Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: You know, milk is one of those things that we
Speaker 1: really take for granted. I mean, it's, uh, it's a
Speaker 1: certain amount of This is kind of an outragious overstatement
Speaker 1: the obvious, but milk is this amazing, nutritious beverage that
Speaker 1: is produced by a mammal so that a larval mammal
Speaker 1: can can grow and and develop and uh and actually
Speaker 1: have a shot at life. Yeah. Yeah, when you think
Speaker 1: of milk, you should probably just think about the milk
Speaker 1: campaign got milk? Yeah, um, But if you think about
Speaker 1: it in a different way, it's it's actually in the
Speaker 1: news quite a bit in the form of breastfeeding, and
Speaker 1: I just wanted to mention that it's it is interesting
Speaker 1: when you think about breastfeeding is becoming this polar de
Speaker 1: sized action because it is natural to mammals to do this,
Speaker 1: and yet legislation exists so that people, humans can actually
Speaker 1: breastfeed in public. Believe it or not. Um, the the
Speaker 1: the human human breast exists um solely to to to
Speaker 1: nurture another creature. Despite all the other things you see
Speaker 1: breast doing UM in our media and in our art
Speaker 1: and our world at large. I mean, this is the
Speaker 1: one thing that they're here for, and it's the one
Speaker 1: thing that some people get up tied about and say, ah,
Speaker 1: that needs to be that needs to happen behind closed doors.
Speaker 1: So pull that out on the train. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. Here in the United States, forty five states,
Speaker 1: the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands have laws
Speaker 1: that specifically allow women to breastfeed in any public or
Speaker 1: private location. Twenty eight states, as well as the District
Speaker 1: of Columbia and the Virgin Islands again exempt breastfeeding from
Speaker 1: public indecency laws. Uh No. In twenty four states, including
Speaker 1: d C in Puerto Rico, have laws related to breastfeeding
Speaker 1: in the workplace. That the fact that we even have
Speaker 1: to have laws in the workplace to make sure that
Speaker 1: breastfeeding can occurs is just kind of odd. Yeah, because well,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about public urination here or or or defecation.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this and this is a This
Speaker 1: is not a waste producing act. This is a UM,
Speaker 1: a life giving act. That's part of the natural mammal process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as we discovered, it's not just mother's milk. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's also someone else's milk. But I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: spoil that right now. I'm not going to spoil that plot. Um.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about what exactly milk is. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is this also sounds kind of like an outrageous question.
Speaker 1: What is milk? What's that stuff that comes out of
Speaker 1: out of a mammal's breast. It's that stuff that you
Speaker 1: buy at the grocery market and the big, big containers.
Speaker 1: It's that stuff and that can that I take back
Speaker 1: to the kitten in the morning and occasionally accidentally drink
Speaker 1: out of. Um, it's kind of chalky, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but no, um, Yeah, what what is milk when
Speaker 1: you when you break it down and you actually look
Speaker 1: at the formula, Well, it's basically a complex emulsion of antibodies,
Speaker 1: flat globules and water and a fine dispersion of suspension
Speaker 1: or suspension of cassine macellis. And these are proteins that
Speaker 1: supply amino acids, carbohydrates, calcium, and phosphorus. And the interesting
Speaker 1: thing about this is that fat, protein, and sugar content
Speaker 1: differs across the million species. Yeah, and it differs quite
Speaker 1: a lot. Um For example, that the fat content of
Speaker 1: milk may be as high as six and seals uh
Speaker 1: and completely negligible in the early lactation stages of something
Speaker 1: like a wallaby. Um. And then you get it into
Speaker 1: interesting distinctions there too, because uh, some some mammal milk
Speaker 1: is just straight up you know, the pretty much the
Speaker 1: same formula nutritions from from the early stages of lactation
Speaker 1: through the latter stages of lactation. Other animals, the chemistry
Speaker 1: the milk changes a bit as they go on, fulfilling
Speaker 1: fulfilling certain biological needs early on and becoming more nutritious
Speaker 1: as as the uh, as the the animal progresses. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in humans, breast milk actually isn't even produced right away. Instead,
Speaker 1: a substance called colostrum, sometimes called liquid gold, is produced
Speaker 1: before a woman's milk comes in, and claustrum is um.
