Mamels life animal

Last summer Angela Garbes interviewed me for an incredible essay “ The More I Learn About Breast Milk, The More Amazed I Am .” A subject we discussed was one of those things you can’t unlearn: Baby Spit Backwash. During the interview, I emphasized that the specific "baby saliva triggers immunofactors to increase in breastmilk" remains a hypothesis. But key links in this pathway have been empirically demonstrated: Artwork by Kd Neely 1) Moms increase the concentration of some immunofactors in breastmilk when babies are sick (but moms are not) (Hassiotou et al. 2013; Breakey et al. 2015). 2) When babies suckle, nipple diameter increases and  there is a vacuum with negative pressure,  delivering fluids  from the infant oral cavity — a cocktail of milk and saliva— back into the ducts of the breast. For the record the technical term for "baby spit backwash" is "retrograde milk flow" ( Geddes et al. 2008;  Geddes 2009;  Geddes et al. 2012; Ramsey et al. 2004 ).

Getting the Message via Milk We can imagine hormones are like a Facebook status post. Just as a Facebook status will only show up in the newsfeed of certain friends (I still don’t get the FB algorithm for this), hormone messages are only received by tissues that have the right receptors. In this way, specialized glands secrete a hormone to convey the body’s “status,” and the “friended” tissues—those with the receptor—are updated. This is known as the endocrine system. “Endo” of course is a Latin derivative meaning ‘within’ our own bodies. Images from Purves et al., Life: The Science of Biology, 4th Edition But what about hormones we get from someone else… like from our mother through her milk? This system is clearly not endocrine… the hormones are coming from another body via her mammary glands during lactation. For this reason they are termed “lactocrine” and the numerous bioactives in milk, including proteins, peptides, and steroids, might be messages from mother to baby. when I was

Among animal models , C. elegans and Drosophila melanogaster are the heavyweight champions in this domain, but when it comes to lactation, as non-mammals they are of limited use. Enter the lab rat, or mouse in this case. Mice allow researchers to systematically investigate mechanistic pathways through which mother’s milk influences offspring neurobiology, immune function, and behavior. Liu and colleagues (2013) investigated these in concert with the precision and dedication of a neuroscientist Sherlock Holmes , reported in Nature Neuroscience, December 2013. in which I write a blog post almost entirely to justify including this image. The target of their research was maternal tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF), one of the traffic controllers of the immune system. TNF is a proinflammatory cytokine that stimulates the acute phase reactions of the immune response system, regulating the actions of other immune cells. Generally always present at low levels, TNF increases physiologically dur

Mother’s milk is more than a food full of essential nutrients and more than a medicine packed with protective immunofactors. Mother’s milk contains signals- hormones of maternal origin- that influence infant metabolism, neurobiology, and behavior. Profs  Frank “Skip” Bartol and Carol Bagnell coined the term “lactocrine programming” to describe the effects of these hormones in the baby. Wonderfully covered  by Carl Zimmer for the NYT , is  the sequel to our 2011 monkey milk cortisol paper .  And like all self-respecting sequels, we had to pack in more special effects (new predictors & outcomes!), an expanded cast of characters (N>100!), and an extended run-time (longitudinal data!). Monkey Milk Cortisol Reloaded original photo by Alex Georgiev In other words, we collected milk at multiple time-points across lactation, measured FOOD & SIGNAL in milk (available milk energy AND cortisol) and correlated these milk features with infant growth AND temperament. And th