I was going to lay off all the vegetarian/vegan talk for a bit, because I feel as though we’ve really heard enough about it/I’ve talked enough about it recently.
However, I had a freak out at Starbucks this past Saturday, and I had to tell you about it.
As I was ordering my Venti skim milk (okay, my 2nd Venti skim milk), I was talking to the barista about being on a step down process and how on the times I’m allowed to have dairy, I need to dairy up.
That’s when another barista started talking to us.
(Stressed breathing.) Here we go. So stressful.
He said to be careful. He said that people who go vegan for a while sometimes have a very hard time transitioning back to dairy. He said that some people can become lactose intolerant. What?!
That can’t be true, can it?
CAN IT?!
It’s already been established that I am terrified to cut dairy out of my diet, ’cause I’m still not entirely convinced it’s bad for me. But, I figured I could undo any damage that three months sans dairy did to me. Even though I don’t believe it’s bad for me, I don’t think it’s so good for me that if I go without it for only three months, it’s going to do irreparable damage to me.
…Unless I can’t ever have it again.
The vegan barista started talking about friends of his who’d gone vegan, saying that once they tried to go back, dairy made them sick. I said I was only doing it for three months. That couldn’t possible be long enough for my body to make a substantial change, right?
He just looked at me like, “You never know.”
I sprinted to my seat and started googling this. I found a bunch of forums of people recounting their personal experiences of dairy making them very sick after cutting it out of their diet, then trying to put it back in. Many people got so sick, they decided to give up and just never put dairy back in their diet.
Scary! Who knows how I’ll feel at the end of all this, but right now, I’m thinking that I will almost certainly want to add dairy back in.
Making a lifestyle choice is one thing. Being forced into not being able to have dairy again – for the rest of your life – sounds like torture.
Here’s the good news. I’ve also talked to some people in my circle of friends who tried veganism, and went back to dairy just fine. I also talked to a couple of medical professionals that I met on my half marathon course on Sunday. They said that dairy may make you sick at first, but you can bring it on back into your diet if you do it slowly.
Apparently, here’s the deal. My understanding is we have this enzyme called lactase in our liver that helps us digest lactose. Once it doesn’t have to work on lactose anymore, it becomes dormant? I don’t know if that’s the right word, but you know what I’m saying, right?
It stops having a reason to work, and when you try to put it back in gear, it’s all “Hey! I’m not used to doing this. Get all this lactose away from me!”
The good news is, from everything I’ve grown to understand over the last two days, apparently it can learn to work again. Mine will learn to work again.
What a terrifying learning experience.