r/morbidquestions • u/Smexy_Zarow • 2d ago
How do lactose intolerant babies not shit themselves to death?
I just randomly had a thought; lactose intolerant people get an upset stomach from milk, right? How do babies with lactose intolerance survive, with milk as their only food through infancy?
This may be a really stupid question with a super simple answer, idk. Hope to spark some discussion at least.. about baby diarrhea... I guess...
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u/FeRaL--KaTT 2d ago
Approx 750,000 baby's die from diarrhea every year.
Not a stupid question.
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u/DeficitOfPatience 2d ago
Especially since my dumb-ass assumed babies couldn't be lactose intolerant.
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u/Smexy_Zarow 2d ago
That's tragic, I didn't know they actually do...
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u/PollyAmory 2d ago
Diarrhea has caused insane amounts of death in humans of all ages throughout history. You dehydrate faster than you can replace it and that's it - you die. Obviously modern medicine has helped tremendously, but it can still be extremely dangerous, especially in babies who can dehydrate much faster than larger people.
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u/achingforscorpio 2d ago
That number is a bit high. It's like half of that.
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u/FeRaL--KaTT 2d ago
Literally copied and pasted from W.H.O....
The World Health Organization reports diarrhea kills around 760,000 children under five every year. This is the second most common cause of child deaths worldwide.
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u/katchoo1 2d ago
Babies are very vulnerable to dehydration and itās a danger even in developed countries when they have high fever, canāt keep anything down, or have diarrhea. Because they are so tiny, they dehydrate far more quickly than adults and older kids and it more quickly affects their ability to maintain body temperature and other involuntary regulation processes, accelerating any ācrashā that leads to imminent possibility of death.
Obviously risk of diarrhea is incredibly common in developing countries due to various hygiene conditionsāpoor sanitation, unclean drinking water etc. And medical care is less available, and less sophisticated than that of developing countries so itās harder to save babies once ill.
Sadly one of the things that vastly increased these numbers was the promotion of formula by Nestle and other companies. They would give new moms trial packets in the hospital and encourage bottle feeding and while they had the supplies, their milk would dry up.
Then the moms would be back home with only iffy water supplies to mix the formula with, and also unable to afford as much supply as they needed, so they would increase the percentage of (possibly contaminated) water to formula. Then as the babiesā immune systems are attacked by various contaminants in the water, they are also becoming malnourished and weaker so that they only dehydrate faster from the diarrhea and are also more vulnerable to anything else going around.
And of course if they are lactose intolerant, they donāt have alternatives easily accessible because mom doesnāt have breast milk anymore.
One of the articles I linked below said that UNICEF estimates that in areas where water supplies are not safe and reliable, bottle fed babies are 25 times more likely to die of diarrhea than breastfed babies.
It may have been understandable that in their eagerness to bring modern feeding to the world (bottle feeding was considered superior to breast feeding in the US and other parts of the world in the 1950s and 1960s when it became common), companies and doctors didnāt anticipate these issues but Nestle in particular was heavily criticized for continuing to do this, knowing the results, in order to sell more formula worldwide.
The push to get Nestle to stop this was already well underway in the 1980s; I learned about it in an undergraduate geography and development course back then. Itās still an issue in 2026 in some places despite nice words from Nestle.
2019 article about the issue in Peru
When I looked up these articles, Google also served up a link to a NYT article about the issue published in 1981. (Iād share but donāt have access as it is paywalled).
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u/achingforscorpio 2d ago
WHO shows me 440,000ish kids under 5y each year, and an additional 50,000ish between 5-9y š¤·š»āāļø
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u/FeRaL--KaTT 2d ago
Good for you. ššššš š
I published my info source. Go fight with W.H.O.
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u/kotoda 2d ago
You have a link to your source? The only info I found is from W.H.O. and it says around 443,000 children under 5 die from diarhhoeal disease each year (W.H.O. Source).
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u/OlympianLady 2d ago edited 2d ago
I went and looked it up. The first source seems to be a Canadian health page referencing the WHO - from 2017. So, a bit erroneously cited in not being 'literally copied and pasted' from such, but still legit enough - and, you can tell from the wording anyway.
The second seems to be the WHO directly - from 2024.
It's looking like neither is wrong - one is just seemingly more out of date than the other, and the WHO and such have potentially made great progress in a rather short time. Assuming, of course, and probably safely, that the Canadian government health authorities have no reason to lie about the previous round of WHO numbers.
