Drinking Skim Milk Can Contribute To Having Higher-than-desirable Estrogen Levels

[Literally]

According to a study I have only read this summary of:
Tip: Another Reason to Avoid Low-Fat Milk | T Nation

 

[milk_lover]

Whole milk tastes so much better than skim milk. My instinct tells me anything that tastes good is probably good for me. The only time I wouldn’t listen to my instinct and food taste is anything that was painted in PUFA.

 

[Literally]

And you have the name to back it up, @milk_lover -- @Literally

 

[milk_lover]

And you have the name to back it up, @milk_lover -- @Literally

Hahah yeah no natter what I eat and experiment with food wise, I always go back to milk. I drink mostly goat and camel milk but I drink cow milk here and there.

 

[Literally]

Where do you get the camel milk and what is it like?

 

[milk_lover]

Where do you get the camel milk and what is it like?

I am from the UAE, a country that is famous for camel beauty pageants, so sourcing milk is not hard. @Literally, you can find it at any gas station. When it’s cold, it tastes exactly like cow milk. But in general, people report it is saltier even though I don’t taste what they are tasting. I buy it because unlike cow milk in my country, camel milk is not fortified with vitamins even though it’s pasteurized and homogenized. Plus, having mostly A2 protien, it makes it easier to digest. I like its taste more than goat milk.

 

[lampofred]

I have always preferred whole milk over skim

But even whole milk I am sure mildly increases estrogen and reduces testosterone. I think the increase in progesterone and other nutrition outweighs the negatives though

 

[schultz]

I am from the UAE, a country that is famous for camel beauty pageants

Haha, I had to look this up. Amazing!

Also this article that I found, which is pure gold... 12 camels disqualified from Saudi beauty contest in 'Botox' row

12 camels disqualified for botox injections. So good!

Edit: Amazing creatures though, truly.

 

[Cirion]

The main problem (according to RP) is that whole milk tends to be fattening, at least when milk is used as a primary protein source. Also I know for a fact that I don't react well to milk fat - at least milk fat from most CAFO milk.

There is not enough information since you can't access the full article. Did the women eat reduced dietary fat as the result of having the skimmed milk? IE, did they not eat the same macros as the women who drank the whole milk?

That's an important distinguishment. If so, the only thing they would have determined is that reduced dietary fat may increase estrogen, which is a distinct possibility.

 

[Dobbler]

Whole milk tastes so much better than skim milk. My instinct tells me anything that tastes good is probably good for me. The only time I wouldn’t listen to my instinct and food taste is anything that was painted in PUFA.

Im the opposite. Even 1% milk tastes disgusting to me. Skim milk is the only milk i can drink.

 

[Optimus]

Has anyone even read the article before posting?

It says:
Quote>>
The lower-fat milk ended up causing much higher estrogen levels than the whole milk did. That's not to say the lower-fat milk had more estrogen in it than the whole milk. Instead, it had to do with the way the body handled the estrogen in the milk after drinking it.

"Milk consumption resulted in a significant increase in urinary estrone (E1) excretion, whereas estradiol (E2), estriol (E3), and 16ketoE2 excretion only increased after semi-skimmed milk consumption."
<<endquote

I says semi-skimmed milk led to increase in urinary Estrogens excretion. Extcretion shouldn’t be same as what’s in body, maybe body is getting rid of estrogens??

Hence, I am wary of the abrupt conclusion the article makes. It would be great if someone can get Ray Peat’s opinion on this.

 

[opson123]

I can't drink milk anymore, but I when I did, it was always skim milk. I think it's mind boggling people like the taste of whole milk. Even 1% milk tastes disgusting.

Edit: I remembered wrong. Quote from Travis.

Spoiler

I wouldn't be so sure about skim milk being lower in estrogen. Of course this is everyone's first impression as estradiol itself is lipid-soluble, but it does actually bind significantly to the protein fraction (albumin I think). Let me see what I can find (using sci-hub.tw and GoogleScholar):

Farlow, D. "Quantitative measurement of endogenous estrogen metabolites, risk-factors for development of breast cancer, in commercial milk products by LC–MS/MS." Journal of Chromatography B (2009)​

Chromatography is going to be accurate; check-out their admirable calibration curves:

View attachment 8633

They had bought milk from a grocery store in Maryland, had extracted the steroids using methanol, had analyzed that, and then had hydrolyzed the sulfated and glucoronidated metabolites and had then measured those. Below is a graph showing both free and conjugated metabolites of estrogens:

