I drank almost 40 liters of milk last week

Here is what happened

DISCLAIMER
I am not a doctor. Nothing you will find here constitutes medical advice.

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Introduction

Over the past week, I have drank around 5 liters of milk every single day.

You may have heard of people refer to this as GOMAD (Gallon Of Milk A Day), a crazy diet bodybuilders and Wisconsinite rack-pullers use to gain weight quickly.

Well, that’s not why I did it.

In fact, it’s not that I added milk on top of my usual diet; it’s that I had milk—and just milk—for a week straight, and I did it for health-related reasons.

Let me elaborate a bit.

Why milk?

During one of his many interviews, Dr. Peat was asked about the possible benefits of a ‘milk fast’, that is, a temporary milk-only diet; he said:

“It can be very powerful, because the milk contains antibiotic ingredients and multiple anti-inflammatory, sedative, as well as nutritional substances. […] It’s profoundly therapeutic to do it for a week or more, up to a month.”

Milk is sometimes called ‘the perfect food’ because it contains practically all the nutrients we need on a daily basis.

Milk is affordable; has a balanced amount of carbs, protein and fats; contains plenty of minerals like calcium and potassium; has crucial fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E and K; and can be very low in PUFAs.

This simple, convenient, ‘holistic’ package makes milk ideal for downregulating adaptive stress substances such as PTH, cortisol, and estrogen, which gives your body some breathing room to do more than just survive.¹

In the early 1900’s, raw cow milk was used by none other than the Mayo Clinic with great success to cure patients of complicated ailments such as tuberculosis, hypertension, and hypometabolism. They called their protocol “the milk cure”.

Nevertheless, as Peat himself notes, milk is still inappropriate as a sole, long-term food for adults, given (1) its amino acid profile, high in tryptophan and methionine, which can have aging and thyroid-supressing effects when consumed in excess; (2) its (slightly) low calcium-to-phosphate ratio, which in the long-term could hinder one's metabolism; and, (3) its low iron content, which could bring about problems for an adult after a month or so of milk-only consumption.²

Regardless, milk’s reign as the queen of foods remains, in my opinion, unquestionable… which thinking about it does raise a question:

Which milk?

Not all milks are made equal.

Human milk, cow milk, goat milk, sheep milk… there are many types of milk, and the differences between (and within) each type are far from negligible.³

The nutritional value of any milk will obviously be affected by its sourcing: what the animals in question have been fed, how they have been treated, if they have been medicated, if they have seen the sun, how their milk has been processed, etc.

Better treated animals produce better milk; worse treated animals produce worse milk. Animals raised on grass and forage from sunny pastures produce awesome milk; animals raised on gross grains and plastic shavings produce shitty milk.⁴

For these reasons, I reckon goat milk is indeed the GOAT milk:

Goats are subject to far less intensive farming practices than cows, for basic supply-and-demand reasons. This means they are less likely to be treated unfairly and injected with synthetic hormones (c.f., cows and rBGH). Goat milk is also easier to digest (and therefore healthier) for most people, even those with acquired lactose intolerance and/or cow milk allergy since childbirth.⁵⁶

So, if you have been thinking about doing a milk fast and have access to raw goat milk… you’re one lucky bastard. For the rest of us (i.e., victims of a boring, “safety-first”, paranoid, iatrogenophilic gerontocracy), comercial cow and/or goat milk will have to do.

Two days’ worth of fresh cow milk

In this regard, I would recommend going for so-called “fresh” rather than “ultra-high temperature” (UHT) milk. The former has “just” been pasteurized (i.e., heated at ~70º C for 15 seconds); the latter has been blasted to 150º C to kill all of its goodies, and is a far-cry from the raw milk the Mayo Clinic was using to treat its patients.

In my case, I had to muster up some Roman pragmatism and settle for fresh cow milk.

So, how did it go?

The Good

The milk fast was surprisingly easy.

To be fair, I tend to consume plenty of milk already, particularly as summer approaches and my appetite dims.

On days 1-4, the only other things I consumed were coffee and Ray Peat’s famous carrot salad, once a day. Though I consider the latter to be “medicine” rather than food, it satisfied what I think was the strongest crave I had to deal with during the week: salt.

