Growth hormones, antibiotics, and over-pasteurization are not the only potential problems with the milk for sale in your store.
Girls are reaching puberty at earlier and earlier ages; men’s testosterone and sperm counts are plummeting. Some of the usual suspects include pesticides and chemicals like BPA in our food supply, obesity, and soy formula for infants. But there may be another culprit—industrial cow’s milk.
For years, integrative doctors like Dr. Mercola have warned parents never to feed their infants soy-based formula. This is because soy milk—even GMO-free or organic brands—contain phytoestrogens, plant estrogens that can hurt babies’ developing bodies and brains. In fact, soy infant formula can provide the estrogen equivalent of up to five birth control pills a day.
However, research now suggests that commercial milk—even products free of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbGH) or antibiotics—can contain much higher levels of sex hormones than in “pre-industrial” cows. One study that compared milk from commercial Japanese cows with milk from Mongolian cows found that industrial milk contained 67% more estrogen, and 650% more progesterone. This is because commercial cows are milked, on average, for ten months a year—something that is only possible because they’re impregnated while still lactating from a previous pregnancy. During the last months they are milked, hormones levels are especially high.
Beyond launching children into early puberty, these high rates of hormones in our milk may be responsible for increased cancer rates.
We wish we could suggest an easy fix for this problem. But we can’t. Even small farmers may be milking their cows too long. If you have access to a “cowshare” arrangement in which you own the cow that is milked by the farmer, you can discuss this problem and ask to reduce the number of months of lactation. If not, your odds are better buying from non-industrial milk producers, and better still buying from raw milk producers, who are more likely not to stretch for every last ounce of milk production.
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I buy my raw milk from a small organic farmer here in the Menonite country in Pennsylvania, who feeds his cows only grass, no grain, etc. But, I would bet he milks his cows year round, especially since he is also a cheesemaker and probably needs milk at all times. I guess you can’t have everything, but it sure makes the case for organic coconut milk!!!
He may milk his cows year-round, but it may be worth asking him if he milks ALL his cows year-round. His answer may surprise you. If it doesn’t, you can share this information with him. Good luck!
I love what you do!
Just be sure to add the share/tweet features to the page you take someone to after they take action.
Right now we are sent to a page where the only option is sending out an email (which, btw, I never do!)
Blessings on your work!
Ariane
Hi Ariane, thank you so much for your comment! At the very bottom of every article (right above this comment box), there are links to share the article on FaceBook and Twitter. All the very best, ANH-USA
Gross, gross, gross, I wish everybody who sell this would be forced to drink it until they…
Let’s combine this hormone exposure issue with all endocrine disrupter sources.
So I have an 8 year old who has numerous dark underarm hairs. She in non-immunized, breasted for 4 years, eats organic 95% of the time, drinks pure artesian water from Eldorado springs, highly physically active, etcetera… Not really sure what sources vs evolution are influencing her early puberty???
What a shame that commercial cowsheds keep millking cows beyond the point where the cows’ pregnancies lace their milk with higher hormone concentrations than people can drink without risking medical complications from ingesting what,for human beings, is hormone excess.
“But hormones are natural.”
Indeed they are.
But “natural” substances at unnatural concentrations can become health hazards:
As the cows’ hormones have.
The cows cannot possibly understand what is happening.
And their human keepers do not want to know.
Few really like to hear such bad news…
But we had better:
Because: our present health hazard
Will remain unimproved until people wise up.
I never drink “factory farmed milk” for the very reason of antibiotics and growth hormones and the animal cruelty involved is horrific. I drink Coconut Milk. It has been fortified with calcium, Vitamin D and Magnesium in a balanced state. I stay away from any soy product as well.
I have had raw milk s a child. My family were farmers. We all drank raw milk straight from the cow. Now I am stuck with colored water that costs more and, processes all the taste out of it.