Speaker 1: It's high in carbohydrates, high in protein, high in antibodies,
Speaker 1: and low and fat. And it's called liquid gold because
Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot of it that's produced. But
Speaker 1: the stuff that is produced is really dense um. It's
Speaker 1: very thick, and it's great for newborns who find it
Speaker 1: difficult to digest at that point because it does have
Speaker 1: that low fat content, and its role is to coat
Speaker 1: the baby's digestive t with beneficial bacteria and act actually
Speaker 1: is a laxative and the reason for this is that
Speaker 1: it helps the baby clear any excess billy reuben from
Speaker 1: its system, which if you didn't clear that would uh
Speaker 1: may actually result in having a jaundice or something along
Speaker 1: those lines. Then that's like baby poo. Well, the term
Speaker 1: for baby pooh actually is maconium. But it's this billy
Speaker 1: rub in, this excess amount that that the baby's body
Speaker 1: actually wants to get rid of, and it does that
Speaker 1: through excreting okay, pop, and this helps facilitate that process.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's like it's not not just milk
Speaker 1: as they a product of the mother as much as
Speaker 1: like it's this targeted um biological agent. It's really doing
Speaker 1: certain unique things that we can continue to discuss here,
Speaker 1: a certain unique things that will aid that new creature survival.
Speaker 1: That's right, has a lot to do with immunity and
Speaker 1: just kind of setting up a kid's system for life really,
Speaker 1: So how long have we had mammalion milk? At least
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty million years? And again this seems
Speaker 1: sort of like one of those things take totally for granted, like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: we've have hasn't this always been going on? Um? But
Speaker 1: the Bovine Lactation Genome Consortium compared one hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: seven milk and memory genes from cattle in more than
Speaker 1: six thousand memory related genes with other genes in the
Speaker 1: bovine KENO. And these genes were then compared with similar
Speaker 1: ones from a platypus and a possum human, a dog
Speaker 1: and mouse, and a rat. And they use this data
Speaker 1: to figure out that the most common ancestor of the
Speaker 1: animal or these animals would have lived about a hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty million years ago. But mammals origins actually go
Speaker 1: back to a mammal like reptile called synapsids, and that's uh,
Speaker 1: that actually occurs in the fossil record about three hundred
Speaker 1: and ten million years ago, so one d and sixty
Speaker 1: million at least. Okay, And from there we see like
Speaker 1: again just a number of different varieties of milk. The
Speaker 1: nutritional specifics of that milk is going to vary from
Speaker 1: species to species. Uh, some of it is just really incredible.
Speaker 1: Like I was reading about the blue whale. Um, the
Speaker 1: blue a newborn blue whale feeding just on milk will
Speaker 1: gain two hundred pounds a day, which is which is incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean that, and that just shows you the I
Speaker 1: mean the importance of the milk. It's like it's it's
Speaker 1: taking this fledgling creature, this um that that by all
Speaker 1: rights and purposes, is not long for this world. It
Speaker 1: makes all the difference by just pumping just vast amounts
Speaker 1: of food and nutrient into the body. Yeah. One of
Speaker 1: the things that the researchers found that was similar across
Speaker 1: all species is that the milk proteins related to secreting
Speaker 1: the milk remain the same, so that across the species,
Speaker 1: same thing the place where they diverged with the nutritional
Speaker 1: and immunological components of the milk. And of course, if
Speaker 1: you've got a baby wheel that's gaining two hundred pounds
Speaker 1: a day, it's going to be stocked in a different
Speaker 1: way with nutrients. Um. So let's give some more examples
Speaker 1: of other species in what they're up to with with
Speaker 1: milk and breastfeeding. All right, well this this is a
Speaker 1: not particularly scientific but I found it interesting in the
Speaker 1: rest on the less, according to a Telegraph article, Um,
Speaker 1: the milk of the giraffe is technically kosher. Um. They're
Speaker 1: they're the Safari Park Zoo and Rama Ghan it's Israel's
Speaker 1: largest zoo. They had a team that took a root
Speaker 1: teen samples of milk and found that it clotted in
Speaker 1: the way required by Jewish law for kosher certification. Uh.
