Is milk healthy?

From childhood, we are taught that milk is healthy and that we need to consume dairy products for the calcium intake. But today, even doctors say cow's milk can lead to iron deficiency anaemia, allergies, diarrhoea, heart disease, colic, cramps, gastrointestinal bleeding, sinusitis, skin rashes, acne, increased frequency of colds and flu, arthritis, diabetes, ear infections, osteoporosis, asthma and autoimmune diseases.

These are some finding of studies:

• Milk is also a cause of malabsorption disorders (2), may be a cause of juvenile diabetes (3), and may promote prostate and testicular cancer (4).
• Preliminary findings indicate that insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus in children is associated with an intake of cow's milk prior to weaning. An autoimmune mechanism has been used to explained how cow's milk causes the body to produce antibodies. These antibodies attack the pancreatic cells that make insulin. Research continues to clarify these relationships and the role of genes in triggering this auto-immune response (5).
• Milk and milk products gave the highest correlation coefficient to heart disease, while sugar, animal proteins and animal fats came in second, third,and fourth, respectively (6).
• Milk and many components of milk (butterfat, milk protein, calcium from milk, and riboflavin)… were positively related to coronary heart disease mortality for all 40 countries studied (7).

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(1) SM Virtanen et al: .Diabetologia 1994(April);37(4):381-387
(2) Shils, Maurice E. Olson, James A. Shike, Moshe. Ross, Catherine A.(eds). Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease. Williams and Wilkins. Baltimore, Maryland. 1999. pg. 1506
(3) Gerstein, HC. Cow’s Milk Exposure and Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus – A critical overview of the clinical literature. Diabetes Care. January 1994 17(1):13-19.
(4) Davies TW et al. Adolescent milk, dairy product and fruit consumption and testicular cancer. British Journal of Cancer. August 1996 74(4):657-60.
(5) Martin, J.M. et al (1991). Milk proteins in the etiology of insulin dependent diabetes mellitus. Annals of Medicine, 23, 447-452.
(6) A Survey of Mortality Rates and Food Consumption Statistics of 24 Countries, Medical Hypothesis 7:907-918, 1981
(7) Circulation 1993; 88(6):2771-2779