Miley Cyrus' Lactose "Allergy"

There are days when I long for the time when nobody knew what lactose intolerance was. Sure, that era was terrible, but no information is higher on the scale than bad information. Today lactose intolerance is an all-purpose joke that the ignorant trot out when they have nothing better to say.

Miley Cyrus is now nineteen, which means she's old enough to know better and old enough to take responsibility for her words.



Images like the above have appeared on the net, which show Cyrus as being disturbingly thin. Naturally, rumors about her having an eating disorder or anorexia sprang up. That's a serious subject and worthy of a serious response. Could be we so lucky? No, of course not.

Here's her actual twitter posts:



I hope I don't need to remind anyone reading this that lactose intolerance is not an allergy - it is, in fact, totally different in almost every way from true milk protein allergies. Gluten intolerance, more properly called celiac disease, isn't a real allergy either. Both are effects of food not being digested properly rather than immune system responses.

You, and by you I mean everybody out there within reach of a normal supermarket, can thrive on a complete, healthfilled, calorie-laden, and satisfying diet even if you can't have gluten or lactose, although the earliest parts of the transition period may be rough until you learn how to adapt. Glucose and lactose intolerances should never be excuses for poor nutrition, bad food habits, or losing excess weight.

Can Ms Cyrus make things even worse? You'd think not, and you'd be wrong. Among her many tweets was one showing her holding a bag of burgers from the popular California chain Carl's Jr. Her caption: "I can’t eat it. So I’m just gonna smell the shittttt out of it! My mouth is LITERALLY watering."

That's an eating disorder. That's the definition of an eating disorder. Or else that's stupidity of a magnitude that not even spoiled pop princesses should ever be allowed to get away with.

Me, I vote both.

LI Celebrity Alert: Drew Brees

Breaking news! Just in time for the Super Bowl!

Drew Brees is lactose intolerant!

(He is the quarterback for the New Orleans Saints football team.)

It's a standing joke in American "journalism" that in the days before the Super Bowl, every column inch of every newspaper page (or today every gigabyte of every hard disk) in Super Bowl cities must be filled with something, anything, Super Bowl-related, no matter how trivial. So kudos to Nola.com for living up to this venerable tradition.

Ron Thibodeaux of The Times-Picayune actually managed to track down the favorite pizza place. When he was in college. A decade ago. It was, so the claim goes, Bruno's in West Lafayette, Indiana. And even better, we know what his favorite pizza was.

"Drew is lactose intolerant, so he’d go with the Bruno’s Meat - just sausage, pepperoni, bacon and ham," said Orlando Itin, known to everyone in town as "Big O."

Itin hasn't talked with Brees about adding the quarterback's name to the menu, but if that happens, he already has a name picked out: "It’s the Drew Brees No Cheese!"

Go Saints!

UPDATE: I did further checking after receiving a comment that Brees was really allergic to milk rather than lactose intolerant. Apparently that's correct. Here's the article from Sports Illustrated.

Brees's long list of food allergies includes dairy, wheat, gluten, eggs and nuts.

Still a dairy-free celebrity for our purposes. Even better, he now becomes an example of what I need to point out regularly. People don't know the difference between lactose intolerance and milk allergy and get them confused on a regular basis.

And it's also a good example of something equally important to point out: never assume that a filler article about Super Bowl trivia has any pretense to accuracy.

LI Celeb Alert: Casey Stoner

Australian motorcycle racing champ Casey Stoner was thrown by a severe case of lactose intolerance last year.

Casey Stoner is confident that having overcome the illness that ruined his championship bid in 2009 he is now primed for glory this season.

The Australian had looked in good shape early last year after winning two of the first five races.

But a mysterious debilitating illness, which left him “completely destroyed after three or four laps” struck and sidelined him for three races. He recovered and won again before the end of the year and he expects more of the same now.

“I am feeling better than I have in years so am really looking forward to this year. We are going out to win the championship like everyone else.”

