Adventures in Fertility
The ups and downs of the costly, often heartbreaking, sometimes comic world of fertility medicine.
October 31, 2015 at 12:08PM
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Saturday, October 31, 2015
Adventures in Fertility
Adventures in Fertility
The ups and downs of the costly, often heartbreaking, sometimes comic world of fertility medicine.
October 31, 2015 at 12:08PM
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Targeting of GLUT1 Glucose Transporter
Targeting of GLUT1 Glucose Transporter Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP, Curator LPBI Prolactin-i
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article sponsered by Northern Michigan certified lactation consulting and Mother Hubbards Country Cupboard
Friday, October 30, 2015
Why are most hazardous food recalls voluntary?
Why are most hazardous food recalls voluntary?
FDA product recalls seem to be almost ordinary, with fears of Salmonella poisoning and undeclared allergens making regular appearances on primetime news. But up until recently, these recalls were merely suggestions made by the FDA.
October 30, 2015 at 04:14PM
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How McDonald’s gets to kids while they’re at school
How McDonald’s gets to kids while they’re at school
When you market McDonald's as healthy to children, you really leave them no choice.
October 30, 2015 at 02:03PM
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Halloween Preparations at My Farm
Are you ready for Halloween? As you know, Halloween is among my favorite occasions, and at the end of every October, I love to decorate the front entrance [&hellip...
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Thursday, October 29, 2015
Think you don’t have herpes? Think again
Think you don’t have herpes? Think again
Two-thirds of the world’s population under 50 have the highly infectious herpes virus that causes cold sores around the mouth, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, in its first estimate of global prevalence of the disease.
October 29, 2015 at 11:41AM
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VW emissions cheat estimated to cause 59 premature US deaths
VW emissions cheat estimated to cause 59 premature US deaths
Nearly 60 people will die prematurely from the excess air pollution caused by Volkswagen cheating emissions tests in the US, according to a new study.
October 29, 2015 at 10:40AM
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Everything You Know About Addiction Is Wrong
Everything You Know About Addiction Is Wrong
"The opposite of addiction isn't sobriety, it's connection."
October 29, 2015 at 10:27AM
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Inside Bulletproof, the Butter-Loving Wellness Cult of the 1%
Inside Bulletproof, the Butter-Loving Wellness Cult of the 1%
The Bulletproof conference pledges transcendence through expensive equipment, diet plans and grocery bills, the affluent approach to keeping your body in check. It promises an extremely long life through "hacking" our biology. It costs $1,799.
October 29, 2015 at 09:38AM
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Garden Pots and Planters from Pennoyer Newman
As an avid gardener, I am always in search of new pots and planters. I love antique containers as well as more contemporary, streamlined pieces. I also enjoy [&hellip...
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Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Sleep Paralysis Is an Inescapable Waking Nightmare
Sleep Paralysis Is an Inescapable Waking Nightmare
Once, when I was 17, I woke up in the dark and couldn’t move.
October 28, 2015 at 04:11PM
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How Stress Makes You Sick
How Stress Makes You Sick
Feeling overwhelmed affects everything from digestion to stroke risk.
October 28, 2015 at 03:04PM
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Colbert Turned The Bacon News Into A Deluge Of Meat Puns
Colbert Turned The Bacon News Into A Deluge Of Meat Puns
"Could your pig in the blanket have a bun in the oven?"
October 28, 2015 at 09:30AM
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A Dinner with PetSmart at My Farm
A perfect autumn evening for dinner with our friends from PetSmart. As you know, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia has a strong relationship with PetSmart, Inc., the largest specialty [&hellip...
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Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Milk Supply
A few weeks ago I shared a post titled Lactation in which I shared my discovery of a diminished milk supply. As a result I had multiple reach out to me, privately and publicly, to share their suggestions, experience and encouragement. It was heartwarming to have other mamas relate to my desire to continue nursing and help me get my supply back up. I received some really good insights and tips and am so appreciative of their selfless support. It’s no surprise, but the nursing community is a supportive one. Thank you ladies, so very much.
Here’s a look at my toolkit to try to increase my supply:
- I upped my intake of Fenugreek to 9 capsules per day.
- I hopped on Amazon.com and purchased the Pumping Pals angled shields which are supposed to fit better, be gentler, and allow me to sit upright better while pumping.
- I contacted my clinic and rented the Medela Symphony pump. This baby retails for $1500+ and after spending nearly $300 for my current pump, I was happy to have the option to rent it. Friends and reading revealed that this pump should be more effective at extracting the milk and be gentler than my Medela Pump in Style Advanced model.
