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Health Check: Questioning the Health Benefits of Drinking Milk

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26/11/2014

Questioning the Health Benefits of Drinking Milk

BBC World Service - Health Check, Questioning the Health Benefits of Drinking Milk

Does the lactose content in milk mean it is not as good for us as we might think?

Is milk as healthy as we might think? Also, a new VSO programme in Nepal is raising awareness of uterine prolapse. And, how we can reduce mobile phone driver distraction?

This edition of Health Check has been updated to reflect the sad death of cricketer Phil Hughes.

Over the years the results of research examining whether milk prevents fractures have been mixed, and some studies even suggest an increase in fracture rates. To try and settle this, Karl Michaelsson, professor of medical epidemiology at Uppsala University in Sweden, conducted a vast observational study of 107,000 people. They kept diaries of their diet and were followed up for more than a decade. The results were that people who drank more than three glasses of milk a day were twice as likely to die at the end of the study period. Women also had a 15% higher rate of fractures. Professor Michaelsson explains a possible hypothesis for what might be going on. 

Uterine Prolapse in Nepal
Uterine prolapse is a medical problem affecting around 600,000 of the country’s 13.6 million women have a uterine prolapse. Often they are left to suffer in silence and sometimes they are unable to walk, lift things or even to sit. So in some rural areas, communities have assigned so-called ‘model couples’ – real husbands and wives trained by the Centre for Agro Ecology and Development - to raise awareness and attempt to reduce the stigma surrounding the condition. The BBC’s Phanindra Dahal travelled to the mountainous district of Dailekh in western Nepal to see a ‘model couple’ in action.

Driving Distraction
Researchers have demonstrated many times that using hands-free phones is much more distracting for drivers than talking to a passenger sitting beside them. In a period of just two years in the US, there were 3000 deaths caused by drivers getting distracted in some way. So psychologists at the University of Alberta wondered what would happen if the remote partner on the end of the phone had the same view of the driving scene as the driver. Kyle Mathewson, assistant professor of psychology tells Health Check about their results.

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