Stoner, 24, discovered his ailment last year had been due to being lactose intolerance, but he returned with a second place in Portugal and then back-to-back wins in Australia and Malaysia to finish fourth in the standings.

After going completely off lactose, he became strong enough to finish races. And win them.

LI Celebrity Alert: Howie Mandel

The world's foremost germophobe, Howie Mandel, has written a celebrity TMI bio, Here's the Deal: Don't Touch Me, detailing his history of health-oriented weirdness.

Photo by Matt Ottosen from Wikipedia

Naturally that includes lactose intolerance, as told to the Toronto Globe and Mail.

"I've had a very fractured, weird career," the 54-year-old performer says from his home in Los Angeles, where he lives with his family and suffers from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. "It's very ADHD of me," Mandel says with a laugh, "my appeal being so distracted."

With the amount of press he's doing, the focus on the bald comic will be narrowed – he'll be the guy talking about his childhood, a highly awkward stage of his life that, as we learn in the first chapter of his book, involved a lactose-intolerant, colour-blind boy so unfocused that he'd forget to go to the bathroom, which resulted not only in his wetting his pants, but in his throwing himself into puddles to cover it up. He also had a fear of laundry hampers, his skin was a nesting ground for sand flies and he needed 100-per-cent attention.

Thanks, Howie. We needed that.

LI Celebrity Alert: John Cleese

Every fanatical Monty Python enthusiast knows that the family surname of John Cleese was changed from "Cheese" when his father went off to fight in WWI. A good thing, to be sure. Who would believe a comic actor by the name of John Cheese? And if he did have that name, would he have dared emphasize it in his work? The world might have lost the Cheese Shop sketch, a member of the pantheon of comedy.

So it's ironic on several levels that John Cleese is himself lactose intolerant, as revealed in this interview with Kerry Lengel of The Arizona Republic.

I love a little chocolate, but unfortunately, as I am lactose-intolerant, I have to get dark chocolate, and so much of that ends up having milk fat in it, too. I also have a problem with gluten, so it's amazing how little I can eat these days. Or rather, how careful I have to be.

John, Mr. Cleese, that's good advice on dark chocolate. But don't worry yourself with milk fat as in ingredient. It is essentially lactose-free.

Hooray for Newsweek!

Newsweek decided a couple of weeks ago to drop the "news" part of the week. Apparently conceding that it could no longer compete with Internet swiftness, the editors rejiggered the magazine to contain mostly opinion and interpretation of issues in the news rather than breaking news stories. It's, at best, a work in progress still. Magazine columnists work best as spice in the meal, not the main dish.

Each week also features a major cover story that they intend to function part as think piece, part as background for the educated reader. These have also been uneven, both in length and depth. They've interviewed Obama (yawn) and examined the "real" Iran (worthy yawn). In need of something to stop the yawning they pulled out the newsmagazine equivalent of a bunker buster. They dissed Oprah.

Specifically, Live Your Best Life Ever! by Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert smashes into tiny smithereens the lack of science and sense in the crackpots and quacks that dispense fraudulent medical advice on her show. Yes, that means you Jenny McCarthy and your anecdotes about autism that substitute for research and how the CFGF diet is an autism cure. And yes that means The Secret which, as I wrote two years ago in It's No Secret. You're a Moron, was actively dangerous in its proposition that positive thinking could beat cancer. The Secret's advice was so incredibly stupid that Oprah had to bring on a woman who was planning on using The Secret to conquer her own cancer to tell her to listen to her doctors instead. And Oprah went on to a year's worth of medical ills and weight gain right after that program, which in a rational world would turn viewers away from Oprah's medical advice. We do not live in a rational world.

The authors of the Newsweek piece do acknowledge that:

she gives excellent diet and fitness tips. Two of her longest-serving resident experts, Dr. Mehmet Oz and trainer Bob Greene, routinely offer sound, high-quality advice to Oprah and her audience on how to lose weight and improve overall health.