The fact that my body craved salt probably means it needed it. This was very much confirmed by how amazing the carrot salad tasted throughout the week. I’ve had this salad dozens of times in my life—it never tasted as good as it did this week.

Besides the salt craving itself, I also reckon the enjoyment came from a decrease in serotonin levels. It did not take long for me to start noticing colors being brighter and more saturated than usual, which I usually take as a (good) sign that I’m moving away from “hibernation” and into a healthier, more energetic state.

Also, in the first few days I cured a temporary episode of dandruff I had “earned” after a recent holiday escapade in which more inorganic iron and PUFAs were consumed than I would like to admit. So, insofar as dandruff can be symptomatic of a deeper metabolic problem, I’m happy I could easily milk it out of my system.

Another benefit I noticed was—to the surprise of many among you, I imagine—better digestion. I had heard firsthand from friends like Ty Guy that, if you can tolerate milk, relying on it can help solve digestive issues. Throughout the week (and you won’t get much detail from me on this topic) I had excellent digestion and an overall decrease in “baseline” bloating.

Further, the fact that I was sipping milk throughout the day also made it very easy for my blood sugar to remain at stable optimal levels. I had no afternoon crashes or crazy mood swings all along days 1-4. In fact, I was in a very good mood.

The Bad

Throughout the week, my training sessions felt tougher than usual. This doesn’t surprise me that much, especially considering Peat’s comments on milk “sedative” effects, which I think I experienced to some degree. I do wonder if this would have been the case if I had consumed only raw goat milk though.

Now, you may have noticed I have mentioned days 1-4 a few times. There’s good reason for this.

On the night of the 5th day, I spent some time with my girlfriend and we ended up accidentally falling asleep earlier than usual. I woke up ravenous and puzzled at around 2 AM; I had not had the carrot salad that evening, and it had been quite a few hours since I had had anything to eat (i.e., drink). Still, I surrendered to the slothfulness of the moment and decided to just “sleep it off”, much to the chagrin that would be waiting to greet me after sunrise.

The next morning I woke up with a nasty tension headache. I wouldn’t call it a migraine, which I have had before, though it was potent enough to throw me off for a few hours. I tried to mitigate it by blitzkrieging milk, salt, sugar, aspirin, and Progest-e at it… but alas, though these maneuvers certainly helped, a latent headache remained.

As nighttime approached, fearing I would wake up to a similar episode on the next day, I decided to screw dogma and eat some raw goat milk cheese with honey. It tasted delicious and made my pain completely disappear.

I’m still not quite sure why that was—whether it was just a hypoglycemic response or not; whether it had to do with a nutrient I was consuming too much of, or one I was not having enough—but I continued having the snack once at night until the end of my experiment, and my headache dared not show the likes of it around again.

The thing is, when milk-fasting, because you’re just sipping on milk throughout the day, you’re constantly treading the border between hunger and satiety. You’re eating “just enough” to feel fulfilled, many times a day, all day long.

This can bring about problems at nighttime, when you will inevitable spend 6-8 hours without any food. In fact, throughout this week I think I woke up a bit more tired than usual, which I attribute to the phenomenon above.⁷

Plus, I also found that the constant sipping threw my usual schedule out the window. We take for granted how much our daily agenda is built around the meals we have: breakfast at this time, lunch with this person, dinner at this place, etc. Only having milk felt a bit odd and anti-social, in this sense.

Would I recommend it?

Officially:

Absolutely not—because I’m not a doctor, and none of this is medical advice.

Unofficially:

A couple of thoughts.

(1)

If you enjoy chugging milk and can tolerate it well, then I reckon a milk fast could be an amazing, cheap, and convenient way to approach an elimination diet.

For those not in the know, an elimination diet is usually advised to people who want to “reset” their stomach by taking away all possible irritants (i.e., foods) and focusing on a few, high-quality, easily digestible sources for a while. It is a smart, via negativa approach to slowly building up a grocery list that supports you and your growth.

In this regard, milk is probably unbeaten—again, if you can tolerate it—because of its wide and sturdy nutritional spectrum. Goat milk would probably be the best source, preferably in its raw form. After all, if you are going to reduce all food intake to a single source, you better make that source count.

