I’ve written quite a lot about food intolerance since I’ve suffered with a lot of digestive issues myself and needed to control them to optimise my own health. While I gave an overview of types of food intolerance in this guide, I’ve not covered lactose intolerance specifically.

A lot of people seem to report lactose intolerance, but it actually seems to be commonly misunderstood. Did you know, for example, that lactose intolerance is thought to affect only around 5-16% of people in the UK? A far lower number than I often see being thrown around on social media.

Because of these kinds of misunderstandings, a lot of people self-diagnose or follow overly-restrictive diets.

There was a point in time where I suspected that I had issues digesting milk. I didn’t know if it was due to a milk protein, lactose, or perhaps something else in my diet entirely, that I happened to consume at the same time.

While I have tried to reduce my cow’s milk intake for sustainability reasons anyway, I felt it was important, from a health perspective, to better understand what could be negatively affecting my body. So, I took a lactose intolerance test.

This article draws from my own experience as well as research into exactly what lactose intolerance is, why the rates vary among different populations around the world, how you can test to see if you actually have it.

But before we get started, here’s a fun fact: when I was younger, I thought that ‘lactose intolerance’ was ‘like toast and tolerance’ and was some kind of idiom that I didn’t properly understand yet.

Thankfully, I understand it now. So here we go.

As you will know if you have explored other articles on my blog, I am really interested in the topic of food intolerance.

Over a year ago, I discovered through a food intolerance test that I don’t tolerate milk well. My first food intolerance test through York Test gave me no more information than that. 

However, knowing that food intolerance testing of this kind tests intolerance to proteins in foods, and knowing that there are several types of milk protein, I went on a quest to find out more. 

My next food intolerance test (and the one that I would recommend to anyone) from CNS revealed my ‘milk’ intolerance to be to casein specifically. 

Since then, I haven’t generally consumed dairy products, and in particular, I have avoided buying and drinking cow’s milk.

Within the last month, I have bought and drunk cow’s milk again for the first time in at least a year. 

Read on to find out why I did this, as well as learn more about dairy intolerance and what’s really in the milk that we as a population consume so much of...