That's not enough.

Bloggers and commentators all over the world have been overjoyed by the audacity and scientific sensibility of the article, as Kate Dailey wrote on the Newsweek blog. They are even harder on Oprah than I've been.

The article really struck a nerve with Dr. Dave Gorski, a blogger at Science-Based Medicine (bookmark it: the site is a great source of thorough, critical reviews of both the latest research and medical fads). ...

No one, and I mean no one, brings pseudoscience, quackery, and antivaccine madness to more people than Oprah Winfrey does every week...Consequently, whether fair or unfair, she represents the perfect face to put on the problem that we supporters of science-based medicine face when trying to get the message out to the average reader about unscientific medical practices, and that’s why I am referring to the pervasiveness of pseudoscience infiltrating medicine as the “Oprah-fication” of medicine.

The article even resonated across the pond: Alex Massie at The Spectator ...

it's worth being reminded that Oprah peddles the anti-MMR nonsense that, if its supporters have their way, is much more likely to harm many more children than would be affected even if their crackpottery were based on a sound evaluation of the risks of immunisation. Which, as best I can tell, it isn't.

And of course, those kids at Gawker chimed in as well:

This lengthy article is actually far too kind (and brief) to baby-killing nut Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vaccine crusade, and yet it still manages to be a very damning indictment of how Oprah is trying to kill your poor mother.

I apologize that others have been more condemning of Oprah's pet quacks than I have. I'll try to do better - or is it worse? - in the future. Especially since I'm sure that we will now be treated to the crocodile tears of this poor maltreated billionaire with only an entire magazine, network, and top-rated talk show to fall back on crying bitterly of how badly she, who wants only good things for people, has been maligned with no opportunity to respond.

Tell her it's hogwash. She brought this down on herself. Send the message loud and clear. No more quacks. Get them off the air. Then we can strive to get them out of the pages of the women's and "health" magazines, and then maybe even off the Internet itself.

I know. I can dream, can't I?

LI Celebrity Alert: Kate Moss

Kate Moss, the famously dysfunctional size 2 supermodel, is writing a kosher cookbook.

[Looks at date on calendar. Nope, not April 1st.]

But the New York tabloid, the Daily News, much more plugged in to the affairs of supermodels than I, reported that:

According to the insider, the super-skinny Moss has already been testing out hearty kosher favorites including chicken noodle soup, salt beef, potato latkes and non-dairy pareve carrot and honey cake on her rocker boyfriend, Jamie Hince.

She was last in the news in 2007 when videos surfaced of her using cocaine. Cocaine, remember, is often cut with lactose, rendering it neither non-dairy nor pareve. Therefore you should always wait at least six hours after having meat before you snort cocaine. The carrot and honey cake can be had anytime.

LI Celebrity Alert: Julio Lugo

Learning that he was lactose intolerant seemed to have been a boon for Boston Red Sox shortstop Julio Lugo.

He's been through a bad year, with an injury, a lawsuit, and his wife's miscarriage. This is the year he hopes it will all get better, according to an article by Amalie Benjamin of The Boston Globe.

The athleticism was evident.

So, too, was the added weight, the added strength. As Rocco Baldelli, also a teammate in Tampa, said, only half-joking, "He looks like someone drew his body on like a cartoon character that has those rippling muscles like a superhero."

That began last season, when all Lugo could do was work out, and has left him nearing 188 pounds, after being listed at 175 a year ago. It helped that he found out in the offseason that he was lactose intolerant, helping him quell his stomach discomfort and allowing him to train without distraction.

The Lacky Award: Special Oscar Milk Edition

Since the biopic of gar rights activist Harvey Milk was released, you can't possibly imagine how many bad lactose intolerant puns I've have to endure.

So I'm going to help you.

Here are some of the worst that have appeared in newspapers by writers of little imagination across this once-great country of ours.


