If you have lactose intolerance, you may love milk, but your body doesn’t – and it lets you know that when you have too much. You might have symptoms like cramps after a bowl of cereal or gas after an ice cream treat.
Lactose is the main sugar in milk and other dairy products. If you have lactose intolerance, you can’t digest it well. Lactose intolerance is not curable, but there are many ways to cut your symptoms and feel better.
Between 30 minutes and 2 hours after eating a dairy product, you have one or more of these symptoms. They may be mild or severe.
Bloating
Cramps
Diarrhea
Painful gas
Nausea
Even with lactose intolerance, you can tolerate a certain amount of lactose. This affects how quickly you have symptoms and how severe they are. Someone else may be sensitive to small amounts of foods with lactose, while you may be able to eat more before you have symptoms.
If you have lactose intolerance, you can’t digest lactose because your small intestine doesn’t make enough lactase, the enzyme that digests lactose. The lactose that isn’t digested makes gas in your colon. So when you eat foods or take pills with lactose, you have symptoms.
For many people, lactose intolerance develops naturally with age, because the small intestine starts to make less lactase.
Your body may also make less lactase if your small intestine is injured or you have certain digestive problems, such as Crohn’s or celiac disease.