might be. How much does it take? Does it affect everyone? And how many other foods do something we don't realize?


Nobody is suggesting that everyone should drink it.

Thanks, Michelle H!

Really? I get an entirely different impression from watching TV, listening to "pop" health icons talking. You'd think you will crumble into a pile of skelletal dust if you don't consume a quart of it a day.

As you can see now, hopefully, there's a lot of things about milk that are questionable yet they never make it to the popular news outlets. Yet any hint that dairy might have a favorable outcome in something and it is yodelled from the tops of buildings. It's just like the low-fat/low-carb diet wars.

At least we have the Internet now and we can start comparing notes and doing some investigation ourselves and not wait until the industry funded groups decide to share the bad news with us.

So, looking at some stuff today. Regarding diabetes: This study (PDF) found casein was possibly diabetogenic, but in some cases, protective:


So, wheat appears to have more of an influence, or maybe wheat rat chow.

The 'Critique of Truswell's' thing was a review, and someone sent a letter to the editor about it. None can be viewed without a paid subscription. Here is the Abstract of what he wrote. I gather from another reference that he didn't feel it held up. It is hard to prove things from vast sweeping epidemiological reviews.

Regarding the Czech cows, that was mostly about how to type cows for what kind of casein-milk they will make. The science they referred to was Elliott's epidemiological reviews around 1999 and McLachlan - McLachlan was inspired by Elliott, basically. The Czech article also said:


Here is some McLachlan-related stuff: This NZ epidemiological review was mixed about A1 (but felt further study was warranted), and later McLachlan responded to it. Both are a good read. Neither is an actual clinical study, however. And since we always want to know funding and so on, all of that is funded by milk companies, and McLachlan himself started the whole A2 thing and founded the A2 company. Apparently he has passed away.
I couldn't find anything about the Campwell thing in any "Journal of Atherosclerosis" anywhere so far. The studies that supposedly support those findings are a combination of this abstract of a French study (I haven't found full text) linking the casein to tyrosyl and this LDL study that discusses a possible role for tyrosyl in LDL formation. It's a bit over my head, so I'm going to leave it aside for now and come back to it (especially if I can find the French thing).

It doesn't seem that major though. There was one study about LDL in rabbits showing that casein caused hypercholesterolemia (the action having to do with blocking cleaning it out, not creating more). Now, I can't get the full text on this without paying, but apparently casein does cause hypercholesterolemia in rabbits, but not rats or humans. Here's an abstract regarding humans.

I want to come back and read this later, it looks like a good primer on opioid peptides: Neuropharmacology of Endogenous Opioid Peptides.

Also interesting: Evidence That Intermittent, Excessive Sugar Intake Causes Endogenous Opioid Dependence



So maybe what's addictive is...any food you really enjoy.

Oh, well, I couldn't tell ya. I don't watch TV, just DVDs.


If you say so. I'm not sure what you mean by "questionable." Are you trying to illuminate my apparent darkness somehow?


McLachlan started the A2 industry himself, so I hope you're considering his findings with a grain of salt. They were merely searching for correlation anyway - not a very solid scientific basis for making assumptions. Whether he even found a solid correlation is not wildly clear. Meanwhile, newer research hasn't found much.

Heh... after all the stuff I've found for you, and you found yourself, you don't find anything in there that calls dairies healthiness into question?

Ok well, have fun with your explorations.

If I have learned one thing from researching various nutritional topics, it's that people typically try to cause panic about foods...to make money selling some other food or product. People selling stevia spread dark hints about aspartame online for years (still do). People peddling herbs write alarmist pamphlets about Big Pharma. That sort of thing.

You can call anything "into question." You can do an epidemiological study on a wide swath of countries to try to prove clown noses cause cancer, find a minor correlation of clown nose sales and cancer incidence, and then fire off some press releases about how "links have been found" and "clown noses have been implicated." Then, start your company selling organically produced alternative clown nose substitutes. Step 3: Profit!

I have a high standard of proof, and I won't apologize for it.

What is your standard of proof? Tell me, I'm combing through pubmed, pulling out research published in mainstream journals that cost $300 bucks a year to subscribe to. You must indeed have very lofty standards.

Well anyway, you and your standard can have fun together because I'm getting a bit tired of the condescension that seems to come along with attempting to have a conversation with you.