Lactose tolerant: this milk isn't sour

I think on Sunday fans of "Milk" are going to find out just how lactose intolerant Hollywood really is.

"Milk" -- To gain millions in advertising dollars, executives of struggling auto companies scheme to replace the traditional drink of a lactose-intolerant Indianapolis 500 winner with a Valvoline/STP mixture. Rating: One dipstick and one cookie.

I found I was lactose intolerant to this cinematic cheese!

ON PAPER, Milk sounds like a low-fat proposition. ... Surely the film should come with a product description that says watery, thin, but good for our collective constitution. ... Milk is the full-cream deal

And the winner of the Lacky Award goes to:

As with so many leaders, Milk’s legacy becomes immortalized when he faces the lactose intolerant, Twinkie chomping Dan White (Josh Brolin).

Ron and Leigh Martel, movie reviewers for The Friday Flyer, win the coveted award for embedding the overused pun in a sentence of such utter incoherence that Strunk & White gave it two thumbs down.

Thanks, Ron and Leigh. We're not sorry you couldn't be here for the ceremony.

LI Celebrity Alert: Steven Pinker

It feels great to write about a celebrity who is also a scientist. There are so few of those around.

But Steven Pinker is pretty close to a bona fide celebrity. He's written five books for a general audience, The Language Instinct (1994), How the Mind Works (1997), Words and Rules (2000), The Blank Slate (2002), and The Stuff of Thought (2007). And he has the best scientist hair since Einstein.

He was a guest on The Colbert Report this week to talk about how he had his full genome read and all the genetic traits and tendencies that revealed. One of them was that he was lactose intolerant.

Watch the whole interview by clicking here.

A bit of searching found that he wrote about this in a very long essay in the New York Times Magazine. There he calls the appearance of the gene for lactose intolerance a "wrong prediction" since he tolerates ice cream just fine. And he also has the gene for a high risk of baldness.

That's the good news for those of you who get nervous thinking about what's hidden inside your own personal genome. You are not your genes. They guide but they don't rule.

LI Celebrity Alert: Dustin Lance Black

Ever since the film Milk opened, the headline punsters had been bombarding me with lactose puns. Yes, I take it personally. I have Google News set to dredge up every reference to lactose made by anyone in the inner solar system. When I have to wade through these jokes to get to the stuff worth sharing with you my annoyance level, normally at incendiary on a good day, goes past fission and into sun's core.

And yet, here's the extreme irony. Dustin Lance Black, the now-Oscar nominated screenwriter of Milk, has just revealed that he is, yes, lactose intolerant. He apparently made the comment at a screenwriters' panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

At least, I think and hope he did. Scott Feinberg posted this bit on trivia on the Los Angeles Times blogs today, but they've already pulled the link. Does that mean Black was making a joke that Feinberg fell for and had to squelch?

Let's hope not. Good irony is hard to find. And I deserve some reward for my efforts.

LI Celebrity Alert: Madonna

From the squabbling over Madonna's divorce from Guy Ritchie comes this gossipy tidbit via The New York Daily News.

Madonna's personal habits include having a live-in trainer, and going to sleep slathered in $800 cream and wrapped in plastic, according to the Mail online.

She also enforced a strict dairy-free policy in their home, and Ritchie was rarely allowed to eat meat. When he did, his wife would leave the table in disgust.

LI Celebrity Alert: Bubble Buddy

OK, I'm doing my homework by reading all the stories that roll across the newspapers of the world that contain the word "lactose." I do this because you have better things to do with your time.

And I run across this essay by Lori Holcomb in the Wilmington News-Journal.

Then there is the “black-toast incident,” as it has become known our family. Conner loves Sponge Bob, much to the dismay of pretty much all the adults in his life. However, certain events occasionally make the nuisance worthwhile. One day, he apparently heard Sponge Bob tell how he was lactose intolerant. He related that fact the best way he could to what he knew in his little world, filed it away and went on.

