Recent research shows that there are a number of people who assume they are lactose intolerant and for the most part their own doctors agree with them. Why you might ask can a person self diagnose lactose intolerance and have their physician agree with them yet be completely wrong? Tests done at Iowa State University on patients who self diagnosed as being lactose intolerant actually showed that many of them could tolerate as much as 1 cup of milk without any symptoms.

Seems that they and their doctors merely tried the elimination diet and since the symptoms went away, they automatically assumed that they were indeed lactose intolerant. In many cases the doctors chose to test the patient for lactose intolerance by giving them a mixture of 50g of lactose in water to drink after fasting for at least 8 hours. This is like drinking a quart of milk on an empty stomach, something that would make those of us who are not lactose intolerant have a bad reaction to.

Newer testing techniques such as the breath hydrogen/methane test can be used to differentiate between what is known as a lactose maldigester and someone who is lactose intolerant. The typical maldigester can only absorb a certain amount of lactose but may never display any of the symptoms of someone who is lactose intolerant such as diarrhea or nausea.

The hydrogen/methane breath test makes use of the fact that the fermentation of carbohydrates by the colonic bacteria in the body should be the only source of hydrogen in the human body. Given this fact the hydrogen that is produced by the fermentation of lactose then enters the blood stream and finally ends up being expelled from the body through exhaling. Thus if the hydrogen level in the breath shows a significant rise after drinking a glass of milk following  fasting then the patient is more likely to suffer from lactose maldigestion rather than intolerance. This is significant in that if the test shows maldigestion but the symptoms of intolerance persist further testing needs to be done to find out the root cause of the symptoms.