View attachment 8634

The skim actually milk has more total estrogens as expressed per unit volume. Although the fatty fraction could have more than its fair share, it is less dense than the protein and water fractions. Moreover, the fatty fraction likely has more lipid-soluble steroids crowding-out the space available for estrogens: cholesterol, pregnenolone, progesterone, and the androgens are all slightly more lipid-soluble than estradiol because they have less polar groups. The estrogens are also quite unique chemically in that they have a planar ring which would be expected to give them extra protein affinity due to hypothetical π–π stacking with the aromatic amino acids phenylalanine, tyrosine, tryptophan, and histidine. And of course, the sulfate group makes a steroid much more water-soluble and is likely the very reason why mammalian enzymes use them for this purpose; the sulfate groups ostensibly prime the steroids for excretion in the urine. Some of these estradiols were also glucuronidated although they hadn't discriminated between the two conjugated species in the above study. I'd think the glucoronic acid conjugates would likely be even more water-soluble than the sulfates on account of their −1 formal charge on the carboxyl group in addition to the three partial charges contributed by their hydroxyl groups—and the two by their ether groups.

So I would vote going full-fat. If I were to buy cheese right now, I'd go full-fat (although Emmentaler is a good cheese made exclusively from part-skim, and a legal requirement to labeled as such). This would both raise the calories ingested by the fuel-efficient as sometimes beneficial (i.e. stearic aid) saturated fatty acids and lower the total amount protein ingested—which could be seen as a plus to body builders but protein is harder to metabolize for energy than are saturated fatty acids. Skim milk would also have more casein both per calorie and per unit volume, meaning that it would also have more β-casomorphin per calorie or lilter.

There's also the possibility that skim milk could have either an enriched estrogen∶androgen ratio and/'or and increased estrogen∶progesterone ratio—or both—than full-fat milk should the milkfat happen to have more than its fair share of those (you might expect this based on solubility, and also because progesterone is not conjugated as frequently). Perhaps it would be helpful to see the comparative fractionation of all steroids to get a better idea?

Courant, Frédérique. "Determination of naturally occurring oestrogens and androgens in retail samples of milk and eggs." Food additives and contaminants (2007)​

As a side-note, there is great variability of egg steroid content from one hen to another.

'Purified Helix pomatia preparation was used for steroid deconjugation (Sigma, St Louis, MO, USA).' ―Courant​

Suspicion confirmed: It looks as if the process of skimming not only increases the total estrogen concentration but also decreases the total androgen concentration:

View attachment 8636

Adding the total androgens together—(34 +32 +296)—yields a value of 362 nanograms per liter in the skimmed milk and also—(65 +78 +934)—a value of 1077·ng/L for the whole milk. Referencing Figure 4 above (the estrogen determination) yields value of 458 and 323·pg/mL, in skimmed and whole milk respectively. Although the authors had used different units, it's easy to show that they are equivalent (multiplying by 10³/10³ is the same as multiplying by one):

pg/mL × (10³/10³) = ng/L​

So the process of skimming would obviously lead to a gross inflation of the estrogen∶androgen ratio—now in numbers:

Whole: 323/1077 = .300
Skim: 458/362 = 1.27​

A quadrupling of the estrogen∶androgen ratio is observed upon skimming. And conversely, the cream would be expected to get the reciprocal—or a fourfold higher androgen ratio.

 

[Aymen]

Estrogen In Milk

 

[TeaRex14]

Seems shaky, there was only one reference at the bottom of the article, and it was related to urinary excretion. Of course that doesn't make it necessarily wrong, but would like more solid evidence than what we appear to be excreting in our urine. Milk has some estrogen in it, but it's also balanced with progesterone. Secondly, most estrogen/progesterone is in the cream of the milk, meaning low fat milk will have less total hormones. Also mammalian estrogen is less reactive in our body than phytoestrogen. Lastly, and probably most importantly, many of us in Peat land are using at least one if not more aromatase inhibitors. Which will likely prevent whatever little estrogen we consume in dairy from being an issue.

 

[Birdie]

Seems shaky, there was only one reference at the bottom of the article, and it was related to urinary excretion. Of course that doesn't make it necessarily wrong, but would like more solid evidence than what we appear to be excreting in our urine. Milk has some estrogen in it, but it's also balanced with progesterone. Secondly, most estrogen/progesterone is in the cream of the milk, meaning low fat milk will have less total hormones. Also mammalian estrogen is less reactive in our body than phytoestrogen. Lastly, and probably most importantly, many of us in Peat land are using at least one if not more aromatase inhibitors. Which will likely prevent whatever little estrogen we consume in dairy from being an issue.

Agree.

 

[olive]

The effects of dairy on hormones are too prevelant to ignore.

Exposure to exogenous estrogen through intake of commercial milk produced from pregnant cows. - PubMed - NCBI

““... estrogens in milk were absorbed, and gonadotropin secretion was suppressed, followed by a decrease in testosterone secretion. Sexual maturation of prepubertal children could be affected by the ordinary intake of cow milk.”

