Lactose Intolerance

Has anyone found any place that has Lactase Enzyme (aka Lactaid) in Taipei? My wife and I have asked around several pharmacies and they don’t have it. One suggested I should just take antacid and anti-diarreahals to treat the symptoms. Uh not exactly.

It seems puzzling this common western remedy isn’t available here when anecdotally one hears that many locals are lactose intolerant.

7-Eleven used to have a lactose-reduced milk, but it is discontinued according to the local branch.

ok, feel a bit silly replying to my own post. did some more research and found out that acidophilus is used to produce lactase enzyme, and I believe i’ve seen acidophilus milk around here. maybe they have acidophilus supplements too. i miss cheese.

OK, no Acidophilus milk, but there’s a wide variety of yogurt drinks. Just look for “AB” on the bottle. A is for Acidophilus and B is for Bifidus (another good critter for your tummy). Seems to do the trick.

Real acidophilus is hard to come by, but you can find it on Zhongshan N Rd in Taipei, ont he same side as Caves Bookstore in a health shop probably no mroe than a block away. Expensive though.

Brian

Are you talking about the GNC opposite Mackay Hospital, or something closer to Caves?

Sorry, I don’t remember. I think it’s called ‘Natural Life’ or something like that . It looks liek a health store, not a pharmacy. They have a lot of imported stuff.

Brian

Do you remember anything more specific? North of Caves, south of Caves? I walked up and down Zhong Shan Street between Chang Chun Road to Nong An Street (Floriday Bakery) and didn’t find any stores selling vitamins other than GNC. They had Nature’s Way Primadophilus in the 180 count bottle for NT1880 which is quite a bit since the same thing goes for NT400 ($12) in the US. That’s over 4.5 times as much!!! (Now I remember why my suitcase is always full of vitamins.) I may end up buying it, but man oh man. I asked why so much and the clerk said because import duties on vitamins are very high.

Could be. I remember it was very expensive. I’ll check next time I’m in the area, but that could be a week or two sorry.

Brian

Don’t worry about it. I thought about it some more and the AB yogurt drink is doing me fine for now. I’m going back to US in two weeks from now so I’ll get some then at sane prices.

Totally stock up on vitamins and other supplments cause they are all at least 2x as high. For example, if you want power bars (or protein bars) you will need to spend 180 NT each if I recall, you can get the same in the states for 1.50 US