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Making
the rounds on the Net today is the adventure of a man who's trying to
survive on a diet consisting
solely of his wife's breast milk.
Here's what happened:
The story so far: Curtis and his wife Katie, a childbirth and lactation educator, have three children. After their first baby spent time in the NICU Katie got into the habit of pumping milk "religiously every two hours round the clock for fear that my milk would dry up." That left her with a huge surplus of milk which she used to feed her first child while pregnant with her second. Her second child also spent time NICU, and she quickly filled up a 7" cubic freezer with more milk, which she eventually donated. Over six months she gave more than 10,000 ounces of breastmilk to an adopted premature drug baby who was not responding well to formula!
And then Katie got pregnant again, and again the baby went to the NICU. This time they ended up with an even bigger freezer full of the white stuff (right), which sadly no milk banks would take (for various reasons including the medicines she had taken while pumping). So this time they were just going to save the milk for themselves...until they realized they had to move and that the cost of transporting so much lactation would be quite expensive. So Curtis decided to take one for the team and drink the milk, and just the milk, for as long as his body will let him. They just finished day two.
Cows that have been modified with human genes are producing milk very similar to human milk. The researchers responsible hope to produce and market a this product as a substitute for human milk. Lead researcher Ning Li explained:
“The modified bovine milk is a possible substitute for human milk. It fulfilled the conception of humanising the bovine milk.”
Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, he added the “human-like milk” would provide “much higher nutritional content”. He said they had managed to produce three generations of GM cows but for commercial production there would need to be large numbers of cows produced.He said: “Human milk contains the ‘just right’ proportions of protein, carbohydrates, fats, minerals, and vitamins for an infant’s optimal growth and development.
Link via DVICE | Photo (unrelated) by Flickr user Joost J. Bakker IJuiden used under Creative Commons license
Of course you would! After all, it makes for good cheese. So you’re in luck: there’s a shop in London that sells ice cream made from milk donated by local mothers.
The dessert, called Baby Gaga, is churned with donations from 15 women who responded to an advertisement on an online mothers’ forum.
One of the women, Victoria Hiley, 35, said if adults realised how tasty breast milk was more new mothers would be encouraged to breastfeed.
Each serving of Baby Gaga at Icecreamists costs £14.
Mrs Hiley’s donation was expressed on site and pasteurised before being churned with Madagascan vanilla pods and lemon zest.
Icecreamists founder Matt O’Connor placed an advert appealing for breast milk donations and believes his new recipe will be a success.[...]
“If it’s good enough for our children, it’s good enough for the rest of us,” he said.
Video at the link.
Got acne? The solution may be … breast milk! UC San Diego scientist Dissaya Pornpattananangkul discovers that an ingredient found in breast milk can cure teenage acne:
"Common acne afflicts more than 85 per cent of teenagers and over 40 million people in the United States; and current treatments have undesirable side effects including redness and burning.
"Lauric-acid-based treatments could avoid these side effects."
Miss Pornpattananangkul also developed a sophisticated "smart delivery system" for the lauric acid to be effective.
She was able to bind the acid with "gold nanoparticles" which stops the lauric acid from joining together while in cream form and then allows it to separate quickly when applied to the skin.
"The new smart delivery system includes gold nanoparticles attached to surfaces of lauric-acid-filled nano-bombs," she said.
Link (Photo: Shutterstock)
After her father Tim was diagnosed with colon cancer, Georgia Browne went on the Internet to research ways to help save him. That’s where she got a brilliant though a bit unconventional idea to feed her dad breastmilk:
Georgia recalls. ‘I started researching on the internet immediately and found separate studies in America and Scandinavia both supporting the health benefits of breastmilk to cancer sufferers.
‘I watched the documentary and thought it was a really mad idea, if it was true,’ she says. ‘I started looking on the net and found research suggesting breastmilk helps kill cancer cells.
‘Finding out I could help was amazing. I could play my small part in helping my dad do something positive for his illness. ‘When I talked to him about it, he thought it was a great idea. He thought: “Why not?”’ [...]
With the family’s blessing, Georgia started expressing her milk for Tim straight away. She dropped the first batch round to her parents’ home in a freezer bag, which her mum popped in the freezer.
‘I thought he’d mix it into a milkshake like the man in the documentary, but when Mum defrosted it the next day, he simply poured it on his cornflakes with a splash of normal cow’s milk. He said it didn’t taste that different to cow’s milk, maybe just a bit sweeter if he didn’t get the mix right,’ Georgia says.
New Idea magazine has more: Link
