Hidden Hormones May Affect Fertility

We've all seen the commercials and heard the claims extolling the healthful benefits of milk and other dairy products.  (Got milk?)  And, as far as research shows, these claims are true; whole milk and whole milk products are packed with nutrients and healthy fats for optimal cellular and organ function (skim milk is not included in this, but that's a topic for another blog).  However, there is a major caveat to the health benefits you receive from milk: not all milk is equal.  In fact, all of these wonderful benefits derived from whole milk may be for naught if you're not careful about the source.  The source of that milk is what we will address here today.

I'm assuming that most of us are familiar with where milk comes from.  Cows are bred to produce young, and the female cows will thus begin producing milk.  They are milked continuously to keep up the flow until they are past peak production, at which time they are bred again to keep up production.  Healthy cows are bred responsibly, allowed to nurse their calves, and then milked daily to extract what they make naturally.  However, most conventional (non-organic) milk doesn't come from healthy cows.  Instead of using breeding cycles to naturally stimulate milk production, cows are given rBGH, recombinant bovine growth hormone (also knows as rBST, recombinant bovine somatotropin).  This hormone forces an increase in milk production by as much as 15 - 25%, allowing the cow to be milked much more frequently.  The nursing calves are also removed from their mothers at a very early stage.  So what's wrong with increasing milk production this way?  We have lots of people that want to drink milk, right?

Unfortunately, rBGH seems to have stimulated much more than milk production in dairy cows.  Cows treated with the hormone have developed mastitis, a bacterial infection of the udders, have given birth to deformed calves, and have even developed cancer.  Those who appeared otherwise "healthy" had significantly shorter life spans than cattle not treated with rBGH; dairy cows typically live 15 - 20 years, but the cows treated with rBGH were dying as early as 2 years after the initial injections.  These health concerns were enough to give even Monsanto pause; it scaled back production of rBGH beginning in 2003 and is currently considering halting all production.

So, how does this affect fertility?  Don't they label milk and dairy products saying that there is no difference between milk from cows treated with rBGH and milk from cows not treated with rBGH?  Let's first address this false claim using common sense.  Any woman who has endured monthly cycles of hormone testing knows that unbound hormones are excreted in all of your bodily fluids; blood, urine, and saliva.  Milk is not excluded from the list of bodily fluids through which hormones are excreted.  The same goes for cows. 

Now for the research: humans who drink milk regularly from cows treated with rBGH were found to have elevated levels of IGF - 1 in their blood.  IGF - 1 is Insulin-like Growth Factor, a protein found in higher levels in rBGH cows' blood and milk than in cows not treated with rBGH.  The presence of this protein is thought to significantly slow the degradation of the hormones present in the milk.  Thus, the hormones are likely to enter the human bloodstream intact (undigested) and bond with our own hormone receptors.  Because there's an excess of hormones in milk from cows treated with rBGH, there is now an excess of intact foreign growth hormones coursing unchecked through our bloodstream, and more of our own hormone receptors will be filled by these foreign (and much more powerful) hormones, blocking our own hormones.  After our own hormones are continually rejected by the receptor sites, our hypothalamus eventually receives the signal that we have an excess of unbound hormones and will reduce production.  This phenomenon results in several potential health problems, only two of which will be mentioned here.  I encourage you to research further for other risks.  First, elevated levels of IGF - 1 as well as foreign hormones in the blood are linked with cancer growth in humans.  Second, and most important to this particular blog, a decrease in the production of our own hormones results in impaired fertility. 

All is not lost, however.  To combat this problem, I recommend at least drinking organic milk and eating organic dairy products.  Even better, drinking fresh unpasteurized milk and consuming fresh, unpasteurized dairy products from grass-fed, humanely raised cattle is the best way to enjoy the maximum health benefits of dairy (I also encourage you to further research the benefits of unpasteurized milk, especially if it sounds odd to you).   You'll not only enjoy increased fertility, but improved overall health.  Got milk, indeed.

Sources

BGH:  Monsanto and the Dairy Industry's Dirty Little Secret.  Mercola.com.  http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2002/02/27/rbgh.aspx.  February 27, 2007.

Dairy cattle.  Wikipedia.org.  December 2008.

Information on rBGH or rBST - aka Posilac - Eli Lilly's Genetically Engineered Bovine Growth Hormone.  Organic Consumer's Association.  http://www.organicconsumers.org/rbghlink.cfm.

The Issues: rbgh.  Sustainable Table.  http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/rbgh/#risks.  Updated July 2008.

More Reasons to Avoid Milk.  Mercola.com.  http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/04/11/milk-part-one.aspx.  April 11, 2001.

Risks of Ice Cream Made with Monsanto's Artificial Hormones.  Mercola.com.  http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/13/monsanto-rbgh-can-cause-cancer.aspx.  September 13, 2010.