When it comes to the health benefits of drinking milk, advertisers deserve a massive pat on the back. Almost every person will immediately think of calcium, strong bones, and adorable milk mustaches. This is the way we have been programmed to think about dairy, but is it correct? What are the actual benefits of drinking milk?

Calcium: Turns out milk is a great source of calcium, which is an essential nutrient for our cells and ensures that our bones and teeth are kept healthy—it protects the enamel surface against acidic substances on the teeth.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to get the equivalent milligrams of calcium that come from drinking one glass of milk, you would need to eat 10 cups of spinach or almost 5 servings of broccoli.

Packed with nutrients: It’s not just calcium that makes drinking milk a must because milk is filled with nutrients including protein, magnesium, Vitamin B12, Vitamin D, Vitamin B2, phosphorous, and potassium. This means that adding milk to your daily diet can help create a well-balanced diet.

Improved complexion: This may seem like an odd benefit, but according to LifeHack, milk can improve your overall complexion, making your skin soft and supple, thanks to the nutrients that you are ingesting.

Relaxation: Another surprising benefit of drinking milk is that it’s a relaxer. According to HealthFitnessRevolution, a warm glass of milk has a calming effect because it contains the chemical tryptophan, which reportedly helps to produce serotonin—the feel-good hormone.

Rehydration: While water is still the best way to hydrate, milk is obviously also a good form of hydration.

Balance acidity: Another pro of milk is that it can balance the body’s levels of acidity.

While most reports seem to suggest that adding milk to your diet is beneficial, it’s important to note that there are studies which contradict with this belief. According to BBC, a study published in the medical journal BMJ and conducted on 107,000 Swedish adults, found that having a diet rich in milk could actually have adverse effects on your health. The findings concluded that women who drank three or more glasses of milk per day were reportedly 93 percent more likely to have died during the study (which ran from 13 to 22 years).

What we can take away from this study then, is that the long-term benefits of milk may still be unclear, and rather than drinking an excess each day, perhaps a single glass is a safer option.

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