Speaker 1: They submitted more milk for verification. So the rabbi's waged
Speaker 1: in and they found that giraffe milk, but also giraffe
Speaker 1: meat was acceptable for observant juice. So there you go,
Speaker 1: giraffe on the menu. Um. Okay, Well, let's look at
Speaker 1: our friends, chimpanzees and binobos. They actually wean they're young
Speaker 1: at the age of four or five, whereas guerrillas do
Speaker 1: about a year earlier. Um. And they you know, anthropologists
Speaker 1: aren't quite sure why that's the case, like why there
Speaker 1: would be a differentiation there. Um. You know, you I
Speaker 1: guess you could guess that it had to do with
Speaker 1: maybe the society or the community that these animals are
Speaker 1: living in and um, some of the different things that
Speaker 1: they're up against. UM. But one of the things I
Speaker 1: wanted to point out is that anthropologists have studied the
Speaker 1: weaning customs of hunter gatherer societies, societies, human societies, and
Speaker 1: they found a significant variation within them. They actually talked
Speaker 1: about the Kung sand of the Kahlari Desert and they
Speaker 1: stopped breastfeeding at around four or five years of age.
Speaker 1: The Hodsa of Tanzania ween about six months earlier than
Speaker 1: the Kung, and the Auchi people of Paraguay queen earlier
Speaker 1: at about three years of a. So again there's there's
Speaker 1: this idea of that human culture and lifestyles influenced that.
Speaker 1: Now here in the West, UM. And this is from
Speaker 1: the Christian Science Monitor, only an estimated thirty five percent
Speaker 1: of American moms are exclusively breastfeeding their children at three months,
Speaker 1: even though the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests about six
Speaker 1: months to be the cutoff date. And then less than
Speaker 1: half of moms nurse at all at six months, So
Speaker 1: you can see there's obviously a huge decline in the
Speaker 1: West when it comes to breastfeeding and UM and weaning UM.
Speaker 1: And then of course the numbers of breastfeeding moms dropped
Speaker 1: significantly as the child get older. As the child gets older,
Speaker 1: And this has been in the media a lot because
Speaker 1: Time recently ran this cover. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: remember this, but it was I think it was maybe
Speaker 1: a model who was still breastfeeding her child at the
Speaker 1: age of three. Yeah. Yeah, this was the cover that
Speaker 1: was kind of controversial, and it was one of those
Speaker 1: situations where the the internet. I don't know that I
Speaker 1: ever saw the original cover. I just saw various um
Speaker 1: takes on it and where they would like replace the
Speaker 1: mom with I don't know, like the creature from Alien
Speaker 1: or something, you know, and I forget, we forget what
Speaker 1: all the other versions were. But but but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: caused quite sure it did, and well because it's it's
Speaker 1: uncommon um again in you know, the West, particularly United States,
Speaker 1: for a mother to breastfeed at that age. But also
Speaker 1: there was you know, a firestorm of controversy because people
Speaker 1: thought that the way that it was portrayed it was
Speaker 1: sexualizing the act. And again going back to breastfeeding and laws,
Speaker 1: at least here in the United States, it makes me
Speaker 1: think about how we sometimes really trying to divorce ourselves
Speaker 1: from our animal selves and why this topic becomes um
Speaker 1: controversial in the first place. Yeah, and you you do
Speaker 1: often see it and just thinking of a various like
Speaker 1: you know, the sitcom's movies, even the there's a there's
Speaker 1: a character in Game of Thrones where it's this sort
Speaker 1: of crazy mom character and she's still breastfeeding her sickly
Speaker 1: child at a very um in a fairly advanced age. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's it's depicted as something unnatural
Speaker 1: and kind of monstrous. But but but again that's from
Speaker 1: the western uh viewpoint on the topic. And and certainly,
Speaker 1: like like a lot of things that end up disgusting
Speaker 1: some people, it's it's the idea that anything that connects
Speaker 1: us to our animal nature, be it uh, be it
Speaker 1: something like like breastfeeding or something having to do with
Speaker 1: our digestive properties. Um it, you know, it reminds us
Speaker 1: of our bodies in a way that we don't like
Speaker 1: to think about. Yeah. And but of course there are
Speaker 1: a lot of proponents of breastfeeding. They're out there. They're
Speaker 1: again trying to influence legislation and try to educate people
Speaker 1: about the benefits of that. The problem is is that
Speaker 1: not only do you have this this idea of the
Speaker 1: animal self that that people sort of need to try
Speaker 1: to get their heads around. Um. But you also have
Speaker 1: the problem of modern society itself where it does it's
Speaker 1: not really set up to support a breastfeeding woman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean you end up with the situation, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not set up to support breastfeeding women. And then
Speaker 1: so and and if it is, it's something that's in
Speaker 1: a closet somewhere, right, you're referring to a lot of work. Um,
Speaker 1: so it remains the thing you stick away in a
Speaker 1: closet or like O, I'll do that at home. And
Speaker 1: and so there's no I mean, there's reduced public awareness
Speaker 1: of it. So it remains kind of taboo because it's
Speaker 1: not out in the open um right right. In Maternity
Speaker 1: leave is pretty spotty too, because I mean it's like
Speaker 1: what six weeks fm L a Family Medical Leave Act
Speaker 1: that that you're allowed to take unpaid, but not every
Speaker 1: business actually um will pay you or actually say okay,
Speaker 1: take that six weeks and then take some more vacation time. UM.
