It is a well-known fact that milk is the only food item that fairly represents a complete diet. When we talk of milk, it is usually the cow’s milk or buffalo’s milk that we think of immediately. However, Ayurveda mentions milks of various animals under the head ‘Dugdha varga’.
Rig Veda mentions milk as “Vrishnyam payam” which means strength-giving drink. Milk increases strength, improves memory, reduces exhaustion, maintains strength and promotes long life—says the famous Ayurvedic treatise, Charaka Samhita. This is because milk contains all the elements necessary for the growth and nutrition of bones, nerves, muscles and other tissues. Milk contains vitamins, which are nature’s antidotes to rickets, scurvy, and other diseases, which are caused due to defective nutrition.
MEDICINAL USES
• Human milk: Human milk, particularly colostrums, is rich in the immunoglobulin IgA which immunizes infants. The lymphocytes and macrophages protect the body against intestinal inflammation. The lactobacillus bifidus in milk aids the growth of intestinal lactobacilli. Lactobacilli produce lactic and acetic acids, which lower the intestinal pH and inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria and fungi. Infants absorb iron more efficiently from human milk than any other form of milk. Breast milk is used in Ayurveda for administration in nasal bleeding and in eye diseases as eye drops. It is also used as one of the ingredients while preparing anjanum (collyrium) for eye diseases.
• Sheep milk: It is a very nutritious tonic for the weak and debilitated. It is used along with honey while treating tuberculosis, gonorrhea, cystitis, obesity, and flatulence. It is also good for rheumatism and hectic cough. However, its excessive use is bad for respiratory disorders and causes eye diseases as it alleviates phlegm and bile.
• Goat milk: Fresh boiled milk sweetened with honey and drunk every night with a banana or handful of roasted groundnuts is a very good tonic for diabetes, asthma, night blindness, neuritis, constipation, sterility, rickets, hair fall, nervousness, and headache. Goat’s milk is sweet, cooling, astringent, and constipating. It is very invigorating and promotes appetite and digestion. Goat’s milk also helps in curing bile disorders (pitta), cough, chronic diarrhea, and vomiting in children; pitta variety of piles; brings down dyspnea, bronchitis and chronic cases of enlarged liver and spleen.
• Donkey milk: The properties of the milk of jenny (ass) are more similar to that of human milk. The milk of jenny can be safely used for infants. Ass milk contains 1.5 gm of fat, 2.1 gm of protein and 46 kcal of energy per 100 gm. As it is saline and easily digestible, it acts as a stomachic (improves functioning of stomach), cardiac stimulant and antiphlegmatic (decreases phlegm). It is useful in curing general debility and when you pass highly-colored and scanty urine. It is also extensively used as a remedy against cough and liver complaints among children and old people, and chronic bronchitis and exhaustion.
• Camel milk: Camel’s milk is mainly used when, during long droughts, other animals cease to produce milk. As it is light, slightly saline and laxative, it is easily digestible and acts as a stimulant and stomachic. Its milk has been found useful to cure edema, dropsy, asthma, tuberculosis, leprosy, cancers, piles, intestinal worms, skin lesions, abdominal tumors and poisonings.
• Elephant milk: It is sweet and acts as an astringent and muscle-builder. It also helps in increasing the vigor and strength. It is also good for the eyes.
• Cow’s milk: The chemical composition of milk varies in different cows in different seasons and in different countries. According to Vedas, Charaka Samhita and Bhaavaprakaasa, the quality of milk differs from cow to cow. The milk of a healthy black cow, which grazes in the sunny green fields is said to be superior to all the other cows. Charaka emphasizes the usage of cow milk for treating tuberculosis, asthma, diabetes, food allergies, chronic cough, protein deficiency diseases, rickets, premature old age, loss of sexual vigor, hair fall, and weakness in children etc. The milk of white cow is supposed to cause indigestion and phlegmatic derangement and is not good to taste. Milk of cows without calves is considered to be bad. Milk of cows calved long ago is a good tonic and checks all the three doshas.
• Buffalo milk: There is a belief that feeding children on buffalo’s milk causes catarrh of the respiratory tract. However, it can be given to babies in the sixth month. Buffalo’s milk should be diluted with V3 its volume of water. A teaspoonful of sugar should be added to every ounce of milk given. For older babies, four ounces of milk can be given twice or thrice a day.