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dude, that sucks. i don't know how i'd handle it if i became lactose intolerant. i've become addicted to my piece of stinky cheese with crackers after working out.

Have your gall bladder checked...years ago I thought I was lactose intolerant after I ate ice cream & had a bad stomach attack. It happened every time I ate ice cream. It took an attack when I hadn't ate dairy to get me to the dr...where I found out that the fat in the ice cream triggered a gall bladder attack. Just a thought....

What a horrendous situation Jamie....
...but to add to dmaria's post; you might be okay!!!

I have never been actually diagnosed with lactose intolerance but I'm almost certian that I have it. Both of my parents are; and the "troubled tummy torture" you speak of is something I can relate to entirely.

There may be hope though:
I aint no doctor but Marina's article makes sense to me as someone who struggles with acid and milk stomach problems:
I can eat all kinds of cheeses, small portions of yogurt, and small portions of gelato/ice cream.

It seems to me as I've battled with this and troubleshooted some meals that the only things that really make me sick are COLD glasses of milk, EXTRA CREAMY ice creams/gelatis/frozen yog.

I don't know if some people just have it worse than others but this is what I've discovered over time...

....to shed some light on your dooming article (??) :D

Coming from an asian family (90%+ of asian adults are lactose intolerant) I've been really interested in it.
As for the use of lactaid pills, I think they are most effective with people who have been lactose intolerant since they were young children? I don't know the genetics of it, but I'm thinking it might be similar to the different types of diabetes (being insulin deficient vs non-responsive to insulin).
Anyhow, I'm not entirely lactose intolerant, but i think it helps when the dairy isnt the main part of my meal. Or if I've had a good amount of other foods aside from dairy beforehand? Who knows... I seem to be sensitive to yogurt, even though people claim the active cultures shouldn't be a problem.
Keep us posted!!!

You poor thing.

i think you may be misdiagnosing yourself with lactose intolerance if you are suffering from eating such small amounts of cheese - talk to your doctor! is always best to check these things anyway.
i have it myself and only feel symptoms if i drink more than one glass of milk at a time, eat ice cream, or eat food with any type of heavy cream. sour cream, cheese, and yoghurt are all fine (though i have never eaten such huge amounts of them to check if a certain amount is a limit :)
lactose pills work for me, but i have to take a lot to see the difference. i take at least 3 if i plan on having a couple of scoops of ice cream. (make sure to eat them before the food)

Take mepolo's advice; check out the gall bladder.

I am pretty sure I am misdiagnosed lactose intolerant. It's all over my medical chart that I am lactose intolerant, but I can eat ice cream and drink organic milk without problem. Problems surface when, in the extremely rare occasion, I eat pizza and drink milk that is not organic. Even Lactaid milk gives me the runs.

My mother could not drink cow's milk at all so her father bought a goat with kid for her to drink. Each morning, she grudgingly drank a cup of "stinky" milk straight from the goat.

The doctor told me to stay way from all soft cheeses. Hard cheeses are okay, as well as yogurt.

I'm glad I don't really care for cheese, if I indeed have a funky type of lactose intolerance. I feel terrible for you and hope it's temporary or psychosomatic. I tend to weigh my desire versus outcome when I know something will gives me the runs. I push the envelope quite frequently.

@LoFromChi and @mepolo, Interesting points about the gallbladder/fat angle. My wife had a similar hypothesis.

Thanks for sharing this Jamie. I've been lactose intolerant since I was born, and spent years meticulously avoiding dairy products of any kind. After realizing that my quality of life suffers without SOME dairy, I've been experimenting for the past two years with eating it again.

I've found that I can have some about once every week or two (a pizza or other cheesy meal, dessert, etc...) with some lactaid and be OK. I tend to go on giant dairy binges while on vacation, and after about a week of eating it every day the dairy builds up in my system to the point where I get sick every time I eat, whether or not the food contains dairy. After detoxing from dairy after my trip, my system returns to normal.

