Can Man Breastfeed?

Posted by Alex in Medicine on September 7, 2007 at 11:25 am


Can man lactate? According to this Scientific American article, the answer is yes:

Newman explains that medical disruptions involving prolactin, the hormone necessary to produce milk, have resulted in spontaneous lactation. Thorazine, a popular antipsychotic used in the mid-20th century, impacted the pituitary gland—the pea-size endocrine gland located near the base of the brain—often causing it to overproduce prolactin. If prolactin levels remained high, milk could follow. According to Newman, lactation is listed as a possible side effect of the heart medication digoxin. A pituitary tumor could also induce milk production: "It would be the same reason—increased prolactin levels&mdashin the one case drug-induced, in the other due to a tumor or some other sort of neurological problem."

In a 1995 article for Discover titled "Father’s Milk," Pulitzer Prize-winning author and one-time physiologist Jared Diamond reconciles the nipple stimulation and hormone quandary, pointing out that such stimulation can release prolactin. He also notes that starvation—which inhibits the functioning of hormone-producing glands as well as the hormone-absorbing liver—can cause spontaneous lactation, as observed in survivors of Nazi concentration camps and Japanese POW camps in World War II. "The glands recover much faster than the liver when normal nutrition is resumed," he writes, "so hormone levels soar unchecked."

Link - Thanks Scott Rosenblum!


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COMMENT

7 comments to "Can Man Breastfeed?"

  1. AT
    September 7th, 2007 at 11:32 am

    Eh, I learned this in high school. As my bio teacher said to me and my friend, “I’ll prove to you that boys can lactate if you act up again in my class!”

  2. meg
    September 7th, 2007 at 1:33 pm

    Meh. Learned about this a while ago. There was an entire TV special about an aussie man who did this for both his children.

  3. meg
    September 7th, 2007 at 1:34 pm

    well, his wife had a double mastectomy so she couldn’t…apparently men’s milk has the same nutritional and antibiotic properties as any other human milk, so they just wanted what was best I suppose.

    still a bit odd. to each their own, I guess.

  4. L
    September 7th, 2007 at 1:51 pm

    Is it really enough to nourish a baby? Interesting, though. Turns out those male nipples aren’t as useless as some people thought. (I’ve also read about cultures where the men let the babies use their nipples as pacifiers. No milk involved there, but it does serve a purpose.)

  5. Lasse
    September 7th, 2007 at 2:20 pm

    I feel that this is something we shouldnt discuss. :-)

  6. meg
    September 7th, 2007 at 6:32 pm

    L- the breast enlarges much as a woman’s does when she’s lactating. There’s plenty there.

  7. lauredhel
    September 8th, 2007 at 4:19 am

    I’ve been searching on this subject for years now, and have never once found a medically verified case report of a healthy man (or an unhealthy one, for that matter) exclusively nourishing an infant. If anyone has found one, do please post it.


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