- Brewer’s yeast. I bought this originally for the lactation cookies, but now have added it to my daily oatmeal breakfast along with flax seed and wash it down with my Milk Maid tea.
- Beer. Not daily, but occasionally throughout the week I enjoy a beer or two in the evening. Leinie’s Sunset Wheat. ;~)
Working to get you supply up is work. And it takes dedication. I’ll be honest, I haven’t been as relentless as I hoped I would have been, but I am working at it and managing this new task with my daily workload. Each morning during the work week, I eat oatmeal which by itself can help with supply. I up the game by adding healthy amounts of Brewer’s yeast and flax seed. Add to that the 2-3 capsules of Fenugreek taken 3 times per day.
Most importantly though, is pumping. This is where I really failed through the first 5 months of nursing. I took for granted that I was producing and Miss Connie and I together were making it work. My travels likely also interfered and put us reliant on organic formula in months 3 and 4 and I believe that was the start of my decline. In month 5 I felt I was low on production. My breasts felt soft and never full and Miss Connie wanted to nurse frequently and didn’t always seem satisfied. A pump revealed I only had about a half an ounce in each breast. OUCH!
So with my rented pump in hand and new shields, I attempted to pump every 2-4 hours throughout the day. I also set my alarm to wake in the wee morning hours to pump. That’s a tough one. I have to wake up, hook up to the various parts of the machine and sit upright for 20-30 minutes. I then have to put the equipment away and store the milk, all of which only wakes me further making it difficult to fall back asleep. Sleep comes just about the time Connie wakes for her nigh-time feeding. Back up, care for her, and try to get her back down. Back to sleep for a short while before Cody’s alarm goes off and Miss Connie awakes again. As a result, I modified my nighttime pumping. I pump in bed before going to sleep. On the nights that Connie wakes after four hours, I nurse her on one side while pumping the other. If she sleeps longer, I wake around 3 am to pump both sides. We then nurse and pump again in the early morning.
Medela Symphony vs. Pump in Style Advanced
One of the mamas who reached out suggested trying a hospital grade pump. I picked up the Symphony on October 6th. For the first two weeks, I used only that pump. I liked that it was quieter than my model and also preferred the control knobs and digital screen. Further, if I am only pumping one side, there is no need to unhook the unused tube–suction is controlled by each individual tube/membrane.
pumping in restaurant bathroom
Was it extracting more than my Pump in Style (PiSA)? I wasn’t sure. On October 17th I had a bachelorette party. I couldn’t afford an interruption so I took my pump along for the fun. The Symphony is much larger and does not travel as discretely, so the PiSA was better for this purpose. I pumped on the bus and even in the restaurant bathroom. What I was able to extract seemed as much as what I got from the Symphony. Throughout that night out, I collected 7 oz. Disappointing, but did add another 3 when I got home.
Since then, I have been using both pumps. I leave my PiSA by the bed and the Symphony at my desk. Results are about the same — no noticeable difference. So it was worth experimenting, but I won’t be extending the rental for a second month. The shields are an improvement however, and I am glad I purchased those. Pumping multiple times throughout the day leads to soreness, regardless of the pump or shield and nothing is as effective as my baby girl at extracting. Sometimes I will nurse her after pumping just to have her get any remaining milk lingering inside.
When I first started pumping at the beginning of the month, I was getting a half to one ounce from each breast. Now, depending on time between pumps, I can get 1 to 2.5 ounces. So I am seeing an improvement. With some consistency, my left breast out produces my right.
I am still working at it. Yesterday I was working away and it wasn’t until the afternoon that I realized I hadn’t yet pumped since feeding that morning! Ugh! As I type, I am again hooked to the machine. Left breast is winning the race….
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get back to seeing 3-5 ounces from a single breast during a single pump, but I’ll be keeping at it. What I do know, is providing my daughter with breast milk is very important to me and I believe she benefits profoundly from it. We have increased solid food intake with her and I provide her with as much mama milk as I can expel.
My advice to new mamas: PUMP. From day one. Incorporate it into your routine to get your supply up and keep it up. Thanks again to all those who reached out and shared their experience.
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When Are You Actually Dead?
When Are You Actually Dead?
Explanimator discusses the difficulties with confirming death. It's a cheery video to start the day.
October 27, 2015 at 11:29AM
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A Day with Sarah Raven and Adam Nicolson
Autumn is a wonderful time for entertaining. Yesterday, I hosted a lovely lunch at my farm for a small group of visitors. Sarah Raven is an English gardener, [&hellip...
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Monday, October 26, 2015
What Does Anesthesia Do To Your Brain?