Hold the presses! SpongeBob SquarePants is lactose intolerant? That's great news! Most characters in television or movies or cartoons who are lactose intolerant are secondary characters who are there just to be made fun of. Giving the lead character our little affliction, and not just any lead character, but a lead character that is an international superstar, would be wonderful.

But if it's so wonderful, how come I never heard this before?

The essence of Holcomb's essay is that her kids are weird alien creatures whose world that she doesn't truly understand. The giveaway is that she can't even spell SpongeBob correctly.

You guessed it. The lactose intolerant character on the show isn't SpongeBob, but Bubble Buddy, a comic sidekick.

To glean the backstory, I went to the font of all things SpongeBob, SpongeBob Wiki, in which adults can plumb the depths of our cheese-avoiding pal. (Yes, really. A SpongeBob Wiki. And there's also a Spongepedia. And a Spongywiki. Think about that. And Lori Holcomb is a newspaper columnist who can't spell the name correctly. That about that, too.)

Bubble Buddy - is a sentient soap bubble created by SpongeBob when he felt alone in the episode, "Bubble Buddy." He comes to life at the end of the episode when Squidward and other Bikini Bottomites threaten to pop him with a needle. A taxi picks him up and he leaves with a suitcase and disappears in the sky. He also appears in the video game Battle for Bikini Bottom, teaching SpongeBob new bubble moves. Bubble Buddy likes bendy straws, funny jokes, and shampoo. He is very picky about his Krabby Patties. He likes no cheese, no crust, pickles to the left, four squirts of ketchup, wheat buns, non-deli lettuce, and farm raised tomatoes; carnival style. He is lactose intolerant, and is naturally nervous around pointy objects. His birthday is October 9. Bubble Buddy is also known for taking a long time to use the bathroom.

He's noted for taking a long time to use the bathroom. How humiliating. For all of us.

LI Celebrity Alert: Scott Burns

You may know Scott Burns as a producer of the Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Sharp-eyed credits-watchers will remember him as a co-writer of the screenplay of The Bourne Ultimatum.

But he has a greater claim to fame - or possibly infamy - than either of those. As Neil Justin writes in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a degree in English, he went into advertising, a career his father had dabbled in. He made an impression, first in Chicago and then across the country, helping Major League Baseball revitalize its image after the 1994 strike, hiring local musician Leo Kottke to provide voiceovers for a series of Washington Post ads and, most notably, contributing to the team that came up with "Got Milk?" campaign for the California Milk Advisory Board.

That was not Burns' proudest moment. First off, he doesn't believe that milk is all that healthy for adults. Secondly, he's lactose intolerant.

Fortunately, he's kicked the advertising habit for the world of movies.

A film he directed, "PU-239," will debut on Sunday on HBO.

LI Celebrity Alert: Karl Mixworthy

Karl Mixworthy. Who?

That's the character played by Joshua Malina on ABC's new fall show, "Big Shots."

The lines between boardroom and bedroom blur in Big Shots, the story of four friends who are at the top of their game... until the women in their lives enter the room. These competitive but dysfunctional New York CEOs take refuge in their friendship, discussing business, confiding secrets, seeking advice and supporting one another through life's twists and turns.

Karl Mixworthy (Joshua Malina, The West Wing) is the sweet yet always nervous CEO of a large pharmaceutical company. He has a loving wife - and a cunning mistress who is beginning to monopolize whatever free time he can muster.

Here's Karl on the show, talking about his mistress:

Look at her. She’s an interior designer by trade. But you know what her real skill is? Making an undersized, insecure, lactose-intolerant man feel like a porn star.

The critics have been merciless and the audience is tuning out in droves, with the ratings plunging halfway through last week's episode. Tune in now: this show won't be around long.

Thanks a lot, Hollywood.

