Lactose intolerance, weight gain and the LCHF diet

 I am lactose intolerant and I live in The Netherlands. It is tough.
The Netherlands produces milk and cheese in overabundance. For some reason this abundance results in dairy products creeping on everything. Bread has milk powder. Sausages have lactose. Ham, pate, already spiced meats, margarine to spread, tapenade, hummus.... All typical cafeteria products are contaminated by some form of milk product. I have to bring my own lunch to work every day.
Before I discovered that I had lactose intolerance life was hell. I had bouts of "spontaneous sickness" and diarrhea.  And my weight piled up at top speed.
Well, I recently went to a specialist (after fighting for a while to get a lactose intolerance test) and told him this. That my weight gain had accelerated after I got lactose intolerance. He dismissed my claim. He told me that there was no connection between weight gain and lactose intolerance (something short of telling me "nonsense").
My claim is not isolated. The Patrick Holford GL diet book is full of these. I am sure a lot of lactose intolerant people suffer from being overweight.
I still claim that it is true though. I have my own theories, as the doctors are not very helpful. What happens when you have lactose intolerance? You get bloated, get a lot of gas, diarrhea. But most importantly, your intestine becomes irritated, inflamed. Your digestive system is not working at its best, and then the nutrient absorption gets reduced. Following from this, one might expect weight loss, not weight gain. This is the usual conclusion and medical reasoning. I guess it happens to some people. But this picture is incomplete: this picture assumes that the body would do nothing! What happens when you underfeed? Your body enters what is called "starvation mode". And what happens in this mode? Your body tries to keep the energy at all costs (the body heat expenditure goes down like 20-30%), the pancreas releases more insulin than necessary for the carbohydrate intake (you become insulin resistant on the long term). Insulin cleans up the sugar in the blood (you crave sugary foods then) and also prevents your fat storage from being burned. This promotes weight gain and very little (if any) weight loss. You slowly gain weight, even if you are very careful with the calories you ingest. Even worse, the feeling of this starvation mode is just terrible: your whole body resists to move, to spend energy. You feel tired all the time, have no energy, and due to the over-insulin you are hungry all the time for sweets. We get a couch-potato recipe.
If you consume inflaming foods (sugar), even if they are not lactose, this condition (the irritated digestive system) persist and worsens. So you have an irritated, inflamed digestive system due to sugar. What the body does when this happens is that it pumps up your insulin levels and all this sugar goes to the fat storage right away and you very soon are hungry for more sugar.  This turns in a vicious circle and you gain weight. Even if you have the will to resist eating the cookies or chocolate, eating pasta for a normal meal would be enough to promote weight gain.
When I felt bad due to an irritated digestive system, I took coca-cola. Why? It felt good and I had this idea that it was good for your digestion (as a child I was given coca-cola for digestive trouble). The sugar in coca-cola irritated me further and fuelled the insulin vicious circle. I had no clue that I was damaging myself.
What does this have to do with the LCHF diet? I actually don't know so much of the reversibility of this process. But what I can tell is that on the short term effects of it. Eliminating carbs from the diet removed sugar and all those starchy foods. The very short time effect was removal of one of the irritating things to the digestive system. But also it reduced greatly the amounts of insulin released. Great amounts of insulin in the body are connected with loads of problems eventually leading to metabolic syndrome. So, keeping the insulin under check promotes not only weight loss but also an overall well-being. The fat part also plays a role too: the fat carries some vitamins (among them, the vitamin D) and also those famous omega-3 fatty acids. When I started the diet I had the most bizarre craving to eat salmon (I know, my body has expensive taste). Apparently, salmon has omega-3 in its fat, even the crappy supermarket salmon we get here. Omega-3 has an anti-inflammatory effect. Now I take omega-3 pills every day....
So, indeed I blame my lactose intolerance for my weight gain and overall state of unbalance.