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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

#161
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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#162
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…

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.

Berkey is kind of a scam: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/big-berkey-water-...

> But in our test on chloroform, the Black Berkey filters performed poorly, lowering it by just 13% in our test sample

> New Millennium Concepts, however, claims—right on the box the filters come in—that the Black Berkey filter reduces chloroform by 99.8%, to “below lab detectable limits.”

> However, he said that they stopped meeting the NSF removal standard after approximately 1,100 gallons of filtering—barely more than a third of the 3,000-gallon lifespan New Millennium claims for the Black Berkey filters.

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

#163
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chronic stress is one of many, many reasons listed. It's confirmation bias to go into something looking for a particular answer. In the article, the mention of chronic stress is more of a passing remark and isn't discussed other than that one quote. But it sounds like your takeaway is that chronic stress is definitely one of the main contributing factors. The article doesn't support that.

more the inverse. my hypothesis is stress is high in society and there are many unknown effects. this is potentially one of the many effects.

> my hypothesis is stress is high in society and there are many unknown effects.

Exactly. You have a prior hypothesis about stress. This article makes a brief mention of stress and you take it as evidence of your hypothesis even though the article doesn’t support that at all.

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

#164
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget the isolation; western civilization all but requires two income earners to have a "median" life. There's remarkably little time or money to raise a child. Median individual income: $40,000, poverty level for "replacement" families (two adults, two children): $30,000.

I find it funny how middle class people all talk about how it is too expensive to have kids. Meanwhile, a single mother in poverty with 4+ kids is a regular sight depending on what side of town you are on. Yet, "I'm too poor to have kids" is not a phrase you'd ever hear from such a person. I don't think "poverty level" is the correct term here. I believe once below the poverty level, everything is basically free (if…

> Meanwhile, a single mother in poverty with 4+ kids is a regular sight depending on what side of town you are on. Yet, "I'm too poor to have kids" is not a phrase you'd ever hear from such a person

"I'm super happy and am living a great life" is probably also a phrase you'll never hear from this person.

Because what people are really saying when they say "I'm too poor to have kids" is "I would have to sacrifice a great deal of the comfort and stability of my life to have kids" and they are choosing not to do that.

From one perspective it's a selfish choice.

From another, having kids when you can't afford them is the selfish choice.

From yet another, having kids at all is a selfish choice.

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

#165
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

more the inverse. my hypothesis is stress is high in society and there are many unknown effects. this is potentially one of the many effects.

> my hypothesis is stress is high in society and there are many unknown effects. Exactly. You have a prior hypothesis about stress. This article makes a brief mention of stress and you take it as evidence of your hypothesis even though the article doesn’t support that at all.

here's the paper cited in the article..?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-90980-3

my point is, I'm not a scientist, so pointing out a bias (in my case a preconceived speculation) won't change my methodology for a future study. you're just going "nuh uh" with nothing else to say.

I am creating a narrative, and based on the discussion from my comment, it was exactly the narrative I wanted to provide.

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

#166
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's deeper than private vs. public. It's more about the "employed" bit.

For a very long time, helping your community and being involved in it meant you got to eat. That's no longer the case. It's perfectly viable to clock in, say nothing to anyone, clock out, repeat. It's also possible to give all you can to your community and starve to death.

The survival strategy is no longer "seek community" but "seek profit", because human society is now more dangerous and rewarding than the natural environment.

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

#167
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…

On the topic of Water Filters, I recommend ClearlyFiltered-- https://www.clearlyfiltered.com/pages/technology

I bought mine because I saw it filters both Fluoride and Chlorine, as well as approximately 360+ other chemicals

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

#168

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.

What alternatives to Berkey do you suggest?

APEC makes good under-sink and countertop (for e.g. apartments) reverse osmosis systems that will get you to 0ppm TDS.

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

#169
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's possible that I'm conflating correlation with causation. But her dentist seems to think it's a factor. They coat her teeth with a fluoride paste and it seems to be working. On the flip side her late 90s grandmother still has some teeth and walks around unassisted. I don't think any of my grandparents made it to their 80s.

Tangential anecdote: I had a co-worker in India who grew up in a region with excessive naturally occurring fluoride in the groundwater. As a result, he had blotchy dark brown teeth - not stained, the substructure of the teeth were brown all the way through. The side effect was that the teeth were substantially stronger than regular teeth, as were presumably his bones. My understanding is that extremely high fluoride…

The benefits that motivate widespread fluoridation, kick in at concentrations well below those needed to stain teeth. If I recall the history of it all correctly, the level of fluoride needed to stain teeth basically leaves you with teeth that are all but impervious to run of the mill cavities from plaque buildup. The bugs just don’t have the power to degrade tooth enamel containing fluoride minerals at concentrations that are high enough the staining becomes noticeably brown (im talking about an arbitrary colour grade here so please be generous in interpretation of just what I mean by “brown” if performing additional research to refute me)

So basically while we don’t suffer for lack of fluoride to harden our teeth… the extra fluoride gives us a lot of protection. And yes you can have too much fluoride, but your never going to see that kind of medical pathology unless you somehow get a lot more bioavailable fluoride in you in a short span of time than you could possibly get from drinking multiple litres (or even gallons) of fluoridated water per day, they don’t put enough fluoride in the water to turn teeth brown, and we have ample evidence that fluoride bearing spring water above these concentrations does no harm for long periods of time.

I get being concerned, but we got so much more important things to worry about with regard to environmental chemicals than fluoride. It’s pretty easy to read the history, find out about the kids with the brown but perfect teeth, find the other stories from around the world, the second generation families living healthy on spring water that is/was naturally highly fluoridated, and put it all together yourself without need to take anyone’s word for the fact this actually is a pretty good “one weird trick for perfect teeth”.

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

#170

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.

I don't know why everyone just accepts uncritically the water fluoridation stuff. It seems like as a culture we're re-examining so many things we incorrectly thought was "safe" but water fluoridation seems to still be a "sacred cow". I'm guessing it's hangover from Birch Society people being against it, but seems weird to just assume it's fine (especially when looking into the somewhat shady origins of the program)

Flouridation has been studied and scuritnized pretty heavily since the 40s. No one is just assuming it's fine. It is.

The positives of flouridation far outweigh any of the negative consequences that could occur. But I have never heard of anyone with a flouride problem in my life.

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