Speaker 1: So anyway, it's spotty cross the board, and it's not
Speaker 1: really set up to do that. Um. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: think that we have covered some the basics of breast
Speaker 1: milk humans and and other species. Uh, so we should
Speaker 1: probably take a break. When we get back, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about whether or not possible from man to breash speed. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back mail like cation now. I've certainly heard of
Speaker 1: cases where individuals who use antibox steroids UM can can
Speaker 1: produce milk through their nipples. And in fact, that's what
Speaker 1: I think of every time I see a container of
Speaker 1: muscle milk in the store. I think of like a big, big, beefy,
Speaker 1: bald headed like pro wrestler, just like squeezing off container
Speaker 1: after container and putting directly in the fridge at the store.
Speaker 1: That's frightening. What is muscle milk? Um? It is a
Speaker 1: it is a I've never had it, but my understanding,
Speaker 1: it's say, like a nutritious like bodybuilding kind of macho beverage.
Speaker 1: It's like like, hey, brow, we're gonna go out and
Speaker 1: we're gonna let's list some weights and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: have some muscle milk in the car, gonna dunk our
Speaker 1: oreos into our muscle milk. Yeah, that's not very much.
Speaker 1: It was. It's just I mean, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things like it's not it's like it's a milk I product,
Speaker 1: it's mussel milk. It's supposed to sound like macho and inviting,
Speaker 1: but it sounds weird and unnatural. Yeah, which maybe it is.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's up um, but yes, okay, so you you
Speaker 1: know of it in that instance, right, where the body
Speaker 1: has been tinkered with a bit because of steroids or medication,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden a man starts producing breast milk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or just in general sort of trauma to the body. Right.
Speaker 1: You had an anecdote about foreign prisoners of war, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't remember that. It's World War Two. They were
Speaker 1: starving and when they finally started to get some nutrition
Speaker 1: sorted to eat, their body was so out of sorts
Speaker 1: that all of their hormones spiked, including prolactin, which actually
Speaker 1: caused them to start actating as well. And this prolactin
Speaker 1: is really important and pregnant women, it begins to really
Speaker 1: sort of um, get flowing through the body. And this
Speaker 1: is an advance of this idea that you're going to
Speaker 1: go ahead and breastfeed, and so your body starts to
Speaker 1: prepare itself. But this Prolactin is produced by the pituitary gland.
Speaker 1: So the pituitary gland really important obviously in producing this.
Speaker 1: And the pituitary gland can be influenced also by say
Speaker 1: another medical condition like a tumor, and UH inadvertently start
Speaker 1: producing prolactin. That's another way that a male could start lactating.
Speaker 1: But this is really interesting to me, is this um
Speaker 1: these instances where men start lactating because of a dire need.
Speaker 1: And what I mean to say is that they're in
Speaker 1: a situation where they're um, the mother of their child
Speaker 1: may have passed away or be gravely ill in psychologically.
