 The reasons you should avoid most dairy at all costs. Now, you'll notice that I said most dairy, which does mean that not all dairy is bad. But here's the thing. Dairy products in the United States come from a breed of cow, such as a Holstein, which contains a highly inflammatory milk protein called casein A1. Now, casein A1 is a lectin-like protein, and it's actually caused by a mutation in cows' genes in Northern Europe about a thousand years ago. It wasn't always this way. Most cows, ancient cows, have a gene that makes casein A2, but this gene makes an aberrant gene called casein A1. Now, in fact, in my practice, most people who think that they're lactose intolerant, in fact, are actually reacting to the casein A1 molecule, not lactose. So, you don't have to give up yogurt or cheese. You just have to know to choose the right dairy products, the ones that are free of the casein A1 protein. Now, there are cows that still exist, most are in Southern Europe, that make only casein A2 in their milk, a much safer protein. The Gern Z-Cow is one example, and the Swiss Brown Cow is another. There's also a Belgian Blue Cow. Interestingly enough, there is a cow in the United States called the Jersey Cow because it makes half casein A1 and half casein A2. Luckily, in the United States, we now are beginning to see products made with A2 milk, and they're labeled A2 on the carton, and they're more and more and more available. Now, these milk products are much closer to what our ancestors would have consumed. Now, if you want more information about this topic, here's my episode 176 of my podcast. I talk with the Alexandres, one of the only A2 dairy farmers in the U.S. Now, you might ask if this stuff is so good for us, why aren't there a lot of dairy farmers using A2 cows? Unfortunately, the Holstein Cow is much hardier and gives more milk, so that through the years, the Guernsey Cow, which is the best cow for A2, has been put out to pasture because it's not as hardy and it doesn't give much milk. And so, unfortunately, most of the milk in the United States is from a Holstein and it's the wrong cow. Now, that's an important point. I have lots of my patients say, I drink or I use organic milk. It's grass-fed milk. Isn't that okay? And the answer is no, because most of our cows in the United States make the wrong form of milk. Now, is milk that's A2 good for you? Well, no, because milk is half sugar. Remember, milk was designed to make baby cows grow. And so, you see these Got Milk campaigns out there that tout a daily glass of milk is good for you? That's absolute nonsense. You can get all the calcium you need by eating broccoli, sardines, or even tahini. And your vitamin D, you can get with a great dose of sunlight, which you should be out in without sunscreen in the morning sun and a vitamin D supplement. Also, milk, regardless of where it comes from, is loaded with a growth factor called insulin-like growth factor one, which is designed to make baby cows or baby goats or baby sheep grow quickly so that they won't get eaten by wolves and predators. We don't want to grow quickly In fact, human milk actually has much lower levels of insulin-like growth factor. Now, here's the good news. That insulin-like growth factor is water soluble. So, when you make cheeses from casein A2 cows like goat cheeses or sheep cheeses or buffalo milk cheeses, then the insulin-like growth factor is gone. And so, that's why I'm such a big fan of using sheep and buffalo mozzarella cheeses in the diet. In fact, interestingly enough, one of the common factors of most of the blue zones, those people in the world that have incredibly long lives, one of the common factors is that they almost all consume goat and sheep products as part of their daily routine. Now, there are plenty of other non-cow options. So, the goats, sheep, and buffalo. There's a pretty readily available buffalo milk cheese in the United States called Bouff B-U-F. Bouff comes from Uruguay, but you can find it in a lot of grocery stores now. It's quite cheap. Most buffalo mozzarella comes from Italy. Do realize that in Italy, the vast majority of buffalo mozzarella comes from the region south of Naples. And in Italy, it is supposed to be consumed within one or two days of being made. You can imagine that the Italian buffalo mozzarella cheese that you get in your grocery store are not just one to two days of age. So Uruguay is a lot closer, and try it. You'll be amazed that they make some pretty doggone good buffalo mozzarella and yogurts. Sheep's milk yogurt and cheeses are widely available now. You can get sheep's cheeses in Costco. Trader Joe's has a sheep milk feta cheese called Pastures of Eden. Beware most cheeses labeled feta cheese are actually made from cow's milk, so please read the label looking for sheep or goat on your feta cheese. Goat milk cheeses, ice cream, butters, and yogurts are becoming widely available. Trader Joe's has a very inexpensive, great goat milk yogurt. We're increasingly seeing normal tasting goat cheeses. There's a goat cheddar now. There's a mozzarella. The good news about these cheeses for people who've been turned off from goat cheeses, they don't taste goaty. In fact, you can fool your friends and family, but still get all the benefits of goat cheeses. And last but not least, goat and sheep cheeses, about 30% of all the fat in these cheeses are medium chain triglycerides, MCTs. And you know how great MCTs are for your health. There are dairy alternatives. Coconut milk, coconut yogurt, coconut ice cream is probably your best option. There is macadamia nut milk that I like a lot, but be careful. Companies are trying to give you a creamy texture in their milk products. And more and more, companies are adding pea proteins to these non-dairy milk products, to these non-dairy ice cream products, to these non-dairy yogurt products. I have nothing against pea protein isolate, which has had the lectins removed. But pea protein is loaded with lectins that I see patients react to all the time. So you've got to be a very careful label reader. And so if you see something that sounds great, like macadamia nut milk, that sounds great, please look at the list of ingredients. And if you see plain old pea protein, don't buy it, there's other alternatives. So you can have dairy products, but be careful. My patients react all the time to American cow melt products because of KCNA1. Get KCNA2 products either from southern European cows or, more safe, use goat, sheep, or buffalo melt products. And you won't have the gut discomfort that comes from American dairy. If you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast, you're definitely going to want to see this one. So what happens when you remove sugar? People are absolutely shocked when their dark spots start going away.