> appear to be temporary
That's a good point to bring up, but I do wonder if this is splitting hairs just a little bit. A shift in your microbiome might be technically temporary while still making things feel very weird for that temporary period -- however long that takes to change.
Also keep in mind:
> Whether prolonged dietary changes can induce permanent alterations in the gut microbiota is unknown, mainly due to a lack of long-term human dietary interventions, or long-term follow-ups of short-term dietary interventions.
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> [...]
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> Our understanding of the duration required for a dietary intervention to have an enduring impact on the gut microbiota, and consequently health, is hampered by several limitations. Firstly, there is a lack of long-term human studies, or indeed follow-ups of short-term dietary interventions, that seek to establish if a diet-induced modulation of the gut microbiota endures, though the wash-out periods of cross-sectional studies provide some indirect insight.
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All that to say I actually kind of agree, and I also don't see super-strong scientific evidence of induced lactose intolerance, but I qualify that by saying that it might just be a lack of study. And again, could also be a difference in what people mean by "permanent". If something makes you lactose intolerant for a month, that's still interesting, even if that's not meeting GP's "in a year" claim.
I've been vegan for maybe a year and half at this point, and was vegetarian before that. I'm curious how my body would react to eating a meat/cheese/lactose heavy meal if I sprang one on it out of the blue (not curious enough to actually try it, but it would be an interesting experiment).