A new era in breast feeding.

Abstract

Increasing worldwide interest and advances in biochemical and analytical sciences are providing greater knowledge of human milk and lactation. Sophisticated techniques of analysis have revealed many specific sugars, fats and fatty acids, minerals, vitamins and other enzymes that combine in the mammary gland to create human milk. This active tissue in liquid form has been evolved by Darwinian selection principles specifically for the nurture of the human infant. However the statement “Breast fed is best fed” is not believed by many stout, upstanding citizens with sludge-lined arteries and corroding kidneys who have “thrived” in infancy on artificial formula. Human milk provides protection for the infant adapting to his new environment. It is also an index of environmental and social pollutants as the mammary tissues filter insecticide and weedicide residues, antidepressants and tranquilizers, antibiotics and analgesics through the secretory epithelium. Lactation is normally preceded by development of the mammary gland associated with endocrine changes of pregnancy although evidence of nonpuerperal lactation is well documented, with sucking stimulus effecting hormone release from the pituitary. Establishment and maintenance of lactation require adequate interaction between infant and maternal reflexes, the former being rooting, suckling and swallowing. The maternal milk secretion reflex is dependent upon stimulation of the nipple and areolar tissue. The maternal milk ejection reflex has both somatic and psychosomatic components. Knowledge, the ready availability of practical information, and social and familial endorsement and mores affect a mother's lactation capabilities. Breast feeding enriches the mother-child relationship, with cognitive reception by the developing infant, and endowment of love, security, confidence and a satisfying hormonal state upon the mother. Low incidence of lactation is an index of the social and interpersonal impoverishment in many technologically advanced communities today.