If it is truly lactose intolerance that you are talking about here are some things to consider. Some restaurants use fake cheese. So you may think you are eating "dairy" and it does not bother you but you are not consuming actual real dairy products. A lot of places use caesin instead of real cheese on pizzas. Like it has been said before hard cheeses have very little lactose in them compared to soft cheeses. This may explain why some pizza gives problems and some does not. BTW, restaurants use fake boiled egg too. The fake slices are easy to spot but usually they use the fake chopped egg. One popular brand they use is "Egg Roll". Some restaurants also use a 'fake' sour cream product that they give for the baked potatoes and use to make salad dressing. One brand of this is called "Hyderve". Of course as you may know restaurants use margarine instead of real butter too. Most people are not bothered by the small amounts of lactose in butter but if you are, use drawn butter on things. That way you are only getting the 'grease' part of the butter and none of the milk solids that are suspended in butter. Some restaurants make "cream soups" from and actual diary cream reduction and some make "cream soups" from a roux with broth added. This may explain why you have more symtoms at some restaurants than at others. Don't bother asking your server if something has real dairy in it as they are not ever given the recipes that the restaurant uses. Nowdays even upscale places buy a lot of premade things from industry restaurant vendors so even the owner/manager may not be able to supply you with the answer. Also heat seems to make a difference in whether there is a large amount of lactose in a food item. Heat destoys a lot of the lactose in a product. So cheese on a pizza may not bother you but cheese sprinkled on a salad may. Tip: You can save money by buying regular milk and boiling it and letting it cool, rather than buying lactose reduced milk. Yes, I know that all milk is pasturized but they do not bring it up to 212 degrees when they do so, only 160 degrees to kill bacteria. For some reason dairy products with acidophilous culture does not bother people with lactose intolerance. Maybe the bacteria eat the lactose?? Yogourt does not usually bother people. You can buy acidophilous milk at stores but for some reason it is becomming harder to find in stores these days. If seems to have faded away when the new lactose free milks arrived in the market. I am lactose intolerant and have always boughten acidophilous milk. It's better for you too! You may have miltiple food sensitivities. Yes, food sensitivities can develop as you age. Something that did not bother you years ago may now cause problems. It may be hard to pin down what it is as so many products we buy have all sorts of food additives 'snuck' into them. For instance lots of restuarants put peanut butter into soups and gravies. the reason is that it takes the scorched taste out of things. In the town where I live a person died at a chili shop while eating chili because it had peanut butter in it. Who wouda thunk? You will be surpised at how much sugar and artificial sweetners is snuck into food in resturants and in the things you buy at the grocer store. Sweetners are put into just about everything we buy. Americans have a big sweet tooth. Soups, breads, salad dressings, meat marinades, canned veggies, almost everything has sweetners, milk solids, and wheat starches, added. Try going on a very bland diet and gradually add things back into it until you find the foods that bother you. This may mean starting out buy just eating rice. Yes, I am serious. If you are truly experiencing severe symptoms you could be allergic to corn, wheat, nuts, synthetic sweetners, milk almost anything and maybe multiple items. Shop at a health food store for a while and only buy "pure" products. See if that makes a difference in how you feel. Keep us posted.

Jean, when it comes to fruits, I agree: Better to eat the whole fruit than drink the juice--particularly if the fruit is organic and you can eat the skin without chemicals. But I'm talking about juicing vegetables. Juicing provides almost all the nutrients from vegetables without the bulk, therefore enabling one to consume more of them. Most of us don't eat nearly enough vegetables. That's why the author of the article linked above calls juicing "concentrated nutrition."

My cardiologist just put me on a low dose of Lipitor last month,even though my chart clearly states i'm allergic to statins.My cholesterol was quite high,higher than it's ever been before.I didn't know this until a couple of days after i saw him,when the nurse called and told me and called in the prescription.I had just finished with 6 sessions of chemo and i asked the nurse if the cholesterol could be from that.She didn't know. Back in 2006 my cholesterol was slightly elevated and they put me on lovastatin.That stuff gave me all kinds of charlie horss,day and night.Got them in my calves,thighs,feet,including toes.Got them to the point that my toes would cramp while driving,and i'd have to pull off the road.Told the dr,he didn't think it as from the meds,but i knew different and told him i wasn't going to take them anymore,and i didn't til last month. I was already having some muscle,bone pain among other things from the chemo meds i'm on for the next 5 years.But they do seem to have gotten worse,so i'll make sure i tell the dr when i see him. I didn't know about the thyroid thing,will have to check into that as well as i have no thyroid,except for what i get in pill form every morning. I always say they give you a pill for one thing and it causes something else!! Kathi

"Bloody D? Has he been checked for hook worms? You did take him to the vet - right?? The blood set off an alarm in my head..." He had an accident on the carpet in my office around 10 p.m. Friday night. When I saw how much blood there was I stopped cleaning it up and immediately went to call my vet (24x7x365 coverage, very nice). I had a long chat with one of the techs as to whether he should be seen immediately or not, with the decision being to take him to the vet at 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning. He had a full fecal work up looking for worms, which was negative. He settled down fairly quickly, but the quality of the... poops... just never really got back to what it should be. This past Saturday he had another episode of loose, mucousy stool, but no blood. That's when I discussed what was going on with my friend David, and he suggested the food change. In the past 48 hours his poops are MUCH more what you would expect from a healthy dog, so I'm really thinking it was the food that was the issue, and I just wasn't smart enough to think of it. And that makes me feel bad. I'll skimp on my own medical care. But I won't skimp on Mason's.