Go Mad! - Or, Is Milk Really The 'White Stuff' For You?

GOMAD is an acronym beloved of weightlifting types who are trying to get heavier.  It stands for a Gallon Of Milk A Day, and refers to the common prescription for lean weight gain: squats and milk.  Well, no-one can argue with squats.  But what about milk?

Milk isn’t necessarily used to gain weight, either.  Some advisors encourage people who are trying to lose weight to use milk to make themselves feel full, and there’s plenty of evidence that milk is a better sports drink than even the very best isotonic, scientific sports supplement drinks on the market.  That’s down to its almost-ideal mixture of electrolytes and to its sugar content as well as the fat and protein present in milk.

So far, milk sounds like the ideal sports supplement 

And for some people it is.  Whether or not milk can be good for you depends on how you react to two of its major ingredients, a protein called casein and a sugar called lactose.

Casein is a protein that makes up about 80% of cow’s milk and about 45% of human milk, so it’s obvious that we are designed to consume it.  And one of the reasons its so popular is that it’s a cheap supplement, a good way to get some extra protein into your diet and one that has the quality of being slow-release.  Casein forms a clot in the stomach and is digested more slowly than some other proteins, making it a bedtime favourite for bodybuilders.

Casein is also responsible for a small number of clinically diagnosed allergies, though a far greater number of people claim non-allergy sensitivity to casein.  That’s partly because of the strong structural similarities between casein and gluten, the protein in grains that takes the blame for so much bowel irritation.  Gluten takes its name from the Latin for glue, and it acts like a glue in the bowel, adhering to the villi, the hair-like whiskers lining the inside of the gut and responsible for digestive transit.

A Sticky Problem

Casein, as the historically or practically minded will have noted, is also a glue.  It forms a clot in the stomach by the same mechanism that casein glues are thickened by contact with an acid, and it’s blamed for many of the same digestive disorders as gluten, causing many people to avoid it.  On a side note, diets free of gluten and casein have been used to control the symptoms of autism and Asperger’s syndrome, though there’s no compelling evidence for their effectiveness (there is a lot of anecdotal evidence though).

Lactose Intolerance

Additionally there’s the issue of lactose, which is a little more complex.  Lactose is the sugar in milk, and while it’s also found in human milk, the gene that codes for the enzyme that allows us to digest lactose safely usually turns off between two and four years old.  While many Europeans can digest cows’ milk safely due to ‘lactase persistence,’ in which the gene never turns off, many Africans and African-Americans and nearly all Chinese are lactose-intolerant.  This isn’t an allergy, but an inability to metabolise a certain type of sugar.  As a result the sugar in any milk non-lactase-persistent people eat is metabolised by gut bacteria instead and causes digestive issues.

If you don’t have any of the digestive issues that can accompany milk then you should be OK to GO MAD, right?

Well, one problem with drinking a huge amount of milk is the sugar content.  Even if you deal with lactose just fine, milk is about 40% sugar by calorie count – the rest of its calories come from fats and protein.  But that’s a pretty high concentration of sugars, and consuming milk constantly throughout the day can lead to problems.

 Whether you’re trying to gain or lose weight, you’ll sometimes be advised to split up your day’s calories into several smaller meals.  The reasoning is the same whether you’re trying to rid yourself of excess fat or gain some muscle: your blood sugar is kept more stable when you eat more frequently.  And there is some truth to this.  However, there’s a danger that permanently elevated blood sugar can reduce insulin sensitivity, which means your body gets worse at dealing with blood sugar changes and eventually you could be paving the way for diabetes. 

How To Get The Best Out Of Milk's High Protein Content

Milk’s high protein content can be a great boon, if you’re one of the people who tolerates casein well.  And its mixture of fats, sugars and proteins can make milk the ideal post-workout drink. 

In fact, post-workout is the ideal time to use milk.  If you’ve had an intense training session, the extra calories and the high glycaemic load are exactly what you need to replace used glycogen stores.  Meanwhile high protein intake post-workout can help prevent catabolysis, a process whereby the body scavenges protein cells from muscle tissue for fuel after its easy-to-reach reserves have been exhausted.  Milk stacks up against these requirements pretty well.

Remember, milk’s supposed to be a complete diet for fast-growing calves.  So it needs to contain everything they need for the first few months of life – not just fats, sugars and protein, but micronutrients as well.  Milk has great vitamin A and D content, and research strongly indicates that it helps with bone health; despite warnings about excess protein leeching calcium from the bones, children who avoided milk suffer more fractures than children who use milk products regularly. 

The big ace for milk over synthetic sports drinks and supplements is that it has a high concentration of trace mineral salts.  These are usually used as salts in the cell metabolism and they’re lost when you sweat as well as being destroyed or excreted through the natural course of life.  While we’re used to warnings about eating too much salt, if you take on fluids without salt after hard training, your body won’t be salty enough to hang on to the fluids.  Instead of going where it should, into the cells, the water you drink will bloat you but, paradoxically, it will be ‘too watery’ to hydrate you!  

Most of us aren’t getting enough of these types of nutrients, but milk can be an excellent source of them.

Whether you’re trying to lose weight or gain it, milk can be a great aid to your progress.  Try drinking milk immediately after your workout or with breakfast or lunch, but don’t drink large amounts of milk continuously throughout the day: it’s bad for your blood glucose levels, and bad for you!