LI Celebrity Alert: Terence Stamp

Veteran British actor Terence Stamp not only has intolerances to wheat and dairy, he's done something about it.



He and Elizabeth Buxton have written a cookbook, The Stamp Collection Cookbook, available from Amazon.com.





UK readers might want to get it under the original title The Wheat and Dairy Free Cookbook, available from Amazon.co.uk.




The two of them also started The Stamp Collection, a line of wheat- and dairy-free breads in the UK.

THE STAMP COLLECTION™

Actor, writer Terence Stamp and Elizabeth Buxton launched the STAMP COLLECTION™ range of products in 1994.

Their aim was to bring delicious, wheat-free and dairy-free products to people who, like Terence, have an intolerance to wheat and dairy products made from cow’s milk.

We produce a variety of award-winning organic products which are suitable for vegetarians and are free from GMOs.

LI Celebrity Alert: Orlando Bloom and Victoria Beckham

Last week I posted about the latest bad news from Britain, that somehow 20% of the British population has managed to convince itself that it has food allergies.

I've done so many posts about the seemingly limitless ignorance about all issues having to do with lactose intolerance or dairy allergy in the UK that I could fill up a book. Just check for the UK tags to get a long list.

With doctors, nutritionists, and newspaper columnists giving out advice that ranges from the inaccurate to the sheer loony, you'd think there'd be plenty of blame to go around when deciding who is at fault for the omnipresent ignorance.

You'd be wrong. It's the fault of celebrities.

Nic Fleming, the Medical Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph wrote that over 60% of general practitioners (GPs) have seen an increase in the number of patients complaining to be intolerant to wheat or dairy.

You might think that there's a clue staring you in the face. When a Medical Correspondent can't use the term allergy properly and sows confusion between allergies and intolerances, how in the world would ordinary readers understand the crucial difference?

But let's continue. Fleming quotes from a recent survey of 1000 adults and 250 GPs.

More than a fifth - 22 per cent - of people said they had first heard of food intolerances and allergies through interviews with celebrities, magazines and television, and 19 per cent had done so via friends and family.

This is a doubled-edged statistic. I admit readily - indeed I shout it out loud here at my blog - that getting medical information from headlines or the media equivalent is an extremely bad idea. But if getting medical information from television is so bad, why are health features a daily segment on every major news program? That survey makes no distinction between believing everything heard and using the media as a critical disseminator of valuable knowledge. Same for hearing from friends and family. Personal experiences with allergies and intolerances can be an invaluable sharing of hard-won knowledge, while other gossip is glurge as bad as any internet rumor.

Clearly people are getting bad advice about food from somewhere, however. Maybe we can identify one source. It's an article by Nic Fleming, the Medical Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.

That's right. The following quote appears in the very same article blaming television and celebrities:

Patrick Holford, the founder of the Institute for Optimum Nutrition, said: "Probably as many as one in five people show an allergic reaction to wheat or milk, generating symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, facial puffiness, itching, eczema, bloating, abdominal pain, constipation and joint aches.

Hogwash. Crackpot hogwash.

You can read more about the Institute for Optimum Nutrition on Wikipedia, which also carries this warning:

Prof David Colquhoun has criticised the ION's Diploma in Nutritional Therapy, arguing that:

The give-away is the term Nutritional Therapy. They are the folks who claim, with next to no evidence, that changing your diet, and buying from them a lot of expensive ’supplements’, will cure almost any disease (even AIDS and cancer)... The IoN is run by Patrick Holford, whose only qualification in nutrition is a diploma awarded to himself by his own Institute. His advocacy of vitamin C as better than conventional drugs to treat AIDS is truly scary.

Thank you Nic Fleming, Medical Correspondent.

Oh, the celebrities. Right. Fleming mentions that:

the actor Orlando Bloom and Victoria Beckham are said to be intolerant to dairy products.

You know where else you might have seen that?

Right here. My post of April 15, 2006. "Free From" Foods Grow in Sales.

