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More on Milk By MARK BITTMAN Mark Bittman on food and all things related. TAGS: DAIRY, DIETS, MILK Not surprisingly, experiences like mine with dairy, outlined in my column of two weeks ago, are more common than unusual, at least according to the roughly 1,300 comments and e-mails we received since then. In them, people outlined their experiences with dairy and health problems as varied as heartburn, migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, eczema, acne, hives, asthma ("When I gave up dairy, my asthma went away completely"), gall bladder issues, body aches, ear infections, colic, "seasonal allergies," rhinitis, chronic sinus infections and more. (One writer mentioned an absence of canker sores after cutting dairy; I realized I hadn't had a canker sore - which I've gotten an average of once a month my whole life - in four months. Something else to think about.) Although lactose intolerance and its generalized digestive tract problems are well documented, and milk allergies are thought to affect perhaps 1 percent of the American population, the links between milk (or dairy) and such a broad range of ailments has not been well studied, at least by the medical establishment. RELATED Mark Bittman: Got Milk? You Don't Need It Yet if you speak with people who've had these kinds of reactive problems, it would appear that the medical establishment is among the last places you'd want to turn for advice. Nearly everyone who complained of heartburn, for example, later resolved by eliminating dairy, had a story of a doctor (usually a gastroenterologist) prescribing a proton pump inhibitor, or P.P.I., a drug (among the most prescribed in the United States) that blocks the production of acid in the stomach. But - like statins - P.P.I.s don't address underlying problems, nor are they "cures." They address only the symptom, not its cause, and they are only effective while the user takes them. Thus in the last few days I'

Dr. Campbell, a nutritional scientist at Cornell University, was concerned in the late 1960's with producing "high quality" animal protein to bring to the poor and malnourished areas of the third world.  While in the Philippines, he made a life-changing discovery: the country's wealthier children, who were consuming relatively high amounts of animal-based foods, were much more likely to get liver cancer.  Dr. Esselstyn, a top surgeon and head of the Breast Cancer Task Force at the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic, found that many of the diseases he routinely treated were virtually unknown in parts of the world where animal-based foods were rarely consumed.  These discoveries inspired Campbell and Esselstyn, who didn't know each other yet, to conduct several groundbreaking studies.  One of them took place in China and is still among the most comprehensive health-related investigations ever undertaken.  Their research led them to a startling conclusion: degenerative diseases like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and even several forms of cancer, could almost always be prevented-and in many cases reversed-by adopting a whole foods, plant-based diet.  Despite the profound implications of their findings, their work has remained relatively unknown to the public.