Speaker 1: What happens is that this kicks up the pituitary gland
Speaker 1: and to produce a the prolactin. And so there have
Speaker 1: been documented cases of this. There was a a case
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two of a thirty eight year
Speaker 1: old managed Sri Lanka, who nursed his two daughters through
Speaker 1: their infancy after his wife died during childbirth. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: again it's important to stress not every male mammal had
Speaker 1: even has the equipment. They lacked both the memory glands
Speaker 1: and a maturity glands to to get things pumping. But
Speaker 1: but male humans have those, so it's just a matter
Speaker 1: of kickstarting them. Yeah. We've talked about this before about
Speaker 1: how we're pretty much all stocked with the same stuff
Speaker 1: when when we're first developing, and then of course horn
Speaker 1: wounds helped to define those boundaries as biological boundaries. Um,
Speaker 1: because you're gonna again look at them. The male human
Speaker 1: as just a necessary mutation, as the female is more
Speaker 1: or less species and male is a take on that
Speaker 1: particular model to fulfill a certain evolutionary purpose. Yeah. Jack Newman,
Speaker 1: he's a Toronto based doctor and breastfeeding expert, has said
Speaker 1: that this isn't too crazy that that men would have nipples,
Speaker 1: need have some breast tissue that would allow us to happen.
Speaker 1: He says, up until certain age, boys and girls as
Speaker 1: fetuses are indistinguishable, so women retain some remnants of the
Speaker 1: vast difference, which is then which then becomes the vaginal
Speaker 1: canal that sperm follows. So again we're all sort of
Speaker 1: hard baked with this stuff here. And if we look
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the animal kingdom, we do find at least
Speaker 1: one example of a mammalian creature that has uh parental lactation.
Speaker 1: That's uh, that's males that are not only producing milk,
Speaker 1: but they're actually breastfeeding as part of their natural behavior.
Speaker 1: And that is a particular fruit bat called the day
Speaker 1: at fruit bat, which will find in Malaysia, Thailand, and
Speaker 1: the Philippines and uh and it is the only known
Speaker 1: occurrence of parental lactation where the males are actually producing
Speaker 1: milk perhaps two. The theory is that it's to help
Speaker 1: alleviate the the lactation pressure placed on the females in
Speaker 1: the fruit back community. Okay, so in certain dire um
Speaker 1: circumstances as well in a different way, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's um. I mean it would be kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, on an evolutionary basis, if it's like mom
Speaker 1: and dad, and like Mom's just super busy, Mom has
Speaker 1: a job on top of looking after the kids, and
Speaker 1: daddy fruit bat eventually develops the ability to nurse them
Speaker 1: as well. It's like it's like Buster, not Buster Michael Keaton,
Speaker 1: Was it Mr Mom? Right? Like? Imagine him as the
Speaker 1: fruit bat with lacktating nipples. Wow? Yeah, I don't want to.
Speaker 1: So are you saying in the future, as women continue
Speaker 1: to um dominate the workforce of academia, that men might
Speaker 1: start breastfeeding perhaps, I mean, I mean it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's the it's the sort of thing that that happens.
Speaker 1: So we look at the fruit bats as a potential model,
Speaker 1: and you could you could see that happening over a
Speaker 1: long period of time, because again, we have the equipment.
Speaker 1: It's just a matter of kickstarting that equipment. Yeah, evidence
Speaker 1: of happening happening when arises. Alright, So okay, that's breastfeeding
Speaker 1: within your own species. What about this idea that we
Speaker 1: started not breastfeeding from other uh species, although some that
Speaker 1: does happens. And remus right to the classic image of
Speaker 1: the of the two children drinking the milk of the
Speaker 1: Was it a cow or was it a sheep? I
Speaker 1: always focus on the children and the outer I tend
Speaker 1: not to notice what the animals, to see what the
Speaker 1: utter is attached to. Um. Yeah, so when did we
Speaker 1: actually start drinking other species milk? Is the question. Years ago,
Speaker 1: we have these humans and obviously up until an age
Speaker 1: of about four or five, they are drinking milk. They're
Speaker 1: drinking their mother's milk. But then uh that the ability
Speaker 1: to consume milk fades away. They become a lactose intolerant, okay,
Speaker 1: And because they don't have what is called lact taste,
Speaker 1: which is an design that we eventually developed. It allows
Speaker 1: us to digest the complex milk sugar lactose um. Without lactase,
Speaker 1: we are lactose intolerant, and consuming milk causes diarrhea. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting to see that this UM, this is
Speaker 1: coinciding with populations turning to agrarian societies. UM. In other words,
Speaker 1: they're cattle, and the cattle are producing milk, and we'll
Speaker 1: find and they'll find themselves in situations probably where the
Speaker 1: there's there's less water available, there's less food available. So
Speaker 1: what do you do. You turn to the milk. And
Speaker 1: when you turn to the milk, some people are going
Speaker 1: to be able to tolerate it more than others. And
Speaker 1: the theory is then that when times get particularly dire,
Speaker 1: the people who are able to turn to animal milk
Speaker 1: for survival survive, and those who can't end up either
Speaker 1: having to starve or they're just or they're dying from
Speaker 1: the intense diarrhea that results from lactose intolerant. And and
Speaker 1: again this is in Central Europe. We're not talking about
Speaker 1: other parts of the world here. Yeah, we are talking
Speaker 1: about pioneer a Grarians who are based initially in Central
Speaker 1: Europe and then moving to northern Europe. So hence the
Speaker 1: pioneer part, and hence the fact that they would have
Speaker 1: crops or cattle that that weren't doing so well and
Speaker 1: so they'd have to turn to the milk um for nutritions. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty crazy because it's um and you
Speaker 1: think of lactose intolerant. Like, growing up, I just knew that, oh,
Speaker 1: some people can't drink milk. That's kind of weird, right, um.
