Challenge 4: Dairy

Unlike wheat, I never really liked milk -- at least not on its own. Yet my diet has always revolved around dairy products. My mother will tell you that all I would eat as a toddler was Franco-American MacaroniOs, which were essentially mac and cheese from a can. These days I love cheese and butter and creamy decaf lattes. Yogurt is a staple for me as well, especially in my morning smoothies. I was hoping that dairy wouldn’t be one of the offenders, but I knew it was a strong possibility due to its prominence in my diet.

The best way to test dairy is in its truest form, which is milk. I bought a quart of Strauss organic whole milk, which is sold in a glass bottle. I usually prefer lowfat, but whole milk is recommended for a challenge test. Starting with breakfast, I downed a glass of it while also adding it to my amaranth porridge. I had no symptoms other than some more throat clearing, which may have been left over from the hay fever. Visions of future lattes danced in my head.

I then had another 10 ounces with my lunch. I was pleased to find that the Strauss organic milk was much tastier than milk I'd had in the past. Within the first hour, I felt a trace of a headache but it wasn’t really notable.

At 3PM, I sat in a meeting where I was being educated about one of our technical initiatives. I realized that I was having a hard time grasping the concepts, so I attempted to concentrate more. As I focused on my coworker’s face, I realized that I could hear what he was saying but that I couldn’t logically follow his sentences no matter how hard I tried. At one point, I felt like I was actually elevated a bit and looking down at him (in other words, spaced out). The brain fog was back, and it was in full force.

I made it through the meeting, and at 5 PM it was time for my third glass of milk. I gulped down the final 10 ounces and headed out to meet my aunt for dinner. Over a beet salad and a very tasty salmon dish (all modified by the nice chef at Sauce), I found it difficult to follow the anecdotes she was telling me. I also struggled to find certain words and lost my train of thought more than once during dinner. Through the fog, my answer was perfectly clear:

Dairy makes me dumb.

This all happened on Thursday, and the last two days I have been thinking about what I might have to give up: saag paneer, mac and cheese, my beloved lattes, aged gouda cheese, Paxti’s pizza, pumpkin pie. Of course, many of these things can be modified, but they won’t be the same. The good news is that my clarity was back the very next day.

After discussing this with my mother, I learned that I was allergic to milk as a baby and had to be given soy formula instead. I seemed to have outgrown the allergy by toddler age (as demonstrated by my penchant for MacaroniOs), but perhaps it just lay dormant for several years or manifested itself differently.

People have asked, “What if you have just a little bit of dairy? Can you have cheese? How about goat’s or sheep’s milk?” Right now, I don’t know. Those answers will require further testing. As I’m rounding off week 7, I’m realizing this is going to take me a lot longer than I initially thought. But I’m certain it will be worth it.