Another point I'd like to make is that I have read the comments of many people (experts, authors, random people) who claim that lactose intolerance does not exist, or that "almost everyone can tolerate XYZ amount/type of dairy." Well, I'm here to tell you that it's real, very uncomfortable, and there are a lot of people who genuinely cannot tolerate a giant glass of milk. In my personal experience, it is not temporary, psychosomatic, and not every lactose intolerant person is exactly the same. Thank you. **steps off of soap box**

I really look forward to reading more posts about this issue!

even thinking about a tall glass of milk makes my stomach hurt...
i am a fellow sufferer, so let me welcome you to the club. ;)
this ought to be a pretty interesting series of forthcoming articles.
keep your head up...(and go talk to your doctor too)

Oh gosh, I became lactose intolerant in college after barely having dairy for a year. It was horrendous, mostly because I would forget what kinds of foods have dairy in them. I once slurped down two portions of chicken alfredo without a thought and paid for it later. At one point, I was so lactose intolerant I couldn't even eat chocolate.

Buy Lactaid Pills at Costco - it's a steal!

have you gotten tested? I had gastritis for years, and after finally getting rid of it, thought it was coming back. It wasn't. I'm developed a milk allergy, not a lactose intolerance. And i adore cheese. In all its forms. My breakfast used to be yogurt, my salads all had dairy, my pasta was rich in milk cream. I have since started experimenting with tofu and soy based cream. I miss lattes the most... but soy milk makes me sick too.

If you can't have dairy, asian is the way to go, imho!

Hope you are ok. I often have problems if I "mix" multiple dairy products at one meal, like your overboard Ukranian meal. Sounds like it was delicious, but man, that's just askin' for trouble!

Not sure this will help but I had a similar onslaught of lactose intolerance that seemingly came out of the blue for about a month or two and it eventually went away. It seemed to be stress related, so if you can eliminate any excess stress, do it and hopefully it will alleviate this horrid affliction.

My husband is lactose intolerant and I recently started making him ice cream with lactaid milk. I am also about to embark on making cheese... I started making ricotta with lactaid milk, but it was very sweet and he doesn't like ricotta. I bought some stuff to make mozzarella... and i got lactaid drops that I can use to make heavy cream lactose free...

I've heard that cheddar cheese has no lactose :) i totally feel your pain though

What always killed me was hot milk. I have to have soy milk in a latte. Try a good (sold refrigerated) probiotic regime to see if it helps.

Not to depress, but my father thought he was lactose intolerant, turned out it was kidney cancer. (although gall bladder problems are more likely based on your description)

Don't self diagnose.

I've been lactose intolerant since birth. My mom said I would puke up milk immediately and gave me rice milk instead. But the intolerance has changed throughout my life. As a child, (post rice milk drinking stage), I took in lactose like a champ. No problems. As a teen, things started to get funny again, I drank virtually no milk in middle and high school but would still have cheese with no problems. I ate ice cream, sour cream, in small doses with little tummy aches. If I did have milk it would be awful. I now can have almost anything I desire. If I have a really large glass of milk, or more than 1, I get some pains, but that's about the extent of it. It has been said that allergies can be depleted if taken in small doses, depending on the strength of the allergy. (I heard somewhere that they're trying to give children with peanut allergies very minuscule doses of peanuts.) So I continue to have dairy products and ignore my symptoms hoping I'm curing myself or something, but who knows, it could get worse again later.

@berzerker - any pasteurized milk or cream has been heated up.

Also, as others have mentioned, gallbladder is a possibility. What exactly happens when you experience your "stomach" problems? It is cramping/nausea and diarrhea or are you having pain near the uppermost part of your stomach? When my gallbladder decided to crap out on me, eating cheese did trigger symptoms even when other foods did not and I didn't have the clasic right upper quadrant paint, but rather intense pain just below my sternum.

My daughter takes a supplement once a day for her lactose intollerance and can have all the dairy she wants. It's called Digestive Advantage, and it's sold at most drugstores. Here's a link to their website: http://www.digestiveadvantage.com/

like previous posts, check the gallbladder! i used to get excrutiatingly sick after eating dairy or moderately rich/fatty foods.. turns out the little guy shut down. they took it out, and (while it took a little while) I can now eat all the cheese and cream in the world! yay!

