Becoming Dairy Intolerant at 18- is that possible?

[speakout]

Over the past 6 months my daughter seems to have developed problems after eating dairy. She is 18 ( years not months)
Typically within a few hours of eating dairy she will get stomach cramps, noisy tummy, and pain.
We have switched to oat milk, vegan ice cream and no cheese and symptoms stop.
Yesterday while out with a friend she had an ice cream and was in pain for much of the evening.
We have tried lactose free milk but it gives the same bad symptoms.
Any advice or information?
She doesn't want to go to seethe GP because when she cut out dairy her symptoms disappear completely.

Anyone else had this experience?

Yes entirely normal, lactose intolerance can kick in at any age if the body stops producing the enzymes to break it down. We naturally stop producing these enzymes at weaning when we no longer have mothers milk, drinking the milk of other animals can force our bodies to keep producing them but it can stop at anytime. Lactose intolerance is also very common, only 35% of people on the planet can drink a pint of milk without feeling sick.

Lactose/dairy intolerance is one of the few a doctor can actually test for, so it might be worth her going to a doctor

DD2 discovered at 20 she has various FODMAP intolerances (and I'd been feeding her broccoli for years ) - according to her dietitian you can go for a long time being only "not quite right", but then suddenly hit some sort of tipping point where it becomes obvious you have an actual issue.

Id seriously recommend your DD gets some medical advice, as there may be other things she's intolerant to. Dietitians are quite hard to get referred to in many places - DD was very lucky in that her very senior consultant was able to get her to one, as her local GP can't refer. A private appointment might not be horrendously expensive if that's an option?

OK thanks.
She may go to the doctor, but isn't a huge dairy eater anyway, so on the whole she is able to avoid the trigger foods.
Yesterday she had a cheese sandwich for lunch and a milkshake, and was in a lot of pain last night.

You can only reliably test for lactose/dairy intolerance, peanut allergy and coeliac disease. Anyone attempting testing for other intolerances is relying on unscientific methods. The only way to figure out other allergies/intolerances is guesswork and exclusion diets.

Yes I understand, but it seems to be working for her, and with an 18 yo child you don't get the final say whether to visit a GP or not!

I developed lactose intolerance in my late teens. It took me a few years to figure out what the problem was and eliminate dairy from my diet. Twenty years on and I'm finding I can eat it again, in moderation.

I was 19 when I was discovered I was allergic to dairy so entirely possible

Interesting.

Looking back she has only started to really eat dairy in the past year.
As a baby/toddler/child she ate no dairy at all.
No yogurt, no animal milk, no butter, no cheese, so it is possible she has been dairy intolerant ( if she is) for a number of years.
It's just in the past 9 months that she has decided she quite enjoys some dairy products and that has coincided with the tummy trouble.

If she didn’t eat much before it’s very likely her body stopped producing the enzymes to break down lactose, it’s a bit of a use it or lose it situation.

• stopped producing them when she was a child that is

If she didn’t eat much before it’s very likely her body stopped producing the enzymes to break down lactose, it’s a bit of a use it or lose it situation.

I did wonder that.
I breastfed my kids for several years, I did try them with dairy many times, but they always resisted.
By the time they were old enough to talk they ( both) told me that dairy smelled foul, could detect even a tiny bit of butter in mashed potatoes.
So I never really pushed it, although I know dairy can be nutritious they were good eaters in many other ways, lots of oily fish, tinned salmon and sardines for calcium, leafy greens, tofu, meat etc.

So neither ate any dairy through childhood.

But now it has come back to bite them on the bum!!

Sounds like it could be a Gluten Intolerance to me.

Read up on the signs of gluten intolerance to double check (or head to the GP!)

I was looking on this site and found out more, hope this helps!

healthnotepad.com/you-might-have-gluten-intolerance/