I wish I could double-thumbs-up this one. I, too, was raised on raw milk (late ’50s-early ’60s). The junk at the grocery store tastes awful. I would milk a cow into a jug which I carried around and drank from all day. My daughter was a milker at a dairy when she was in high school (late 1980s). We were able to “snag” some then, too. She raised beef steers in 4-H and we had to inject that junk into them. I almost quit eating beef then (not a big problem as we preferred venison). She was a state dairy princess, state guernsey princess, and national guernsey princess. That was very educational as to where the industry was then and was headed.
Production farming of any kind is no good for us, the land, or our genetic relatives.
Sorry, but the evidence against phytoestrogens is lacking. One study on rats only showed problems in high levels of phytoestrogen consumption (10-100x the amount one would get from eating a high-phytoestrogen diet) (see doi: 10.1016/j.reprotox.2013.05.014 ). Another article (PMID: 11497534) followed children raised n milk or soy formula for 20-34 years and found little difference between them other then a higher incidence of heavy periods in the girls raised on soy. Phytoestrogens are very weakly estrogenic and can occupy the receptor site without stimulating them, keeping stronger estrogens and xenoestrogens (from plastics, BPA, etc) from stimulating the receptors. It’s possible that regular milk has more estrogenic activity than soy milk.
Gee, I wonder who did the studies? Probably backed by Big Soy or Big Farma. If cow estrogen and phytoestrogens are occupying the estrogen receptor sights, where can the poor girls’ own estrogen go? This is not a healthy scenario and points to numerous health problems down the road. And the heavier periods due to drinking soy? This is because the subjects thyroids were being blocked – another major health problem today. I’m sure this was not the only health issue these women had. Raw milk from cows that are not overly hormonal seems obviously the best choice.
Thanks for this science info on milking for too many months.
being from the nation’s dairyland, Wisconsin, this kind of thing sickens me. I’ve got no problem with raw milk. Our parent’s, grandparents, etc, drank it, they came out ok. something neds to be done.
Where are your references.? 5 birth control pills? Wow! This explains the rise in obesity, reproductive cancers and benign tumors, as well as gender dysphoria in the boomer generation and their offspring.
I had wondered how they kept cows producing milk for so long. I know most animals only produce it for as long as their offspring need it. Now i know for sure and will either limit the amount i drink or stop drinking it all together becuse is is unnatural to do what they are doing to the cows! Alot has been kept from the public for too long because of greed for money. This info needs to be widely publicized.
If only took me 65 years to figure it out that grocery store milk and eggs were ‘the problem’ with many of my brain and body physical un-health issues. Now after nearly 5 years of using Almond and/of Coconut milk am I recovering from many health challenges. Would never have thought of changing from any physicians’ requirements. Only 2 friends as a male Kabbahlist Jew and a female Jehovah Wittness. As a busy executive, I was unread to the many chemicals in USDA approved milk and milk produced products such as chocolates of any kinds mass produced. What we don’t know can “kill our normal” human purpose. I grew up on a farm in Georgia with a cow, free range chickens, produce and fruit trees. So color me ‘dumb’after joining the USN and corporate life. Large farming as Corporate Citizens with extreme power are destroying our normal health recovery of the body’s self-defenses. Who knew?
We had a family dairy for 50 years. No hormones or other etc were used. The cows had a calf once a year. They lactated for about 10 months of the year without hormones or other encouragement” and would then be dried off if they didn’t dry themselves off. They would be dry for about 2 months before having their next calf and beginning the new lactation cycle.
also:
My farmer brother has a small cow/calf grass fed operation selling meat animals. The calves stay in the pasture with the mother and nurse. The calves wean themselves. The animals are not separated.
There is a herd bull in the pasture. The animals take care of their own reproduction cycles. The brood cows have a calf pretty much every 12 months.
My brother has a mixed herd. Some are beef type animals and others are dairy type.
His cows are not treated with any hormones or antibiotics or anything else to alter their natural behaviors. The brood cows are raised on the farm so don’t come from a polluted background.
I’d like to acquire our milk and other dairy products from you and your brother!