Will drinking apple cider vinegar help with my lactose intolerance?
I've recently been diagnosed as being lactose intolerant over the past year and have been VERY careful about eating dairy products. On vacation I slipped up and ate ice cream one night and have felt awful for about a week. I work with a personal trainer and she suggested that I drink apple cider vinegar diluted w/water. Any truth to this? She also recommends on a daily basis to take probiotics.
Dr. Gourmet Says...
This is the first that I have heard about vinegar helping the symptoms
of lactose intolerance. After reviewing the medical literature
I can't find good evidence to support this, but it's likely not
to be harmful. We do have some recent evidence for using apple
cider vinegar in helping control blood sugars in diabetics.
http://www.drgourmet.com/diabetes/index.shtml
There have, however, been a number of recent small studies that indicate probiotics can be helpful with lactose intolerance. There has not been a large scale study to support this and it is also important to keep in mind that the term "probiotic" can mean any number of hundreds of various bacteria that can live happily in your intestines and potentially provide benefit to you. Because the studies are often small and incorporate only limited (and often only one) bacteria, it's hard to know exactly what to recommend.
We do know that most people who are lactose intolerant can tolerate some lactose. One recent study put that level at as much as 12 to 15 grams of lactose. Here's a list of amounts of lactose in certain foods.
Thanks for writing,
Timothy S. Harlan, M.D.
Dr. Gourmet