 

[schultz]

The effects of dairy on hormones are too prevelant to ignore.

Exposure to exogenous estrogen through intake of commercial milk produced from pregnant cows. - PubMed - NCBI

““... estrogens in milk were absorbed, and gonadotropin secretion was suppressed, followed by a decrease in testosterone secretion. Sexual maturation of prepubertal children could be affected by the ordinary intake of cow milk.”

I think it depends on how pregnant the animal is. A third trimester cow will be putting a lot of estrogen into the milk. It's sort of weird to be milking a cow this late and I think they stop milking them a couple months before delivery (I think they have a 9 month cycle right?). It's actually weird to milk any pregnant animal IMO. Imagine giving all that milk as well as growing a calf?! But I guess they don't care about the health of the animals.

Edit: Just getting the numbers from the paper you posted...

"Concentration of E1 sulfate increases from 30 pg/mL in non-pregnant cows to 151 pg/mL in pregnant cows at 40–60 days of gestation, and to a maximum level of 1000 pg/mL in cows at 220 days of gestation."

Edit 2: Btw they used 3.5% milk in this study, which contains significantly more of the unconjugated estrogen (and also more progesterone since progesterone is very lipophilic)

Edit 3: Yes, another edit... I guess I should actually finish reading the study before I start commenting.

I noticed this study was done in Japan and they used commercially available cows milk. It says...

"In Japan, milk is produced predominantly by lactating cattle, and approximately 80% of this milk originates from pregnant cows."

I am really curious as to what that number is in the US and also Canada (since I am from Canada) I suppose I could just walk down the street and talk to some of my neighbours lol.

It's probably the same percentage as I think farmers tend to use the same schedule which is based on 1 year. Cows give birth once a year, and there is a 2 month dry period where they are not milked before the birth. So they are milked for 10 months, 3 of which they are not yet pregnant. What a life! Also, dairy cows give an average of 30 litres of milk a day. Imagine that for a family? lol

 

[schultz]

I thought this was interesting. I am not making a point, just thought it was neat.

Relative concentrations of progesterone and estradiol-17beta in blood serum, whole milk, skimmed milk and milk whey of Holstein cows. - PubMed - NCBI

"The mean estradiol-17β concentration had a higher tendency to be higher in skimmed milk than in whole milk and serum."

"The difference in estradiol-17β concentration between skimmed milk and whole milk suggests that more estradiol-17β is present in casein than in milk fat."

"Milk whey was also selected as one of the specimens, but this was not regarded as an appropriate specimen for estradiol-17β determination, because the estradiol-17β concentration of milk whey was below the minimum detectable activity for all the cows."

 

[schultz]

Estrone and estrone sulfate concentrations in milk and milk fractions. - PubMed - NCBI

I think we talked about all of this stuff in another thread (probably like 20 other threads actually, there is a lot of repetition on the forum) but I will post it here anyway.

They list the production rates of estrogen in that paper, which I think @Travis thought were too high of an estimate. Anyway, they also list the amount per cup of milk in that paper which is useful to give people an idea of the amount of estrogen they are consuming.

"Estimated total E(1) intake from three servings of whole milk was 68 ng/day, which represents 0.01% to 0.1% of daily production rates in human beings."

Even with Travis' conservative daily estrogen production values, this is still quite low. 6 cups of milk a day could still be under 0.5% of your total daily estrogen, and that assumes you are absorbing 100% of it and it also assumes that it is being put into cells in the body and becoming biologically active, instead of just being removed by the liver immediately (urine estrogen goes up post milk, so I suspect it is just being removed). I wonder how much your daily estrogen goes up from 1mg of DHEA? Surely more than 0.5% of your total estrogen? (I don't actually know, but it's an interesting thought)

Also, I found this quote which is an important point regarding the gestation of the cow.

"Cows later in pregnancy have higher milk estrogen concentrations, yet they generally produce less milk than those in early lactation. Therefore, their relative contribution to the milk supply is lower than that of early lactation cows."

So a cow in the later stages of pregnancy will be contributing less milk in general to the "milk pool". Some numbers would have been helpful though, so the reader can determine for themselves whether the contribution is relevant or not.

Okay so I found a study showing the decline in milk production. Seems to drop about 25% (maybe 20%?) from the start of pregnancy to when the cow is dried up. That doesn't seem like that much of a drop to me. (study here)

 

[schultz]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814697001507

From the paper...

"It has further to be taken into consideration that about 90% of the ingested hormones are inactivated by the first-pass-effect of the liver."

"More effects on human beings can be expected from exposure to phytoestrogens, which occur in plants in high amounts, or by environmental chemicals with hormonal or hormone blocking activity such as some pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls or dioxines, which are widespread in food and water."