I have been told by the Moderator that my earlier message relating to scientific backing for the a2 case has been removed from public view because of "unsubstantiated" information.
I wonder if perhaps a complaint has been laid by a competitor of a2 Milk who doesn't like this information being made known. But that’s okay with me. I completely support the HotCopper policy of requiring substantiation and am happy to provide it.
Some readers of this forum may in fact be pleased at the opportunity to follow up the references I am about to cite.. Others who find this post rather long are of course not forced to read it.
My original posting began by confirming that StanJupiter was absolutely correct in his belief that a2 milk doesn't really provide "health benefits" per se, but guarantees the complete absence of potentially harmful A1 protein . I noted that for a long time the company itself did not make this clear, and simply promoted the health "benefits" of A2, but this allowed other dairy processors to misleadingly start promotiing their products as also being beneficial because they contained
a proportion of A2 protein .
I also said a2MC apparently then felt forced to come out openly and clarify that A1 is the health villain, and a2 milk is the healthy option because it contains no A1. Nutritionally, a2 milk has exactly the same valuie as standard (mixed A1-A2) milk, but it avoids producing the peptide BCM7 in the consumer's gastro-intestinal system which only A1 milk can do, and this peptide can spread through the consumer’s bloodstream.
The company's recent hardening-up of its promotional message has been aided by clinical trials including the recent Curtin University trial and the Shanghai trial, both of which have been published in refereed scientific publications as already quoted on this forum. For substantiation, the journal reference for the full text of the Curtin trial result is
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24986816 and the journal reference for the Chinese trial result is https
://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-016-0147-z
These trials which involved human subjects both confirmed that A1 milk (and not A2) are the cause of digestive discomfort associated with dairy, and the Chinese trial went further and showed that A1 milk is the main causative factor in so-called lactose intolerance. The Chinese trial has been praised for its scientific quality and hailed as a major health breakthrough.
I then stated that BCM7, which is the product of A1 milk, is definitely linked with neurological conditions such as autism and schizophrenia. This has been in the published scientific literature for more than a decade and is not disputed (though no one is saying it is the sole causative factor).
And I said BCM7 also appears to compromise the body's immune system by interfering with the anti-oxidation process that is crucial to it in fighting such diseases as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.. The source reference for this statement is a 2014 research report by Trivedi et al published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25018147
I quote some relevant passages of the research report below. For ease of comprehension, BCM7 is the opioid peptide derived from A1 milk, and DNA methylation is a biochemical process crucial to the immune system’s ability to fight against disease. Prior to this research study, there was no evidence that BCM7 could actually inhibit this process, but tests using human neural cells showed that it could do this by disrupting the uptake of cysteine, an essential precursor to glutathione, the central component in the methylation process. Thus:
"The current study is the first to describe the ability of food-derived opioid peptides and morphine to modulate cysteine uptake, with subsequent effects on cellular redox and methylation status leading to global changes in DNA methylation and gene transcription...
"These actions constitute a biochemical pathway, namely a redox/methylation signaling pathway, which extends our current understanding of the physiological and pharmacological effects of food-derived opioid peptides….
"Changes in epigenetic marks such as DNA methylation are crucial for adaptive changes in gene transcription and early-life experience; for example, nutrition can influence the lifelong risk of diseases such as cancer, type 2 diabetes mellitus, obesity, inflammation and neurocognitive disorders. …
"While the GI tract may be the primary locus for opiate peptide effects, their influence can extend throughout the body, by virtue of their influence over systemic antioxidant resources. It should be noted that bovine form of BCM7 is only released from cows with the A1 genotype and not A2 genotype cows."
Happy to respond to any questions arising from this.
(20min delay)