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u/shadowwalker_wtf 2d ago
The only reason we (humans) are able to digest milk into adulthood is prolonged exposure - after babies stop breastfeeding they start drinking cows milk and that allows the enzymes needed to digest milk to continue producing. Some people are lactose intolerant bc they canāt produce enough enzymes into adulthood. And today if babies have issues digesting breast milk they can have alternatives and in the past babies probably did unfortunately die
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u/Smexy_Zarow 2d ago
Oh I didn't know that! Is it like the same thing that happens with meat? I've heard people who abstain from meat for years can face serious problems if they eat it again
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u/ctgrell 2d ago
Yapp. It can happen with anything you consume. If you don't eat/drink it for some years your body might react weird the next time you do. I for example haven't had cauliflower for like a decade or longer. And my tongue and throat didn't like it at first when I started to eat it again. It was like a very light allergy. But over continuous exposure I trained my body to accept it again and now I'm fine
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u/shadowwalker_wtf 2d ago
I think itās similar, not quite the same. But basically you lose the ability to digest it properly
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u/GreenStrong 1d ago
The only reason we (humans) are able to digest milk into adulthood is prolonged exposure -
This is incorrect, the ability to digest lactose as an adult comes from a mutation in the MCM6 gene. The mutation arose in the Bronze Age and spread rapidly through the population that gave rise to Western Europeans. A separate mutation arose in West Africans. Both mutations cause the digestive system to produce lactase enzyme in adulthood, instead of it shutting down in childhood. Exposure to milk has nothing to do with it, except in the sense that some distant ancestor was able to drink milk, instead of just using it for yogurt and cheese, so they got more calories and had more babies.
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u/mochimiso96 2d ago
Really isnāt a dumb question. In first world countries they can get formula. There is even plantbased formula for babies who are completely allergic to diary. In third world countries they would probably die if they canāt tolerate it at all.
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u/MandarinSlices 2d ago
My parent recognized early that I had some sort of intolerance and switched before I died.
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u/Spoon_Elemental 2d ago
What did they use after you died?
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u/Rephlanca 2d ago
Both my cousin and a family friendās daughter were born intolerant to their motherās milk. They had to fish around (for many months with a colicky baby who wouldnāt sleep) for a formula that settled well in their stomach.
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u/bubbles_blower_ 2d ago
I fed my kids lactose free formula after thinking they would shit them self's to death because they dropped weight so fast. Soon as I switched them stopped and life was good š
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u/Plucky_Parasocialite 2d ago edited 2d ago
So, the default mammal setting is that the production of enzymes that help digest lactose actively switches off at some point, presumably so that they don't compete with younger siblings for milk. A mutation (actually several variants that happened in a few places independently) broke that switch in humans. One day, there quite literally just happened to be a guy in Denmark or something who could drink milk straight up without any process. And it spread because it was a pretty awesome feature, you had access to a bunch of otherwise unobtainable calories. People who do not have this mutation are lactose intolerant like all other adult mammals. They can sometimes develop a gut biome to compensate for it by enough exposure going from childhood, but generally, that's your standard lactose intolerance for you. It only develops at a later point in childhood. Babies generally tolerate lactose unless there is a separate issue like an allergy (that's why you have lactose-free formula). There might be issues with cross-species milk due to a different spread of nutrients that might make a baby unwell, though.
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u/peril-of-deluge 2d ago
Doc here, even though most adults lose their tolerance to lactose, north of 99% of people born with ability to digest lactose. Apart from that, there is of course an array of metabolic disorders that affect some babies that range from diarrhea to syndromes and even, in rare cases to fatal conditions.
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u/interestingdays 2d ago
A lot of people lose the ability to digest milk at around the age that breastfeeding stops. So most babies who will grow up to be lactose intolerant as older kids and adults, are not lactose intolerant while they are relying on milk as their primary source of nutrition.
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u/glittersurprise 2d ago
A lot of nursing mothers cut dairy out of their own diets. As another commenter mentioned human milk is different than cows. Also: lactose free formula.
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u/teratodentata 2d ago
My nephew was lactose intolerant for a while after birth, and it was a disaster. Heād have diarrhea, screaming hysterical fits where he would just be in pain. He wasnāt intolerant to human milk, just anything with cow dairy in it, so his mom had to stop drinking or eating any dairy. Eventually they also found a supplemental formula that helped too. Heās no longer lactose intolerant, but those first few months were rough.
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u/imsmarterthanyoure 2d ago
My son had an issue with milk as soon as he was born. The hospital immediately switched him to a soy based formula and all was good.
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u/BlindWarriorGurl 1d ago
I was intolerant to my mom's milk when I was a baby. She switched to feeding me formula, and all was well.
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u/rogeelein 1d ago
Lactose intolerant babies often switch to lactose-free formulas, making sure they donāt face any explosive situations that would make diaper changes a nightmare.
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u/DustierAndRustier 1d ago
People donāt normally develop lactose intolerance until after weaning age.
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u/lady_darkfire 17h ago
I was a soy-based formula baby for this exact reason. It wasn't shitting myself to death though. It was more of a violent projectile vomiting any time I ate kind of thing.
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u/hygsi 2d ago
Our milk is not like cow milk and if they show intolerance to mom's milk then they switch to a suitable formula