After the stomach has had a bit of time to heal, and the adaptive stress responses have calmed down, you could then slowly start reintroducing foods whilst paying close attention to how you react to them. This is exactly what Ty Guy (whom I previously mentioned) has been doing, and you only need to scroll down his (great) timeline to see it in action. It works.

(2)

If you are simply wanting to experiment with yourself to rekindle the sense of individual sovereignty that modernity keeps insisting on suffocating, then consider the following.

It didn’t take long for me to realize how crucial it is to go into these experiments with the right set of eyes. In retrospect, I think I jumped into it too impulsively and hence had to force myself to discern the effects I was experiencing, because the week was (unsurprisingly) not “life-changing.”

It didn’t cure tuberculosis, it didn’t heal any war wounds, it didn’t double my IQ… because those were not things that needed fixing in the first place. I don’t suffer any serious ailments, so noticing and interpreting changes (okay, dandruff aside) required honest and proactive self-assessments—an attitude which was more readily fueled knowing I wanted to share my thoughts with all of you once the dust settled.

Peat called this diet therapeutic for a reason: because it can heal specific conditions. If, hypothetically, I were to advice this experiment to anyone (which I wouldn’t, as you already know, because I’m not a doctor), I would tell them to pick one or two things they want to see change beforehand, and to watch them closely as they implement changes. Otherwise they will get overwhelmed by the amount of variables they can keep track of.

More random thoughts

• Simply deciding to do this experiment and preparing everything felt good. It’s undeniably true that the search for therapy is itself therapeutic.

• It also feels good knowing I could survive with a single food. There’s something weirdly freeing about it. If I ever find myself drifting across PUFA-ridden seas again, I can at least know to hold on to milk (even condensed one), eggs, coconut oil, and a few fruits to keep me afloat.

• I consider me “breaking” my fast with some raw goat milk cheese not a failure, but a definite success.

  • The point of these experiments is not to follow an arbitrary, unalterable, authoritarian rule despite acquiring new information: it’s precisely to learn how to adapt to and incorporate said information.

  • “To be annoyed or feel remorse because something goes wrong—that I leave to those who act because they have received orders and who have to reckon with a beating when his lordship is not satisfied with the result.” (F. Nietzsche, TGS, 1.41)

• I realized too late that I had not been tracking my weight or temperatures throughout the week. This was a shame.

  • Weight-wise, I reckon I must have lost a little bit, though I could be misattributing the effects of reduced bloating. For reference, I was eating around 3.000 kcal per day, which should at least imply my metabolism was not particularly low.

  • When it comes to temperature, I wasn’t too bothered about it as I didn’t experience unexpectedly cold limbs. It’s usually at 37º C during midday (it certainly was today), and I reckon that did not change much.

• I would love to try this again once I can get my hands on raw goat milk. I just need to find one that (1) won’t cost me ludicrous amounts of money (2) I can get delivered or stored efficiently, without taking up an entire fridge.

That is all!

If you have any questions, please leave them below.

And if you have some experience with milk-fasting and would like to share your insights, know that I’m all ears.

Upwards,

Yago

1. You can read more about that here and here.

2. Initially, I thought Vitamin C would also be an issue, but given how its content seems to fluctuate between 2-3 mg per 100 ml, a daily gallon of milk should be enough to cover the needs of a male adult (roughly 90 mg/day). [R]

3. Nowadays, much anti-milk sentiment hinges on how “humans are the only mammal that drinks milk from another mammal”, an argument I have never understood. We are also the only animal brewing coffee, writing poetry, flying airplanes, etc., and for that matter the only one mixing synthetic gums, cheap vitamins, and carburetor oil to make almond “milk”. I reckon all mammals would enjoy other mammals’ milk if they simply had access to it.

4. This is also the case for humans, of course. For instance, microplastics have recently been found in human breastmilk and I reckon their presence is far more widespread than we have come to realize, particularly across abusive farms, which you should not be supporting anyway.

5. PMC2951635

6. I would also add Click’s tweets on how, (1) with homogenized (commercial) cow milk, bovine folate receptors can be persorbed through our gut lining, which could cause immune and neurological problems in the long run; and (2) the protein sequence of bovine casein contains a lot of proline, which makes it harder to digest and have opioid-like effects. I put this as a footnote because it sound scary—and I don’t want you hating milk!

7. Note to self: have some ice cream before bed next time.