| Human Health Improves with Goat Milk Consumption Australian Family Even Experienced Improved Dental Checks By Tim King |
| Improved
dental health is among the many health benefits of drinking goat milk.
Goat milk improved the health of the teeth, skin, and the digestion of
Vanessa Grant's children in Tasmania, Australia. The positive effect on
one child's digestion was dramatic. "Our fifth child didn't nurse well and ended up on formula," said Grant. "However she also was allergic to all the formulas—including the commercial goat formula. Reading the back of the tin I was rather disgusted to see how processed it was. It didn't contain ‘whole goat milk,' but ‘protein derived from goat milk' and other things including canola oil. But it was the only brand of goat formula available." "In the meantime, the baby, who was seven months old, was full of mucus through all her airways," Grant said. "She was coughing and vomiting after feeds. She was a really sick, sick baby. The naturopath took one look at her and said, ‘Her food is making her sick. Get her on raw goat milk.'" "Because we had had our own goats before, and knew how good goat milk was, we were quick to take his advice. We found a source of raw goat milk. The baby was well within a week, and after that she was a healthy baby with no mucus, coughing, or vomiting at all." The Grant family children had equally dramatic results regarding their dental health when they had goat milk available. "We could only get the raw milk for the baby at that time, not for our other children," Grant said. "They had to be content with normal milk. By then there were no obvious intolerances, so they drank normal milk. After two years of this, one child developed terrible cavities, and later an abscess resulting in about three separate dentist visits and an extraction! It was a while before we could get back onto raw milk. He was having gum and tooth troubles all that time. But we finally went back on raw goat milk, and he had no tooth problems after that." The Grant family moved a number of times while the children were young and growing. Like many people, they have not always been able to have a goat or to find goat milk. But before her younger son developed the severe dental problems she described, she had also witnessed the positive effects of goat milk on her older children's teeth. "After two years on this (raw goat) milk we had a dental nurse appointment for the four children. The dental nurse was very excited by the condition of our children's teeth," Grant said. "She just couldn't get enough of saying how amazing they were, with no cavities in any of the four. She insisted we must be very good with tooth brushing. We aren't really all that good at remembering all the time. She also thought that we must be really strict about no sweets. But that's not true either. We had sweets sometimes, the same as anyone else!" Grant admits she can't actually prove that her children's dental health is related to drinking goat milk. But she witnessed a very clear connection between acute dental distress without raw goat milk and dramatic improvement once the raw milk regime was started again. She also witnessed long-term dental health in her children during the periods that her family had access to raw goat milk. When researching ways to respond to her children's allergic reaction to some foods, Grant said she discovered that goat milk contains fluorine. She doesn't recall where she found that information but suspects fluorine might have something to do with halting her child's acute dental problems. Health writer Julie Phillips concurred, saying that goat milk is one of the best sources of dietary fluorine, nearly 10-times higher than cow milk. Fluorine helps build immunity and strengthen teeth and bones. Fluorine is depleted during the cooking process, so is only present in unpasteurized milk. The chemical "fluoride" does not have the same healing properties and is best avoided wherever possible. Research on the website altmedangel.com also revealed that "chlorine and fluorine are natural germicides and fluorine assists in preventing diabetes." However, fluorine isn't the only ingredient in goat milk that has the potential for improving dental health. "Most adults never get the daily recommended amount of calcium, 1,300mg, unless they are taking supplements, which are not good for you anyway," said Stephanie Bugielski, of M & S Farm in New York state. "You would need to eat an extraordinary amount of greens in one day to get the amount of calcium a body needs, or you can add goat milk to your diet. Especially raw goat milk. It is easy to digest and full of healthy living enzymes that help you assimilate calcium. In other words your body can use it. Once the milk is pasteurized the enzymes are killed off, and you are left with a useless drink." Bugielski, who milks a dozen goats at her farm in the Catskills, sells a lot of raw milk to customers who drive an hour or more to obtain it. She, and her customers, believe that dental health is part of an entire package of benefits derived from drinking goat milk. "Goat milk provides 13% more calcium, 25% more Vitamin B-6, 47% more Vitamin A, 134% more potassium and 350% more niacin than cow milk," she said, "Goat milk is also higher in chloride, copper and manganese." Vanessa Grant believes that young children who drink goat milk, with all its nutrients, may continue to reap the benefits of it when they are older, even if they are no longer drinking it. "It seems that the more goat milk they had from an earlier age the healthier they were in general," she said. "The poor lad who had commercial formula from seven months had multiple intolerances and remains the most sensitive of our children now, whereas the ones who had raw goat milk from weaning are either totally fine, or very mildly reactive to very large quantities." "We now live and work on a regular (bovine) dairy farm, and our children all now tolerate raw cow milk," Grant said. "I do find that we still have a few issues with pasteurized cow milk, and I instantly get a strong reaction to ultrapastuerized/UHT milk." She said that her family had grown to a stage where they didn't need goat milk to survive anymore, but if they had very young children again, she would definitely make sure they had access to it. "It seems that when our children were very young they tolerated goat milk more than cow milk," she said. "It is very beneficial for them, in so many ways." |