Speaker 1: But but but when you, you you know, you become educated
Speaker 1: on the on the topic, you realize that the reality
Speaker 1: is a lot weirder. It's like, at one point in
Speaker 1: our path, um, you know, years ago, a genetic mutation
Speaker 1: allows us to drink the milk of other creatures. Again,
Speaker 1: think of milk. Is this immune system boosting, nutritious, targeted
Speaker 1: um fluid that is secreted by a specific mother for
Speaker 1: her offspring within that species, and then we we suddenly
Speaker 1: have a genetic mutation that allows us to drink from
Speaker 1: it as well too. In a way, um, like it's
Speaker 1: it's almost like this parasitic relationship that we evolve to
Speaker 1: have with our cattle. Yeah, and the evidence is there. Um.
Speaker 1: Using genetic and archaeological data, Mark Thomas and colleagues at
Speaker 1: University College in London were able to trace down the
Speaker 1: first evidence of black case um being actually used in
Speaker 1: adulthood to exactly when you see the beginning of the
Speaker 1: linear bandcarum um nick culture. Quite the word twister there,
Speaker 1: tongue twister and this is an ancient Neolithic culture. So
Speaker 1: you see that you've got some evidence there that this
Speaker 1: is happening then um and yeah, I mean when it
Speaker 1: comes the choice between life and death, your you know,
Speaker 1: these cultures are going to adapt and as you say,
Speaker 1: we're going to be able to thenly enough change our
Speaker 1: our own biology to be able to handle this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean like when when I have accidentally tasted some
Speaker 1: of the kitten milk formula and it can and not
Speaker 1: in a bottle, I wasn't nursing good. But you know,
Speaker 1: if times we're rough, if I was, if it was
Speaker 1: like if there was nothing else in the fridge and
Speaker 1: there was just kitten milk, you know, I might throw
Speaker 1: back a cannibate. See what happens and it's the same situation, right,
Speaker 1: and then if it caused me to have intense diarrhea,
Speaker 1: I might die, And if it didn't then I might
Speaker 1: survive and we would have a new breed of humans
Speaker 1: that would take over the household. Who who can handle
Speaker 1: kitten chitten lectas? Yeah, pretty interesting. This is a news
Speaker 1: item for about from about a year and a half ago.
Speaker 1: But scientists in China are actually trying to create cows
Speaker 1: who produce more human like milk. It is interesting and
Speaker 1: some people say this is not necessarily a bad thing
Speaker 1: because um, you know, imparts the world's very difficult to
Speaker 1: to get breast milk uh for human babies and as
Speaker 1: you say, this is this is so important to their lives.
Speaker 1: Can be rather inpensive, Yes, for me, can be really expensive.
Speaker 1: For this may be something that may be readily available.
Speaker 1: It seems a bit odd, yes, but there's definitely a
Speaker 1: need for it. Um. I should also point out there
Speaker 1: are there are also scientists who think we need to
Speaker 1: turn to other creatures milk to depend on rather than
Speaker 1: cows uh. International team of scientists from the Marine Research
Speaker 1: Institute in the Netherlands. UH. They might be argument that
Speaker 1: that whales are the answer, particularly the minky whale which
Speaker 1: has a has the milk from this particular whale has
Speaker 1: a higher fat content, but it's but it's full of
Speaker 1: Omega three three fatty acids. So um. They've actually conducted
Speaker 1: experiments with like milking pods for milking bays for the
Speaker 1: whales in in the fields of the Norway, which is
Speaker 1: which is pretty interesting. The idea that you might be
Speaker 1: able to go to the store one day and you're
Speaker 1: not depending on it's much on cow milk, but maybe
Speaker 1: whale milk or wilk. I guess, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: feel like I'll have a little bit of whale milk
Speaker 1: with my herring. It just seems so, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And if you're staying kosher or you can stick with
Speaker 1: your raft, right, I see the Mega three part because
Speaker 1: that's great for inflammation and for keeping disease at bay.