Enjoy.

I'm with ya Ysabella, I really am! However... First, I am not convinced by the 'general' warnings about dairy, MSG, aspartame, but surely you must recognize that if any industry has an iterest from a purely money interest it must be Big Pharma? From my own research, it is clear to me that the people behind high cholesterol drugs and COX-2 inhibitors are being less than honest... Not to appear counter-culture as a rule, I am not convinced of the general approval of 'organic', but you seem to give 'Big Pharma' a pass that they really don't deserve. If anything, by what I belive to be your yardstick, Big Pharma is more suspect by reason of the where the money is. Who is peddling the 'cure' for big bucks?



Ok, but where is the money? BIG PHARMA! By way of money, where the money is (Big Pharma, if you haven't guessed ) is where you should apply the most pressure. Of course, IMHO.

Regards

When reading studies: in vivo is far more informative than in vitro; human test subjects are more informative than animals; double-blinded studies including controls are best; funding is something of a consideration (if the info is available); the more hard measurements, the better; subjective data points are very hard to draw safe conclusions from; read the full text whenever possible; don't draw major conclusions from abstracts (although realistically as a layperson I'm not planning to subscribe to piles of $300 journals).

When reading non-studies, I bear in mind this quote attributed to JFK: "Where there's smoke, there's somebody working a smoke machine."


Is it because I said I don't watch TV? I don't think it makes me somehow wonderful. I'm just too cheap to get cable and too lazy to put up an antenna.

Meanwhile, I'll step into the hall closet to secretly make out with my hot, sexy standards.

Ah, trying to get me to let down my guard. Well IT WON'T WORK! *takes defensive karate stance*


I honestly don't get you here. Has an interest in what? Do pharma companies run dairy cooperatives? Every industry has an interest in money, naturally.
Do you mean when it comes to research? Sadly, there isn't a lot of pure research these days. Some industry is paying for it, usually. The government pays also, but they have an agenda, too.



Pharma companies do some bad things, yes. But there isn't one giant global medico-fascist complex. Those companies compete against each other, for one thing.
There are a lot of good drugs that come out of the system, however. Gleevec, a recent molecular leukemia drug, is keeping my father-in-law alive.


What is it you think Big Pharma is trying to do?

I dug a little into gluten while J was giving the baby his bath earlier, and I want to park those here before I shut down for the night:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_exorphine

I searched on A5 -
This study felt in its conclusion that gluten has effects outside the colon, due to another study that showed a postprandial insulin response.
This is the abstract for that study, saying that injected and oral gluten exorphins A5 and B5 both generated an insulin response. So that makes sense.

So gluten seems to be interesting with regard to diabetes.

One quick abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/e...4&dopt=Abstract
That helps describe the peptides a bit. A5 is the strongest and hits the enkephalin receptors. This makes me realize that I don't know what receptors BCM-7 reacts with, so I should check that out.

Here's one small one to do with autism: urine peptides. However, they feel their conclusion is weak, as the results varied by individual more than anything else. More studies are needed.

I wish they'd write these things in a way that didn't make my brain shut down

I'm interested in the A1 and A2 casein info, since I'm casein intolerant. I was only tested with cow's milk and have experimented a little with goat dairy products to gauge my reaction - nothing noticeable so far. Would like to try sheep and buffalo as well. I figure since goat's milk is A2 mainly, and it's known as the "nanny milk" due to it being aggreeable to most mammals, I'll have better luck with it. Cross fingers, 'cos it's nice to have cheese now and then. Haven't tested it much as of yet.

Interesting anecdote...I don't find goat creates cravings for me. It's self-limiting, unlike cow's milk cheese (for me). I can eat a whole block of cheddar in one sitting, whereas I can have a few slices of goat cheddar and feel satisfied. I also don't get a little "thrill" in my gut when I smell goat cheese. I do with cow's milk cheese.

I don't think we need to panic about milk, but at the same time I don't think it should remain on its pedestal.

One thing I'd love to know - when we began domesticating animals, which were we primarily using for milk? My suspicion would be that we began milking goats and sheep, since they are small and fairly easy to round up (esp. with a canine partner) and require less space. Wonder where I could find this out? I also wonder if our processing of cow's milk alters the casein in such a way to make it an irritant to some of us...is there a difference with raw milk?