What Does Anesthesia Do To Your Brain?
Brain waves under anesthesia look a lot like those for coma patients, but doctors still don't entirely understand how the medicine works. They also don't understand why redheads need more of it than others.
October 26, 2015 at 06:59PM
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Health: Medication Errors Happen in Half of All Surgeries
Health: Medication Errors Happen in Half of All Surgeries
Half of all surgeries involved some kind of drug error, according to a study at an elite medical center.
October 26, 2015 at 06:01PM
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Why Groundbreaking New Cancer Drugs Still Don’t Work For Most Patients
Why Groundbreaking New Cancer Drugs Still Don’t Work For Most Patients
Immunotherapy, which aims to harness the body's immune system to fight off certain cancers, has received plenty of attention, praise and investment in recent years. Yet, for all their promise, immune therapies have not produced such dramatic results for the majority of patients.
October 26, 2015 at 06:01PM
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Four ways breast milk is really interesting
You might have heard a lot that breastfeeding may reduce the risk of infections, allergies and gut problems. But it’s perhaps even more fascinating than you realise.
1. Mums may produce different breast milk for sons and daughters
Dr Katie Hinde from Harvard University studies lactation in monkeys to understand how breast milk provides not only nutrition, but shapes immunity, nervous systems and behaviours in their offspring.
Her team has found that even a monkey mother’s own breast milk can vary in the composition of fat, hormones, protein and minerals. It can depend on her age, how many children she’s had and what she’s been eating now and in the past. But, as this Naked Scientists interview explains, it even matters whether she’s had a son or a daughter.
Rhesus macaque monkeys produce more, lower energy milk for daughters, but less, higher energy milk for sons, in such a way that the overall energy supplied balances out. Why this is is unclear and Dr Hinde’s team is working to unpick these tricky questions. The monkey mothers also produce more calcium for daughters, which Dr Hinde speculates is linked to a quicker development of daughters’ skeletons.
As the interviewer, Kate Lamble asks, how do the monkey mums know whether it’s a son or daughter? Dr Hinde thinks it’s probably down to more hormones produced during female foetal development affecting mammary glands. It could also be behavioural interactions between mother and offspring after birth.
The big question is, does this hold true for humans? Is this something that mattered more in our evolutionary past, but is less relevant in our cosier modern world?
2. Time of day matters
Many animals exhibit day-night rhythms that can affect everything from sleep-wake cycles, metabolism, immune responses and heart rate. And it seems breast milk production is no different.
Milk produced during the night contains higher levels of a hormone, melatonin, which is known to regulate day-night (“circadian”) cycles. Researchers have suggested this can help reduce irritability and prolong night-time sleep, but more work is needed to show this for sure. Adults can manufacture melatonin from essential molecules taken in through the diet, but babies can’t.
Other studies have focused on tryptophan – an important building block in the body’s biochemical manufacturing of melatonin. One study linked higher levels of tryptophan in breast milk at night with a rise in melatonin in the breast-fed babies, which was also associated with more sleep.
To try to establish whether elevated tryptophan caused improved sleep (rather than because of some other differences between breast- and formula-fed babies), another study compared babies who were fed formula milk with added tryptophan at night, added tryptophan in the day and with no added tryptophan at all. Only babies fed added tryptophan at night had better sleep and metabolites in the urine suggested this was down to the production of more melatonin.
Whilst the overall effect on babies’ sleep and whether fluctuations in the makeup of breast milk can really cause changes is still to be fully teased out, these findings suggest that mothers who express milk for their babies for a later time may want to pay attention to what time of the day they did it.
3. Hormones in breast milk can affect behaviour too
Hormone levels, such as cortisol, can naturally fluctuate throughout the day. Cortisol, in particular, is not only important in the stress response but is needed in the mammary glands to stimulate new milk production and protect the survival of mammary cells.
Researchers comparing breast- and formula-fed babies have suggested that higher cortisol levels in milk are associated with more fearful babies. Others studying monkeys and humans have reported levels of maternal cortisol affecting temperament in three-month olds, and this may differ for sons and daughters. For some animals, like red squirrels, it may give them a competitive advantage – cortisol-like hormone levels rise as a forest gets more crowded, which accelerates the growth of their offspring.
Back to Katie Hinde’s research. Again, studying rhesus macaques, her team wanted to know whether these effects were genuinely down to cortisol or because of variations in the amount of nutrients passed on (which are in turn affected by hormone levels). The researchers measured milk one month after birth, and again three to four months after birth. Generally, higher levels of cortisol in milk were associated with babies who scored higher for nervousness and lower for confidence.
