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Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#121

Post by artificialLimbs »

Dove wrote: post #71

I started aggressively filtering my water (Berkey black + white filters) during my last pregnancy, and I was amazed how much better I felt and how much more water I wanted to drink. I was trying very hard to drink lots of water to support the pregnancy, and found it difficult. When I started filtering it, it became really easy and I felt a lot better to boot. I still get pretty low key dehydrated if I try to subsist…

We moved to a place with excellent well water a few years ago. When I drink water in a restaurant now... well, I don't. 99% of the water I've tried in restaurants tastes disgusting.

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#122

Post by cjohnson318 »

For my wife, it was the fact that our kids all had tongue and cheek/mouth ties. As soon as those were cut, they nursed normally. We'd asked at the hospital if our kids had tongue ties, and their rubric was, "Can your kid make a taco tongue? If they can, then they don't have a tongue tie." It turns out that this is not the case. According to modern American medicine, tongue ties don't exist, and if they did exist, your kid will get over them, and anyway here's a bottle, good luck. After we took our kids to a specialist to fix their tongue ties, they went from nursing and crying all night long, to nursing for 15 minutes and sleeping normally. Tongue ties are a thing. If your kid is exhausted from trying to nurse all night and can't get full, then they might have a tongue tie.

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#123

Post by newsclues »

rdedev wrote: post #47
newsclues wrote: post #18

Has anyone considered that birth control is actually messing with humans?

Did you mean birth control pills or just birth control in general?

I know it exists, but I don't know what form the medication is in.

But I know it's so ubiquitous it is in the water.

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#124

Post by newsclues »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #101
newsclues wrote: post #18

Has anyone considered that birth control is actually messing with humans?

Massive hormone therapy at a never-before-attempted scale might have an effect…

Didn't think this was controversial.

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#125

Post by mncharity »

A friend managed the relationship between her diet and her baby's digestive happiness/distress with experimental care. Slowly expanding her dietary envelope; backing out unsuccessful additions; doing retries; retreating to a small core when there was non-determinism, etc. Careful documentation, timing, observation - I was impressed. She accumulated lists of foods which weren't working. Which isn't novel - there were various on the internet. They even overlap.

A thick booklet came in her mail. Part of the pregnancy ad deluge. It was a free cookbook, of easy to prepare recipes for the nursing mother. But curiously, the recipes overlapped with her causes-distress list. Like, massively overlapped. I was puzzled - how could this be? Then, in small print, on a back page: Nestlé.

I wonder how many of those they send out each year?

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#126

Post by nugget »

pvaldes wrote: post #103
Dove wrote: post #71

I started aggressively filtering my water (Berkey black + white filters) during my last pregnancy, and I was amazed how much better I felt and how much more water I wanted to drink. I was trying very hard to drink lots of water to support the pregnancy, and found it difficult. When I started filtering it, it became really easy and I felt a lot better to boot. I still get pretty low key dehydrated if I try to subsist…

Some worrying Orthorexia vibes in your post. Could mean nothing, but keep an eye on them. Distilled water is not good to drink. It dehydrates the body, so you could feel the need to drink more. Being devoid of salts can cause also an entire set of undesirable problems if you are pregnant and drink it for too long. The concept of osmosis is very important in biology and disrupt it can cause undesirable effects. Of cou…

Your reference to orthorexia is extreme. There's nothing in the parent comment that would take my mind there. It's true that relatively few people realize how polluted drinking water has become - lead and other metals, PFAS, plastic particles - take your pick. I have a hard time understanding why any knowledgable person who can afford to do so wouldn't filter all or almost all of the water that they drink and cook with at home. OP also didn't mention distillation as a filtration method. A reverse osmosis filter with a remineralization stage is vastly more popular and a no brainer to install in any kitchen. If you do drink distilled water then you can supplement with an extra pinch or two per day of salt and minerals in your food and you will be fine.

Orthorexia and OCD tendencies are real and destructive but I'd be equally wary of normalizing the oftentimes highly toxic exposure of modern life to the point where anybody who express tangible concerns and takes meaningful countermeasures is pointed to as a potential basket case.

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#127

Post by sys32768 »

xupybd wrote: post #112
etrautmann wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you until the fluoride bit. Do you have any medical evidence to suggest there's any issue with fluoride? Also why Berkey? They're extraordinarily expensive relative to alternatives, primarily for aesthetic gain.

My wife grew up in Vietnam. No fluoride in her water (she grew up on bottle water). The dental work is expensive and regular.

We moved to Montana when my child was a teen, and the dentist immediately remarked that my child must have grown up somewhere else because of her teeth being in such good condition.

Most local teens grew up on well water and their teeth suffered for it.

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#128

Post by Dove »

KoftaBob wrote: post #120
Dove wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh gosh. I didn't mean to touch off a controversy about fluoride. As I said, I suspect, but I don't claim to know. But if you want to know why I suspect, here is my reasoning: I can subjectively tell good and bad water apart in double blind tests over a period of several hours, so I know that what's happening to me isn't just in my head. So -- I don't know whether it's fluoride or not, but it's definitely something.…

> What I do know is that I drink a lot more water than is typical -- about two gallons a day when I am not nursing, and much more when I am That's 3 times the recommended amount of water intake for pregnant women.

Yes, I don't have a lot of faith in standard recommendations. It's not that I set out to drink that much -- I drink water to solve problems. That's just how much it usually ends up being. The idea of a one size fits all recommendation is something I find laughable. Needs are personal based on activity, environment, and biology.

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#129

Post by BlueTemplar »

kneebonian wrote: post #82
_oghd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

longevity? uh... no. capitalism is very young in human society. for clarity, feudalism lasted twice as long as capitalism has currently existed. and while competition has dominated the scientific and cultural narrative for a while, that's not the exclusive interpretation, or even necessarily the best or correct one.

I have to ask what do you mean by capitalism then? Was the blacksmith selling the products of his labor to people in the community not capitalism? What exactly do you mean by capitalism?

In the sense that most people were manorial serfs and didn't use money and also the merchant class was despised by the ruling landowner/warrior class before they were overthrown by the merchants around 1800.

Now, sure, that manorial land was technically the means of production, and those in charge of these manors technically owned it (maybe much more like we are used to in civilizational phases, like with the Roman empire ?), but isn't this really stretching the intuitions we have around "capitalism" ?

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#130

Post by robertlagrant »

mxkopy wrote: post #16
robertlagrant wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is society is profit and growth driven?

Presumably OP is talking about Western societies, in which the dominant form of getting sustenance involves making money, which in turn involves following business incentives.

There are a giant number of people employed by the public sector where I'm from. Not everything is the private sector, and a lot of the private sector is not about relentless growth and profit.
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