Orlando Bloom and ex-Spice Girl Victoria Beckham have to stay away from dairy products, say sources close to them (or tabloids or somebody equally respectable).

Somebody equally respectable. Like Nic Fleming.

Nude PETA Ad Banned in Texas

Remember the Barenaked Ladies line from "One Week"?

"I have a history of taking off my shirt."

That might be PETA's motto, with all the ads they've done featuring celebrities - female, for some reason - who need to take off their clothes to prove that they don't eat meat.

No, I don't get it either.

The latest vegan celeb is Alicia Silverstone, 2004's sexiest female vegetarian, whose nude swim ad was banned in Houston by cable provider Comcast.

Comcast Cable bosses banned the spot because Silverstone is naked, and they don't want to upset viewers in Texas.

PETA chose to debut Silverstone's new ad -- which is also available on Peta's website, PETA.org -- in Texas because the states' leading cities "repeatedly rank among the least healthy in America."

Wait a second. They banned the ad on cable because you can, gasp, see the sides of her body, and not a single naughty bit is shown even for a Janet Jackson second? The print ad above shows more of her body and it's still safe for little children. (Though I have a question. She's 5'5". How does somebody that short have legs that long? It's not from veganism.)

Who's nuttier, PETA or Comcast?

Here's the 30-second video spot itself.



Hysteria, over nudity or milk or any other imaginary issue, is bad for your health. And that's the only health guarantee you'll get out of this whole scandal.

LI Celebrity Alert: Denise Lewis and Rachel Hunter

The Brits are at it again. Three million Britons are suffering from "imaginary" food intolerances, according to researchers.

An article at ThisIsLondon.co.uk reports that up to 12 million Brits - that's 20% of the population - claims to have a food intolerance of some sort. It's not even clear whether they mean they have allergies or true intolerances; apparently they're using the terms interchangeably. But what can you expect when:

One in 50 of the 1,500 men and women polled in a survey on food intolerances decided they suffered from an intolerance on hearing a friend's diagnosis.

No such article is complete without quoting celebrities for their views. Fortunately, we get a fairly intelligent set of quotes.

Olympic gold medalist Denise Lewis mistakenly tried self-diagnosis as she attempted to find the cause of the stomach problems that had plagued her for years.

"I've suffered from irritable bowel syndrome-related symptoms for 13 years and these have affected my performance on and off the track," she said.

"I was often guessing what could be wrong with me and eliminating a range of foods I thought could be the problem."

However, she discovered what the problem was after taking a food intolerance test.

"I found out I was intolerant to cow's milk, egg yolk and garlic.

"Since reducing these from my diet, I've not suffered my usual bloating and stomach cramps, have more energy and feel brighter and lighter.

She's not alone.

Research by Norwich Union Healthcare found that 19 per cent believe they have a gluten intolerance, such as that suffered by TV presenter Carol Vorderman, while 18 per cent claim a lactose intolerance like that of Rod Stewart's ex-wife Rachel Hunter.

That's right. "Stacey's Mom" is LI.

LI Celebrity Alert: Michelle Rodriguez

Yep, lactose intolerance causes gas. Really bad, really smelly gas.

But how blunt about about it do you have to be? Especially if you're a celebrity whose every word gets quoted by the "media." Or at least celebrity gossip blogs.

Case in point. Michelle Rodriguez. (She was on the tv show Lost if you didn't know.) The gossip site TMZ.com caught her out late the other night, where she said...

Michelle Rodriguez is never at a loss for words -- if only she were last night!

TMZ caught the always wacked-out ex-"Lost" 'tailie' in New York at the Marc Jacobs Fashion Week show, where M-Rod turned down free ice cream courtesy of Kate Spade because, "Milk makes me fart, sorry!"

Damn! Girl couldn't just say she's lactose intolerant?!

As Gene Kelly said in Singin' in the Rain, "Class. Always class."