But why? They point to evidence that elevated cortisol in humans may lead to reduced growth, and speculate that there may be a trade-off between infant temperament and growth – if more nervous, less confident behaviours reduce activity, then the available energy from milk can be put towards growth, particularly for sons. This may be particularly crucial in times when resources are scarce or competition is high.
At least in rodents, the receptors for these hormones are most abundant in the gut in infancy, before declining into adulthood. This suggests that babies of at least some animals may be taking an active role in sensing the environment through their mother’s milk.
4. Breast milk may shape the friendly gut bacteria
Californian researchers compared the bacteria in the intestines of breast- and bottle-fed baby macaque monkeys between five and 12 months old. They also took blood samples to analyse the immune cells in the growing babies.
The bacteria profiles in each group showed stark differences. The breast-fed babies contained higher levels of Prevotella, Ruminococcus and Lactobacillus, whilst the bottle-fed babies had higher levels of Clostridium. The immune systems of the two groups also differed. Breast-fed babies had more immune ‘memory cells’ and ‘helper cells’ (which help fight off foreign invaders) and produced a sturdier immune response when isolated blood cells were challenged. The researchers noticed differences in chemical signals in the blood known to influence how the immune system develops.
Another study, this time on mice, may give clues as to one way this can happen. By manipulating particular antibodies in maternal milk, these researchers showed that a lack of antibodies produced very different bacterial gut colonies and affected how well the mice could cope with an intestinal insult. Both studies showed that variations in bacterial profiles were still seen many months after the experimental diets ended, indicating that the effects on the immune system may be very long-lasting.
All this suggests that breast milk, possibly through the action of antibodies, causes certain helpful microbes to colonise the gut. These then produce a spectrum of chemicals that help shape the maturing immune system, making it better equipped to fend off infections and less likely to trigger allergic reactions.
The question is, for humans in today’s world, how much would these variations actually matter?
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The Black-White Sleep Gap
The Black-White Sleep Gap
An unexpected challenge in the quest for racial justice.
October 26, 2015 at 05:05PM
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Can Fast Food Get Healthy?
Can Fast Food Get Healthy?
As the public’s tastes move toward kale and quinoa, big chain restaurants are trying to keep up.
October 26, 2015 at 03:07PM
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Something Fishy in the Food Chain
Something Fishy in the Food Chain
The Pacific broad tapeworm thrives in the guts of the sea lions that frolic in the waves of the Pacific Ocean, has been identified in the preserved poop of Peruvians mummified some five millennia ago, and is now making its way to seafood-loving Europeans through the briny conduits of the worldwide commercial fish trade.
October 26, 2015 at 01:05PM
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The World’s Largest Clinical Study Is Examining the World’s Oldest Wonderdrug
The World’s Largest Clinical Study Is Examining the World’s Oldest Wonderdrug
The world’s largest clinical study is about to begin, and it’s only aimed at studying one thing: aspirin.
October 26, 2015 at 12:04PM
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How Red Meat Joined the 478 Other Things That Might Give You Cancer
How Red Meat Joined the 478 Other Things That Might Give You Cancer
What does it mean to say processed meat causes cancer?
October 26, 2015 at 09:37AM
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Sausages, ham are cancer-causing, red meat 'probably' too: UN agency
Sausages, ham are cancer-causing, red meat 'probably' too: UN agency
Eating sausages, ham and other processed meats causes colon cancer, and red meat "probably" does too, an arm of the World Health Organization said Monday.
October 26, 2015 at 08:38AM
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The Specter Of Addiction And Suicide Among Veterans
The Specter Of Addiction And Suicide Among Veterans
As suicide attempts go, mine was of the halfhearted variety.
October 26, 2015 at 05:21AM
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Planting in My Vegetable Greenhouse
Fresh, organic produce will soon be growing in my vegetable greenhouse once again. As the temperatures dip here in the Northeast, and outdoor garden beds are cleared and [&hellip...
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Sunday, October 25, 2015
The Neuroscience of Anorexia Reveals Why It’s So Hard to Treat
The Neuroscience of Anorexia Reveals Why It’s So Hard to Treat
Most of the anorexia patients Dr. Joanna Steinglass sees in the inpatient eating-disorders unit at the New York State Psychiatric Institute have been to treatment before. While in the hospital or a
October 25, 2015 at 01:03PM
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Could Depression Be Caused By An Infection?
Could Depression Be Caused By An Infection?
Depression has long been reduced to a "chemical imbalance" in the brain, but the conditions origins still leave many doctors baffled. Now, some medical professionals are investigating the connection between depression and infection.
October 25, 2015 at 09:02AM
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