Maybe it started with the splash of milk in your morning coffee. Or a scoop of ice cream that left you puffed up and gassy an hour later.

So you did what most people do. You cut back on milk. Then cheese went, then yogurt, then anything with dairy on the label. And the special cartons on the store shelf aren't cheap.

But here's what's worth knowing. One dairy food comes with its own help built in. It's plain yogurt, the kind with live cultures. And the reason it sits easier than milk was first seen in a pot of yogurt more than a century ago...

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In 1905, a 27-year-old Bulgarian named Stamen Grigorov was studying medicine in Geneva, Switzerland. He had a pot of yogurt from his home country. A drop of it went under his microscope.

What he saw was a crowd of tiny germs shaped like rods, with round ones mixed in. Those rods turned out to be the key to yogurt itself. They eat the sugar in milk and turn it thick and sour. Scientists later named the rod for his homeland: Lactobacillus bulgaricus.

That milk sugar has a name too. It's lactose. And it's the reason so many people quit dairy...

Let me explain. After your stomach, food moves into a long, coiled tube called the small intestine. This is where most of what you eat gets taken in. Its lining is folded into millions of tiny fingers, and the cells on top make tools for different kinds of food.

The tool for milk sugar is called lactase. It snips lactose in two, so your body can pull it in. Babies make plenty of it. But most adults on Earth make far less once childhood is over.

So what happens to the sugar that doesn't get snipped? It slides on down to the colon. Germs there feast on it, and the feast makes gas. That's the bloat, the cramps and the rumble you feel.

Here's the clever part. Some of that gas is hydrogen. It soaks into your blood, rides to your lungs, and leaves in your breath. That means a doctor can tell how much milk sugar you missed just by having you blow into a bag...

That's what a team at the University of Minnesota did in 1984. The group included Michael Levitt, a gut doctor who spent much of his career measuring the gases the gut makes. They chose people who digest milk sugar poorly. Each got about the same dose of lactose three ways: in milk, in plain water, and in yogurt.

What the breath showed: When the milk sugar came in yogurt, people breathed out only about a third as much hydrogen as when it came in milk. Less hydrogen means more of the sugar was handled before it ever reached the colon. (University of Minnesota, 1984)

Why would yogurt do that? The rods Grigorov found carry their own lactase. Tucked inside each germ, the tool rides safe through your stomach acid, and the thick yogurt helps shield it. Then, in the small intestine, bile helps split the germs open. The tool goes to work on the milk sugar right there beside it.

You see, the yogurt arrives with its own crew. Its cultures also use up some of the sugar while the yogurt sets.

The same Minnesota group then asked one more question. What if the germs are dead? They tested yogurt that was heated after it was made, which kills the cultures. About three times as much milk sugar went undigested. Live germs did the work.

The odd twist? People still felt fine on the heated kind. Keep that in mind for the next part...

Now for the honest part. In 1995, this same group found 30 adults who said they were badly lactose intolerant. Each one said that less than a cup of milk brought on symptoms every time.

One week, they drank a cup of milk with breakfast. The other week, they drank milk with the sugar already broken down. Nobody knew which was which. The result? Symptoms were small both weeks, and the two weeks looked about the same.

The team's point was simple. Many people blame milk for gut trouble that milk didn't cause. Hold this one loosely, though. Those 30 people were young, with an average age near 29.

A much bigger look came in 2010. The National Institutes of Health brought a panel together to weigh years of research. Their verdict: most people who have trouble with milk sugar can handle about 12 grams at a time with no symptoms or only mild ones. That's about one cup of milk. And spread through the day with meals, many could handle more.

So I'll say it plain. Yogurt isn't magic. It's a head start. Its live cultures do part of the work for you, and what's left is often a dose your body can manage.

Look for the words "live and active cultures" on the tub. If a yogurt was heated after it was made, a federal rule now says the label must read "does not contain live and active cultures." Put that one back on the shelf.

Lab tests found flavored yogurts carry somewhat less of the helpful enzyme at work, though people still handled them well. It also skips the added sugar. Stir in your own fruit instead.

In the Minnesota tests, most frozen yogurt made the usual way sat in the gut about like ice cream. Enjoy it as dessert. Just don't count on it for the same help as a cold tub from the dairy case.

Grigorov looked at a pot of yogurt from home and saw a crowd of tiny rods. He couldn't have known that, about eighty years later, doctors in Minnesota would show those same rods helping people digest milk sugar.

Those rods are still in a plain tub at your store. Before you buy a box of pills, give the living kind a fair try. Half a cup at breakfast, every day this week. See how you feel by Friday.