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Jul. 5th, 2005 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katallisonToday's boring chapter in the Saga of the Aging Body:
So for the past few weeks I'd been experiencing chronic medium-grade distress in the digestive regions, which delicacy and kindness to readers forbid me from elucidating further. At first I just assumed I'd eaten something funky (entirely plausible, given the state of everything in my refrigerator); then I thought maybe I'd picked up a transient stomach bug. When it persisted, my inner Deranged Hypochondriac sprung to life, telling me that this was definitely colon cancer, which the gods were smiting me with as recompense for having chickened out on the Really Unpleasant Check-Up Procedure last year. (My inner D.H. is all about the guilt-tripping.)
And then, over the weekend, some vestige of a clue drifted into my brain, and I thought to myself, Self, I thought, this sounds exactly like the accounts and descriptions I've seen of lactose intolerance (which apparently can crop up suddenly in later life). So I immediately ceased all consumption of dairy products, and -- within 24 hours, le crud digestif had completely abated.
It could be, of course, that there was something else entirely going on with the innards, and it just happened to subside at the same time I stopped eating dairy products. So the final step will be to re-introduce the independent variable (I *knew* all those research methodology classes would come in handy someday) by picking a low-activity day and slamming down a couple of glasses of milk, and seeing if I experience a recrudescence, as it were (and boy, were it ever) of the Inner Distress. If so -- well, *dammit.* I've always loved milk and cheese, they're two of my foundational comfort foods, and I would be very sad to lose them. I'll have to investigate those Lactaid pills, I guess...
So for the past few weeks I'd been experiencing chronic medium-grade distress in the digestive regions, which delicacy and kindness to readers forbid me from elucidating further. At first I just assumed I'd eaten something funky (entirely plausible, given the state of everything in my refrigerator); then I thought maybe I'd picked up a transient stomach bug. When it persisted, my inner Deranged Hypochondriac sprung to life, telling me that this was definitely colon cancer, which the gods were smiting me with as recompense for having chickened out on the Really Unpleasant Check-Up Procedure last year. (My inner D.H. is all about the guilt-tripping.)
And then, over the weekend, some vestige of a clue drifted into my brain, and I thought to myself, Self, I thought, this sounds exactly like the accounts and descriptions I've seen of lactose intolerance (which apparently can crop up suddenly in later life). So I immediately ceased all consumption of dairy products, and -- within 24 hours, le crud digestif had completely abated.
It could be, of course, that there was something else entirely going on with the innards, and it just happened to subside at the same time I stopped eating dairy products. So the final step will be to re-introduce the independent variable (I *knew* all those research methodology classes would come in handy someday) by picking a low-activity day and slamming down a couple of glasses of milk, and seeing if I experience a recrudescence, as it were (and boy, were it ever) of the Inner Distress. If so -- well, *dammit.* I've always loved milk and cheese, they're two of my foundational comfort foods, and I would be very sad to lose them. I'll have to investigate those Lactaid pills, I guess...
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-06 04:48 pm (UTC)Lactaid, I'll reiterate, is not bad. I like it better than soy milk. Man - soy milk makes me sicker than real milk - just the *thought* of it makes my stomach all clenchy.
::shudders::
Luckily - I can have cheese for the most part. Sometimes it is possible to overdo the cheese, but I'd like to think that is just a function of overdoing it and really has very little to do with lactose.
Oh! And yogurt! I can totally have yogurt.