Health Benefits of Raw Milk
Few people are aware that clean, raw milk from grass-fed cows was actually used as a medicine in the early part of the last century. From the time of Hippocrates to until just after World War II, this “white blood” nourished and healed millions.
Clean raw milk from pastured cows is a complete and properly balanced food which you could live on exclusively if you had to.
What’s in it that makes it so great? Let’s look at the ingredients to see what makes it such a powerful food.
Proteins: Our bodies use amino acids as building blocks for protein. Depending on who you ask, we need 20-22 of them for this task. Eight are considered essential, in that we have to get them from our food. The remaining 12-14 we can make from the first eight in the chemical factories of our bodies.
Raw cow’s milk has all 20 of the standard amino acids. About 80% of the proteins in milk are caseins; reasonably heat stable but easy to digest. The remaining 20% fall into the class of whey proteins, many of which have important physiological effects (bioactivity). Also easy to digest, but very heat sensitive, these include key enzymes (specialized proteins) and enzyme inhibitors, immunoglobulins (antibodies), metal-binding proteins, vitamin binding proteins and several growth factors.
Lactoferrin, an iron-binding protein, has numerous beneficial properties including improved absorption and assimilation of iron, anti-cancer properties and anti-microbial action against several species of bacteria responsible for dental cavities. Recent studies also reveal that it has powerful antiviral properties as well.
Two other players in raw milk’s antibiotic protein/enzyme arsenal are lysozyme and lactoperoxidase. Lysozyme can actually break apart cell walls of certain undesirable bacteria, while lactoperoxidase teams up with other substances to help knock out unwanted microbes.
The immunoglobulins, an extremely complex class of milk proteins known as antibodies, provide resistance to many viruses, bacteria and bacterial toxins and may help reduce the severity of asthma symptoms. Studies have shown significant loss of these important disease fighters when milk is heated to normal processing temperatures.
Carbohydrates: Lactose, or milk sugar, is the primary carbohydrate in cow’s milk. Made from one molecule each of the simple sugars glucose and galactose, it’s known as a disaccharide. People with lactose intolerance for one reason or another (age, genetics, etc.), no longer make the enzyme lactase and so can’t digest milk sugar. This leads to some unsavory symptoms, which, needless to say, the victims find rather unpleasant at best. Raw milk, unlike pasteurized, has it’s milk sugar enzyme, lactase, undamaged, and so, may allow people who traditionally have avoided milk to give it another try.
Lactose provides milk’s natural complement of Lactobacilli bacteria with the raw material from which to make lactic acid (the sour taste in fermented dairy products). Besides having known inhibitory effects on harmful species of bacteria, lactic acid boosts the absorption of calcium, phosphorus and iron, and has been shown to make milk proteins more digestible.
Fats: Approximately two thirds of the fat in milk is saturated. Saturated fats play a number of key roles in our bodies: from construction of cell walls and key hormones to providing energy storage and padding for delicate organs, to providing a vehicle for carrying important fat-soluble vitamins
All fats cause our stomach lining to secrete a hormone (CCK) which, aside from boosting production and secretion of digestive enzymes, let’s us know we’ve eaten enough. With that trigger removed, non-fat dairy products and other fat-free foods can potentially help contribute to over-eating.
Consider that, for thousands of years before the introduction of the hydrogenation process (pumping hydrogen gas through oils to make them solids) and the use of canola oil (from genetically modified rapeseed), corn, cottonseed, safflower and soy oils, dietary fats were largely saturated and often animal based. Healthy cultures all over the world thrived on the use of butter, lard, tallows, poultry fats, fish oils, tropical oils such as coconut and palm, and cold pressed olive oil.
Now consider that prior to 1900, very few people died from heart disease. The introduction of hydrogenated cottonseed oil in 1911 helped begin the move away from healthy animal fats, and toward the slow, downward trend in cardiovascular health from which millions continue to suffer today.
CLA, short for conjugated linoleic acid and abundant in milk from grass-fed cows, is a polyunsaturated Omega-6 fatty acid with promising health benefits. CLA raises metabolic rate, helps remove abdominal fat, boosts muscle growth, reduces resistance to insulin, strengthens the immune system and lowers food allergy reactions. Grass-fed raw milk has 3-5 times the amount found in the milk from feed lot cows.
Vitamins: Volumes have been written about the two groups of vitamins, water and fat soluble, and their contribution to health. Whole raw milk has them all. Whether regulating your metabolism or helping the biochemical reactions that free energy from the food you eat, they’re all present and ready to go to work for you.
Nothing needs to be added to raw milk to make it whole or better. No vitamins. No minerals. No enriching. It’s a complete food. Heated milk must have destroyed components added back in—especially the important fat soluble vitamins A and D.
Minerals: Raw milk contains a broad selection of completely available minerals ranging from calcium and phosphorus down to trace elements.
A sampling of the health benefits of calcium, a ‘macronutrient’ abundant in raw milk includes: reduction in cancers, particularly of the colon; higher bone mineral density in people of every age, lower risk of osteoporosis and fractures in older adults; lowered risk of kidney stones; formation of strong teeth and reduction of dental cavities, to name a few.
An interesting feature of minerals as nutrients is the delicate balance they require with other minerals to function properly. For instance, calcium needs a proper ratio of two other macronutrients, phosphorus and magnesium, to be properly utilized by our bodies. Guess what? The entire array of minerals in raw milk is in proper balance to one another thus optimizing their benefits.
Enzymes: The most significant health benefit derived from food enzymes is the burden they take off our body. When we eat a food that contains enzymes devoted to its own digestion, it’s that much less work for our pancreas.
The amylase, lactase, lipase and phosphatase in raw milk, break down starch, lactose (milk sugar), fat (triglycerides) and phosphate compounds respectively, making milk more digestible and freeing up key minerals. Other enzymes, like catalase, lysozyme and lactoperoxidase help protect milk from unwanted bacterial infection.
Cholesterol: Milk contains about 3mg of cholesterol per gram—a decent amount. Our bodies make most of what we need, that amount fluctuating by what we get from our food.
Cholesterol is a protective/repair substance. A waxy plant steroid (often lumped in with the fats), our body uses it as a form of water-proofing, and as a building block for key hormones.
It’s natural, normal and essential to find it in our brain, liver, nerves, blood, bile, indeed, every cell wall.
Seriously consider educating yourself fully on this critical food issue. It could, quite literally, save your life.
Beneficial Bacteria: Through the process of fermentation, several strains of bacteria naturally present or added later (Lactobacillus, Leuconostoc and Pediococcus, to name a few) can transform milk into an even more digestible food.
With high levels of lactic acid, numerous enzymes and increased vitamin content, ‘soured’ or fermented dairy products like yogurt and kefir (made with bacteria and yeast) provide a plethora of health benefits. Being acid lovers, these helpful little critters make it safely through the stomach’s acid environment to reach the intestines where they begin to work their magic.
Some of them make enzymes that help break proteins apart—a real benefit for people with weakened digestion whether it be from age, pharmaceutical side-effects or illness.
Other strains get to work on fats by making lipases that chop triglycerides into useable chunks. Still others take on the milk sugar, lactose, and, using enzymes like beta-galactosidase, glycolase and lactic dehydrogenase make lactic acid out of it.
Raw milk is a living food with remarkable self-protective properties. Perhaps it is time to explore all the benefits of raw milk and begin living a healthy lifestyle. Explore what worked for countless generations before ours, and put it to work for yourself today.
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