Speaker 1: But the other thing about these about the whales, I
Speaker 1: told you about the two hundred pounds a day that
Speaker 1: the baby blues are packing on. Well, um, the minkies
Speaker 1: that they had in these milking bays, they found that uh,
Speaker 1: once they were hooked up, the milking took about fifty
Speaker 1: minutes and produced uh one thousand, six hundred liters of
Speaker 1: milk or uh two thousand, eight hundred and fifteen pints
Speaker 1: compared with a typical cow's forty of milk. So would
Speaker 1: they just keep these whales in these bays? Is that
Speaker 1: the idea? Um? I would hope they get to sort
Speaker 1: of free range a little bit, like they get to
Speaker 1: swim around and then they come in and uh, and
Speaker 1: then they milk them there, because I don't like the
Speaker 1: idea of keeping him well, you know, prisoned and producing
Speaker 1: milk whatll I was just thinking about cows in the
Speaker 1: way that those um are dairy cows and the way
Speaker 1: that their milk is extracted and all the antibiotics and
Speaker 1: all the issues surrounding that. Um. So, yeah, you would
Speaker 1: hope that the whales wouldn't have the same plan. I
Speaker 1: guess you'd have to hurt him in or hire you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of traditional like Norwegian mermaid creature to do
Speaker 1: it for you. Oh yeah, and they are readily available. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: a lot of them as as we'll discussing a Mermaid
Speaker 1: episode that we're going to record, a lot of the
Speaker 1: Mermaids you encounter in various full tales are herdsmen or
Speaker 1: hurts women, and they are hurts people and they are
Speaker 1: attending to like aquatic bovine herds, which I guess maybe whales.
Speaker 1: So it all comes back around. All right, let's talk
Speaker 1: about some of the really cool healing properties of breast milk,
Speaker 1: because we talked about the benefit to the kids, to
Speaker 1: the babies. But um, you know, it turns out that
Speaker 1: and this is very interesting, that breast milk has a
Speaker 1: protein in it that could, or rather a substance that
Speaker 1: can actually kill some cancer cells. Um. This is from
Speaker 1: a two thousand and ten study carried out by researchers
Speaker 1: at Lund University in the University of Gothenburg and Sweden.
Speaker 1: Patients with cancer of the bladder who were treated with
Speaker 1: the substance excreted dead cancer cells in their urine after
Speaker 1: each treatment, and the substance has been dubbed hamlet okay
Speaker 1: human alpha lactical human made lethal to tumor cells interesting okay,
Speaker 1: and laboratory experiments have shown that hamlet kills forty different
Speaker 1: types of cancer, and researchers are not going on to
Speaker 1: study its effects on skin, cancer tumors in the mucous
Speaker 1: membranes and brain tumors. Um and and this is the
Speaker 1: really great part about this is that these hamlets, uh,
Speaker 1: this hamlet substance killed only cancer cells and does not
Speaker 1: affect healthy cells. It's cool. And that just comes back
Speaker 1: around to you to our defining of milk and and
Speaker 1: looking at it is not merely this food product that's
Speaker 1: like that that is coming out of a creature, but
Speaker 1: it is, uh, it is it is something that is
Speaker 1: I mean in a sense, it's like like all food
Speaker 1: is more than just the thing that you eat to
Speaker 1: satisfy what you're doing. And I mean, it is the
Speaker 1: thing that you build your body out of, and it
Speaker 1: that heals the body and and uh and and that's
Speaker 1: what what milk is. Yeah, And let's talk about third
Speaker 1: world countries where where you have different diseases that we
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have to deal with um in first world countries.
