Can drinking milk cause Parkinson's disease? See the details here!

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Daily milk intake may lead to stronger bones, but one recent study suggests it may not have the same positive effect in our brain, which could lead to Parkinson's disease. The new findings published online in the journal Neurology was a result of an analysis of the relationship between midlife consumption of milk and the Parkinson's disease.

But, before you throw out all the milk stored in the fridge and detest the poor liquid altogether, the study points out that it was the contaminants, which found its way to the milk in Hawaii decades ago, that may have caused the problem.

In the study, the data on milk intake were taken from 449 men aged 45-68 years from 1965 to 1968 and the researchers did a follow-up postmortem examinations from 1992 to 2004. The results revealed that those who consume at least two glasses of milk a day have brain residues of heptachlor epoxide, an organochlorine pesticide found at excessively high levels in the milk supply in Hawaii in the early 1980s.

The milk may have been contaminated by the pesticide because pineapple debris was mostly used as a feed for cows in Hawaii back in the 80s. The use of the heptachlor epoxide as an insecticide in the U.S. was already banned according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

After taking note of the density of neurons in specific areas of the brain known to be affected by Parkinson's, the researchers also found out that these men exhibit the thinnest nerve networks in these areas, which could mean that there could be a compromised function of the nerves, according to a TIME report.

Dr. Robert Abbott of the Shiga University of Medical Science in Otsu, Japan said that his team was not able to obtain a sample of the milk that the men consumed at that time and, because of this, they cannot not tell for sure whether it was really from the milk where the pesticide residues came from.

"We don't have all the data yet, but we are close to finding the smoking gun here," he said. "It's not complete, but it's very suspicious."

As for the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, further studies need to be done involving the link between drinking milk, pesticides and development of Parkinson's disease, NBC News wrote.

"The researchers could not test whether the milk the men drank was contaminated with pesticides (heptachlor, in this case), and no one knows how long or how widespread the contamination was before being detected," the foundation wrote in a statement.