Yes, get tested.
Most GI disorders present the same symptoms so it's very easy to jump to conclusions.
We assumed the same thing (lactose intolerance) with my husband, turns out he had a parasite which caused such irritation and inflamation which in turn developed into an infection in his intestines, which could only be verified by a colonoscopy, but there was a trip to the ER first and two CT scans. After about $9000 in medical bills, largely covered by insurance, but we were still out almost $3000 out of pocket (thanks to yearly deductibles and bc hubby got sick in Dec and Jan, so two different insurance years).
The infection and parasite were easy to clear up with anitbiotics, but recovering from a ravaged digestive tract took several weeks of restricted diet as we tried to ease back into eating, suffer a set back, ease back into it, change how/what we ate, etc. Feared the worst (cancer, crohns, celiac, ibs, etc). All tests are neg. thank god.
Anyway, it's a very long story, but if you haven't confirmed LI, you might want to. Just to rule out anything else.

I also take Digestive Advantage on the recommendation of my gastroenterologist and find that it helps tremendously.
You can be lactose intolerant and still eat some cheeses. Parmesan cheese and bleu cheese are not a problem for me. I can also eat most feta cheeses. Some feta is made with cow's milk and others are made with goat's milk. Go for the goat's milk varieties.
Sour cream is a killer. I had one tiny taste of the cheesecake my husband ordered for dessert and paid the consequences.
My son, also lactose intolerant, can't tolerate chocolate, either. Poor boy.
I can't eat quality ice cream. But, when I crave a little treat, I have ice cream from McDonald's. It never bothers me. I assume that it must be soy-based.

There's no lactose in cheese. Cheese is made from milk protein, and any remaining lactose that contaminates the protein is the first thing to be degraded by the Lactobacillus that ferments the milk.

You may have a milk allergy. But it t'ain't lactose intolerance.

Dear Jamie,
(I apologize ahead of time for this long post, but I'm talking about a cure here)
Have you ever heard of Kefir? I'm talking about home-brewed Kefir, not about the sterile glorified yoghurt that is sold in supermarkets and health food stores under the same name. Real Kefir is brewed from Kefir grains which are popcorn-sized colonies of about 20 different bacteria and yeasts, lactobacillus included of course. A typical serving of home brew delivers a billion or more vital, active cultures, complete with their own fuel source, which over time out-compete and replace undesirables, completely changing the microorganism profile in your gut . I started home brewing because I read that Kefir can reverse sudden-onset lactose intolerance, and for me at least it has (most importantly naturally and cheaply, with a host of other health benefits to boot!). A colony of live Kefir grains costs less than $20, can be purchased from many different sources all easily found on google, and since they technically can never die, when properly cared for can be willed to your great-great-great-great grandchildren... they're just that awesome. A serving size is about 8oz and will require about 10-12oz of milk to brew (the grains will use some volume of milk to grow and replicate), so considering the cost of the materials this works out to a dollar or under per day for a lasting solution. All of this can be maintained in under five minutes per day. Start out brewing with un-homogenized goat milk (no lactose and a different whey protein structure which may help more immediately with your symptoms) and after a couple weeks drinking this, try brewing from whole, UN-HOMOGENIZED (preferably raw) cow's milk and see if you can tolerate it. If not, back to a couple weeks more on the goat's milk kefir then repeat the process. Once you can handle full servings of cow's milk kefir, then move on to DUH-DUH-DUH... uncultured dairy. Can you eat the inoculated yogurt sold under zippy brand names in the stores? Sure, if you want to waste time and money. Those brands contain very impotent "live" cultures held in stasis from the cold which are dispatched by your stomach acids before they even reach your intestines... some brands are even pasteurized AFTER the cultures are added, completely negating the purpose of adding them in the first place! HOME BREWED KEFIR is the BEST! Good luck and hope this helps.

I have learned that dairy with the least amount of fat, ex: skim milk,
low fat milk and buttermilk have the most lactose.
So many products contain dairy. Whey is also a dairy by product and it
is in many foods. Pretzels contain whey.

Thought for years I was lactose intolerant. Then was prescribed a Z-pack antibiotic, now i can digest dairy!!!!!! Apparently something was blocking the enzyme needed to digest dairy & the antibiotic killed it. But just recently had the stomach flu, was still sick after 2 weeks. Doc said the dairy products were FEEDING the BAD BACTERIA. Said no dairy for 2 weeks, then start adding back in PROBIOTICS (Activia, ect....) for 2 weeks then add regular dairy back in. Still in the no dairy stage, will let you know if it works. Cross your fingers!!!! lol Found this site looking for cheese low in lactose, Thank you so much for a wealth of info everyone!!!!