Battle Lactose Intolerance By Changing The Time You Eat
I reduced my severe lactose intolerance with a time management diet.
Lactose intolerance, oh the horror! No longer can you enjoy the sticky sweetness of your favorite ice cream, nor can you savor the gooey goodness of mozzarella cheese oozing from your favorite type of pizza without fear.
Milkshakes? You can forget those! As autumn approaches and all your friends begin to enjoy their perfectly drizzled with cinnamon, pumpkin spice lattes with no consequences, you need to stock up on Lactaid instead.
Lactose intolerance is such a tricky foe. The ability to digest dairy products stem from a genetic mutation, yet, lactose intolerance is the condition where you either never had this mutation from the beginning, or you gradually lost it over time.
You begin to mourn the days where you could dig into your favorite ice cream, without the unfortunate events which occur at least thirty minutes later. But, what if I was to let you in on a little secret? You can reduce the severity of your lactose intolerance by changing only the times at which you eat!
Introducing My Best Friend: Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent Fasting is not a diet per se, but an eating pattern, where you eat for a specific period and fast for the remaining time. There are quite a few different styles that you can experiment with until you find the one which works well for you. In my case, I started with the beginning pattern and gradually transitioned to a more advanced one.
If you are a bit worried about trying this, I would recommend that you start with the 16:8 pattern. In this pattern, you eat for 8 hours in a day and fast for 16 hours. You can ideally skip breakfast, eat lunch and dinner, and start fasting or you can eat breakfast, eat lunch and skip dinner instead. Everyone’s bodies are different, so you might notice better results while skipping dinner instead of breakfast as I have.
The second pattern is the 18:6 pattern. You eat for 6 hours and fast for the remaining 18 hours a day. You can follow the same format as the 16:8 pattern, where you skip either breakfast or dinner. There are no rules except that your fasting hours must be consistent, not cumulative. That is, it does not work if you fast for 9 hours, eat a meal, then fast for another 9 hours to add up to 18 hours of fasting.
Let’s say that you’re a fighter, a warrior even. You want to challenge yourself from the beginning and strive to reduce that puny lactose intolerance as soon as possible! Then, I would recommend that you start with the 20:4 pattern. Fondly called: The Warrior Diet, you fast for 20 hours a day and eat for only 4 hours. I have the most success with this pattern and use the schedule of eating from 11 am to 3 pm.
While there are many different patterns that you can experiment with, the last one I would recommend is One-Meal-A-Day or OMAD. This pattern is quite challenging, where you fast for 23 hours and eat for 1 hour. If you are female, I would recommend that you try this at least once a week so that it does not interfere with your menstrual cycle. Interchanging fasting patterns is perfectly okay.
So, how does this help with lactose intolerance? How does intermittent fasting help your lactose intolerance to become less severe? The easy answer for this is fasting causes your body to change on a cellular and molecular level.
Intermittent Fasting And Lactose Intolerance
Intermittent Fasting kickstart a lot of changes in your body. It regulates your hormone levels, repairs your cells, boosts your metabolism, and modifies your genes. The effect that we are looking for is the increase in Human Growth Hormone (HGH)¹.
HGH is a key hormone produced by the pituitary gland and plays an important role in cell repair, growth, and body composition². Lactose intolerance is generally due to your body’s inability to produce lactase. Lactase is the enzyme that breaks down lactose in your small intestines³.
Though not fully proven in humans⁴, it seems that the boost in HGH levels from fasting encourages your body to produce more lactase than it would normally. For some people, this little boost in lactase production is all you need to eat that extra slice of pizza!
When Can I Expect Results?
Realistically, you will not be able to see results in one week. Though, if you keep at intermittent fasting, your HGH levels will gradually increase as time goes on. Everyone’s bodies are different, so it just depends on you.
After 6 months, I gained results in the severity of my lactose intolerance. After one year, I gained the ability to eat various levels of dairy without most of the negative side effects. Lactaid is a great crutch, but it is expensive. Gaining the ability to eat three slices of pizza instead of half a slice at no cost was the best thing that happened to me!
You can improve your lactose intolerance simply by changing the time you eat. How strange is that? This goes to show that our bodies will never stop being the strangest and most fascinating thing in our lives. I am very much looking forward to enjoying a nice pumpkin spice latte for the first time in years.
[1]: J Clin Invest. (1988 Apr). Fasting enhances growth hormone secretion and amplifies the complex rhythms of growth hormone secretion in man. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC329619/
[2]: Am J Clin Nutr. (2005 Jan). Alternate-day fasting in nonobese subjects: effects on body weight, body composition, and energy metabolism. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15640462/
[3]: NHS. Lactose Intolerance.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/lactose-intolerance/
[4]: S D Krasinski 1, B H Upchurch, S J Irons, R M June, K Mishra, R J Grand, M Verhave. (1997 Sep). Rat lactase-phlorizin hydrolase/human growth hormone transgene is expressed on small intestinal villi in transgenic mice.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9287976/