Speaker 1: Among the infectious diseases, diarrheal disease is one of the
Speaker 1: leading causes of morbidity and mortality, causing an estimated five
Speaker 1: million deaths per year in children under the age of
Speaker 1: five years of age, eighty percent of which occurs in
Speaker 1: the first two years of life. So there was a
Speaker 1: study called anti microbial activity of breast milk against common
Speaker 1: pediatric pathogens. And what they said is that the spectrum
Speaker 1: of anti microbial activity of breast milk was deter amend
Speaker 1: using nine common bacterial pathogens of infants and children on
Speaker 1: in vitriol essays. And they said using a commercial milk
Speaker 1: formula as a control, breast milk was found to exert
Speaker 1: bacterial bacterial tidal activity in other words, killing the bacteria
Speaker 1: in these pathogens against Vibrio cholera and bacteriostasis for enteric
Speaker 1: pathogens like E. Coli, seminila, and chicola. Wow. So again
Speaker 1: it comes back to boosting up the newborn and just
Speaker 1: enhancing its ability to survive or I mean making its
Speaker 1: survival possible, but also boosting its immunity against other potentially
Speaker 1: lethal diseases and ailments. So there you go, milk. Well
Speaker 1: we should there's one there's one last thing, uh that
Speaker 1: we should mentioned in talking about the evolution of of
Speaker 1: this this mutation that allowed Europeans to actually drink the
Speaker 1: milk of other animals. There's also the macho milk theory.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot about this. Yeah, And this one
Speaker 1: is this is a this is not a very probable idea,
Speaker 1: but it's it's so amusing that we have to mention it.
Speaker 1: So the theory is that you go back to Neolithic
Speaker 1: times and um, you know, everybody's hanging out. Uh, the
Speaker 1: men are hanging out, and they're they're engaging in these
Speaker 1: drinking games with uh, with what's around to drink. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of cow milk not getting used. So
Speaker 1: they they line and line them up, line up a
Speaker 1: few I don't know, bowls or skull caps full of
Speaker 1: the stuff, right, and they start throwing them back, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and seeing who can, who can drink the
Speaker 1: most without becoming horribly ill and if you can, if
Speaker 1: you can take you know, several skull caps full of
Speaker 1: of cow's milk and you don't get sick, and you're
Speaker 1: one of the boys and you can hang and if not,
Speaker 1: then you're not very cool, I guess. But that's the
Speaker 1: theory that that did this serve to to kick start
Speaker 1: our our lactose tolerance. I'm just trying to imagine it.
Speaker 1: Put hair on your chest, you feel like, and it's
Speaker 1: the original muscle milk in this stuff. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: all right milk. Yeah, So uh, and milk. Milk is
Speaker 1: one of those topics we get into milk and breasting.
Speaker 1: There are a number of topics that that stem off
Speaker 1: from this um and you can really get into into
Speaker 1: into into a little more lengthy discussions of of culture
Speaker 1: and and then there's this whole area of of lactophilia
Speaker 1: that we we may uh cover at some future point,
Speaker 1: but but hopefully this will serve as a nice introduction
Speaker 1: and a reminder of just how amazing uh milk is
Speaker 1: and how it really uh puts such mammals apart, and
Speaker 1: uh you know, and why I should think about it
Speaker 1: when you when you have a glass of of of
Speaker 1: real milk or or or fake milk. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the other thing to think about. Like when we we
Speaker 1: have like the glass of soy, we're still replicating the experience,
Speaker 1: uh somewhat of the of the the actual a million milk.
Speaker 1: Always think it's funny that we call it soy milk.
Speaker 1: It's like this psychological you know, chasm that we're trying
Speaker 1: to you know, breach because we're like, okay, I can't
Speaker 1: it's milk, right, it's white, um, but it's not milk.
Speaker 1: But it's okay because we call the milk. I'm a
Speaker 1: proponent of swim, don't get me wrong, but I find
Speaker 1: that interesting. Well, tell us what you have to thank
Speaker 1: if you would like to reach out to us and
Speaker 1: uh and chat with us about about milk, as it's
Speaker 1: produced by mammals, as it's purchased at the store, as
Speaker 1: it may or may not have played into drinking games
Speaker 1: in the past. Uh, let us know we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You You can find us on Facebook for starters,
Speaker 1: where our handle is stuff to Blow Your Mind, and
Speaker 1: on Twitter you can find us under blow the Mind
Speaker 1: and you can always drop us a line that blew
Speaker 1: the mind at how Stafford's dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. You are out the pony