Now, a protein from milk acts as a stress-buster.
If you find it hard to fall sleep at night, you may have given in to that old method, of downing a warm glass of milk at bedtime. Perhaps while you did so you were thinking wistfully of how peaceful a baby looks after being breast-fed by its mother. That blissful baby is, apparently, the very image that researchers of Ingredia had in mind when they went in search of the particular ingredient in milk that had this calming effect. Ingredia is a French company that makes and markets food ingredients, including for nutrition and health, mostly based on milk.
They isolated a particular form of a milk protein, which they then patented and to which they gave the name Lactium. This “natural stress management formulation” — not medicine, mind you — is being sold under various brand names, including Equilibrium and Rilax, licensed by other companies. It is claimed that 150 mg of Lactium a day, usually taken in a capsule and not at mealtimes, can help you better cope with the stress of daily life. And if it is taken an hour in advance of a stress-inducing event, such as a difficult work meeting, social encounter or exam, then it supposedly can help tide you over that as well.
Lactium “allows you to prevent and regulate problems and bad habits due to stress: snacking, weight gain, sleep troubles, stop smoking, mood swings, sexual problems, impaired memory and concentration”, according to the manufacturer. That sounds like a lot of work for a simple milk protein. Boiled down to the essentials, Lactium is said to reduce blood pressure and improve sleep — without having a sedative effect — as well as concentration.
If the formulation does what it promises to — and a “randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled” but short-term clinical study with a small number of volunteers indicates that as far as stress-related eating goes, it does help a little — then Lactium, and other products like it that may be developed in the future, could prove useful to millions of people who currently bear the physical and mental health burdens of long-term stress, whether work-related or not.
Long-term stress has many side effects, including digestive troubles, headaches and body pains, mood swings, depression, insomnia, high blood pressure and a reduced ability to concentrate. It can also, over time, lead to cardiovascular disease, a major killer.