NYT article about breastfeeding

[walkitout]

On the one hand, it ends with this comment:

"please breast-feed.”

How much can I really hate that, right? But it includes this remark:

"The complex sugars were long thought to have no biological significance, even though they constitute up to 21 percent of milk."

Really? I'm not complaining about the author; I'm prepared to believe the author was correctly describing the state of understanding of breastfeeding in science-y/medicine-y circles. But really? 21% of breastmilk is a mystery to you, so you conclude "no biological significance"? That's right up there with, hey, it's DNA that doesn't code for protein. Must not do anything at all, right?

Here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/science/03milk.html

The news is basically, hey, look, this stuff the baby doesn't digest coats the baby's gut (surprise? I thought we already knew that?) and nasty things that might make the baby sick instead latch onto this stuff and the baby doesn't get sick. Yay. Some anomalous commentary that I cannot make any sense of:

"The complex sugars, for instance, are evidently a way of influencing the gut microflora, so they might in principle be used to help premature babies, or those born by caesarean, who do not immediately acquire the bifido strain."

I thought the babies got this stuff from the boob? What has _that_ got to do with preemies or c-section babies? I nursed A. while they were closing. Preemies receiving kangaroo care nurse. Preemies unable to nurse can be given expressed breast milk. What's the problem? Well, I mean other than poorly run hospitals adhering to practice standards that have been proven less than optimal for decades...

Comments

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Okay, maybe I'm being dim, but I'd have thought the sugars would have been dismissed as just being, you know, FOOD. Which is biologically significant in a sense, but not in the immunological sense. It never occurred to me that the sugars weren't digested. Incidentally, does that mean that the sugars added to formula, which presumably ARE digested, are causing a nutritional imbalance? I'm in way over my head here ...

I think immunities do pass from mother to child in the last weeks before birth, and some exposure to maternal bacteria happens during vaginal birth.

From a veterinary friend of mine (old conversation on Usenet): "Well, one of the big differences between species is what types of maternal
antibodies cross the placenta. In most farm animals, NO maternal antibody
crosses the placenta, so a neonate who fails to consume colostrum will
almost surely die or have failure to thrive, because it won't have any
antibodies. I believe I explained previously that for cows in particular,
during the last 2 wks of gestation, as cow approaches calving date, she
starts concentrating immunoglobulins from plasma into the mammary gland -
mainly IgG. The IgG is extracted from plasma and secreted into the
colostrum. Those antibodies are consumed by calf during first day of life
and absorbed by GI tract into circulation. There have been many studies
which show that calves that have a failure to absorb the Ab have a higher
incidence of disease than normal calves.

"What you guys are thinking of is closure of the gut. In the calf, gut
closure occurs at about 24 hours, after which the immunoglobulin molecules
in the milk/colostrum are too big to be absorbed by the calf anymore.

"Human beings, on the other hand, have transplacental acquisition of IgG.
That's why formula fed babies don't fail to thrive automatically. They
don't HAVE to get the immunoglobulins from the colostrum, they already
have a bunch from mom when they're born."

not being dim

[walkitout]

The article is stunningly unclear in several respects.

The sugars in question are lactose plus sugars, so some of the sugars in the milk are digestible and some are turned into something that is not digestible, apparently to good purpose.

I knew about the transfer of some flora during the birth process. But it's just not entirely clear why that (if indeed that's what they _meant_ by bringing up preemies and c-section babies) got brought into the discussion.

The remark describing "whey" as a "waste product from cheesemaking" was also completely ridiculous. I'm not saying it's wrong; I'm just saying it is not relevant. It would have made more sense to just say that the same stuff had been found in cow's milk. Which is what they meant.