★★★★★
Then when I was 10 or 11, a couple of things happened: I hit puberty, and we started getting raw milk from a farmer. My parents were still worried about my famine victim appearance, and admire the robust-looking kids of a professor friend who lived on a small farm. The friend told my dad that he had several cows, and all seven of his kids were drinking the milk. He was aware of the track record of raw milk in treating illnesses, and told my dad that a couple of my distant cousins in town were also drinking it. He didn't tell my dad about how it had been used in the past, though.
A couple of years later, everyone was marveling how I'd outgrown my allergies; even my allergist was amazed at my turnaround. I was gradually weaned off most of my medicines.
Then I went away to college, and my allergies returned within about 5 months, just a tad. Just enough to need a rescue inhaler and be on antihistamines that year. But they gradually worsened, until within 10 years I was on all kinds of experimental drugs, and within 12 years I was as bad as I'd ever been. I almost died when my son was 11 months old from a food reaction, only the second I'd ever had. Mine were all molds and pollens and danders.
About 2 years after that, we moved and I made new friends. One of them told me about someone who was going to have raw milk, and I was excited because it just represented health to me. I couldn't have the extensive garden and orchard my parents had had to plant when I was a child, but I could at least give my kids raw milk.
And within 6 months, I was wondering why there was no ragweed season. Within 12 months I'd let most of my allergy medicines run out without refilling them. And within 14 months, I'd been challenged by spending the night in a room with 5 of my top allergies, only to awaken with clear sinuses and lungs, still alive, even though I had no medicines with me.
I then found out that there had been a particularly severe ragweed season that year, and I hadn't even realized it. I realized the only thing that had changed for me during that time was adding raw milk to my diet. So I did some research and found out about the natural steroids in the cream that are destroyed by heat, and how substances in the milk heal small leaks in the intestines that may contribute to allergies.
At the same time, I noticed my 12-month-old daughter's eczema had vanished. I'd thought it wasn't active during the summer; then realized it hadn't reappeared during the winter. She now has lovely skin at age 10. And no cavities ever, because she's had pasteurized milk only a handful of times in her life.
That's the biggest thing I've noticed from drinking it, and it's such a huge thing in my life. The two times that I've had trouble getting raw milk for several months since then, at the end of that time period I would sometimes react to my strongest allergens again, just a little; and my daughter would sometimes have slight flair-ups of eczema. We do our utmost to make sure we can have raw milk!
