milk feeding women

apparently some adults prefer to drink breastmilk, but is that really what’s breast for them? whatup my mammals, i’m julian for dnews.there’s a small community of adults who have taken to drinking human breast milk.some for the taste or pleasure, others for the supposed health benefits. while sciencecan’t dictate whether or not someone’s personal preferences are right or wrong, itcan debunk health claims, so let’s see if breast milk is the “superfood” some forumsclaim it is. some fitness forums claim human breast milkis a good supplement for bulking routines because, they say, it has more nutritionalvalue than dairy and can help athletes recover

from workouts faster. but breast milk’scomposition doesn’t totally agree with those claims. on average mature human milk is 0.8%-0.9%protein, far less than whole milk’s 3.3%. as for caloric content, it’s slightly abovewhole milk. whole milk offers 62.6 kcal per 100 ml, and human milk is 60-75 kcal per 100ml. breast milk does have more lactose in it, around 7% while whole milk has about 4%,so the higher levels of that carbohydrate may indeed help replenish energy stores faster.by comparison though gatorade is 13% carbohydrates, so the self-reported energy benefits are likelya placebo effect. another purported benefit of breast milk isit’s easier to digest and has antibodies from the mother in it. with that in mind,some chemotherapy patients have taken to drinking

it as a source of nutrition and to bolstertheir immune system. there’s a few problems with this line of thinking though: chemotherapycan cause a lactase deficiency for some patients and because breast milk has more lactose init, it’s actually harder to digest. then there’s the claim about antibodies. themost common antibody in breast milk is immunoglobulin a. these antibodies protect surfaces of thebody like the nose, ears, eyes, breathing passages, digestive tract, and vagina. whilethey may actually benefit the patient, they’re going to lose some effectiveness if the motherlives elsewhere and so is exposed to different pathogens. which brings us to a bigger problem. there are non-profit breast milk banks inthe united states, but they cater to infants

who need milk and the cost of operation meansthe milk can be expensive. there are sites like only the breast that allow mothers tosell and ship their product to anyone directly. since there’s no standard on how the milkis packed and shipped, it’s often stored in a way that allows bacteria to contaminateit. the new york times found that 64% of samples from milk sharing sites had staph, 36% hadstrep, and a whopping 74% would have failed milk bank criteria. plus the milk is usuallyunscreened or unpasteurized. a milk bank in san jose, california that screens potentialdonors had to turn away 3.3% of them because they tested positive for hiv, syphilis, hepatitisb, hepatitis c, or human t-cell lymphotropic virus, which is a virus that can actuallycause cancer. if a mother has any of these,

she can pass them on in her breast milk. thatis the absolute last thing immunocompromised chemo patients need, and if they’re buyingmilk from unscreened donors, they’re taking a huge risk. so it looks like breast milk isn’t the wonderfood some health or fitness forums make it out to be. it’s absolutely top notch forbabies, but the benefits for adults are negligible and it can even be very harmful if it comesfrom a bad source. as for the weirdness factor of drinking breast milk as an adult? wellkeep in mind adult humans couldn’t drink any milk until a genetic mutation about 12,000years ago. and it’s still primarily a european thing. it’s why 95% of asians and almost100% of native americans are lactose intolerant.

so maybe reconsider that drinking cow boobjuice is pretty weird already, when you think about it.