Lanka, Varanasi
Uttar Pradesh
Early in the morning, the naughty cows
and bulls dance in the nearby forest of the Aaj House, bellowing their love
tunes. Anyone sleeping with windows open will hear their calls. In the morning rush hour traffic, cow, bulls,
buffalos, and oxen move into the streets, as the traffic slows and is not
as dangerous for them as the night-riders are.
People very respectfully drive around the cows, taking time not to touch
them or provoke them. An occasional
servant will throw a basket of leaves, peels, and skin over the side of a
rooftop, or out a window into a grassy pitch below, knowing this is a buffet
for come bovine passer-by.
In this land of roaming cows, I have finally
gotten my first glass of fresh, undiluted, non-GMO, non-Bovine Growth Hormone
–injected, non-homogenized, non-pasteurized, non-“enriched with Vitamin A and
D,” non-reconstituted milk. It has a
cream layer on top, is always drunk warm, and has a rich, sweet taste. It is real M-I-L-K.
I have a lot to say about milk.
Milk, however, is villified in the USA. Vegans retort, “milk is for baby cows, not baby humans.” People are anti-milk and have created an industry of soy milk, rice milk, almond milk to replace their favorite dishes. Many doctors tell patients they have milk allergy, or casein (milk protein) allergy and forever forbid them from the land of dairy, throwing in eggs somehow (?!) in that calculation.
It is not the milk that is causing the problem. It is processing of the milk and our treatment of the cow.
Ayurveda has great wisdom about how, when, and why to drink milk, but in its Sanskrit sutra, Ayurvedic wisdom is not yet accessible to westernized Indians and people in the West.
Pure cow milk provides Lactobacillus, bacteria that are symbiotic and healthy for humans. These bacteria can survive a soft boil and they are one of the best things that can come to reside in your gut. The biochemistry of our gut and vaginal microbiome depends on the molecules produced by the Lactobacillus species which trigger cell-signaling pathways for absorption of nutrients.
What does pasteurization do then to these little friendly critters? It explodes them with the sudden increase and decrease in temperature, allowing fast-forming water crystals to pierce their walls, leaving carcasses of Lactobacilli throughout the milk. Of course, this happens with all the bacteria – good and bad – that are in the milk. So the immunologist in me wonders how all these antigens and dead bacteria floating in my milk can be good for my immune system.
Ayurveda says milk is not to be drunk raw, … or hyper-heated. It is not to be combined with other cows’ milk; it is to be soft-boiled; ginger is to be added when a person has low digestive fire; turmeric is to be added when anti-inflammatory effects are required; and buttermilk made from yogurt is the best relative of milk and the best for medicinal effects in healing the gut.
The proper pathway of making milk products is milk–>yogurt–>buttermilk–>butter–>ghee.
There are many, many rules for how to use milk as a nutrient and as a curative medicine….
When made properly, milk boosts Ojas (~immunity) the fastest of any substance, because it seems, our immune system responds to the cow antibodies quite well. I have been using home-made yogurt and buttermilk “takra” to help people cure themselves of IBS for years. Cream is an instant coolant and soother for bites, bumps and boils; Ayurvedic energetics says it is not the temperature of the milk, but the inherent property of pure milk that makes it cool the body.
The problem today is that we are processing milk in all kinds of ways without questioning its utility. Yes, Mr. Khurian of Amul used mass production and factory farming to help end starvation and Vitamin D-deficiency diseases. But the techniques were developed without respecting Ayurveda’s wisdom, respecting animals, and before modern industry and medicine knew about the role of the gut microbiome. With the new tyrannical farm laws in the USA, consumers cannot even report on the treatment of cows, the conditions of factory farms, and attitudes in farming. Beyond criticism, the cow lobby is now free to torture cows and feed their parts to other animals. In addition, one hundred years after these techniques are creating millions of jobs and supporting crores^ of people, noone wants reform and injection of new knowledge.
The Ayurvedists are too quiet and too late.
If we really believe in evidence-based medicine, we should do a real study of what is left behind in the milk when it is pasteurized and homogenized and pooled with 10,000 other cows’ milk! We should also study what happens when we add sugar as a “natural” preservative. Ayurveda’s pharmaceutic division, the field of Bhaisajya Kalpana, tells us how to cultivate, process, and store milk so that it remains therapeutic. We could design a study and test the effects. However, some dairy lobby will suppress the evidence.
Ayurveda believes in **practice-based** evidence, watching millions of people over thousands of years, drinking the products of milk that are properly cultivated and produced, and not suppressing the evidence. In America, studies have been done to show that homogenization of milk makes it difficult for the human gut and liver to separate the fat properly into an HDL, and thus it goes into an LDL. This physiology, mechanism and connection of homogenization to atherosclerosis and heart disease is well-known, but suppressed.
Ayurvedic vaidyas don’t even get involved anymore in the argument of new techniques, because their clinical evidence is so strong that they don’t need to prove anything to anyone. They quietly go home, and drink their milk and feed their children and make their medicines only from pure milk. If they are kind vaidyas, they bring you milk-sweets once in a while.
If you REALLY want to understand milk, go sit quietly in front of one of them, and l-i-s-t-e-n.
You may see then that what we are drinking in most urban areas in the world is cow poison, not MILK.
^1 crore = 10 million