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This chapter begins by considering the specific context of the workplace as it presents significant barriers to women seeking to continue breastfeeding as they return to work. From there, the chapter considers lactating working mothers alongside lactating (working) cows, the source of most infant formula that non-nursing mothers use. Considering both lactating mothers and lactating cows, the chapter reveals that increasing degrees of embodiment correspond with increasing degrees of individual, public, and planetary health. Breast milk for young ones and non-dairy milk for others emerges as critical to securing optimal health for all; additionally, as research has surfaced pointing to ways in which we make healthier decisions when we focus on others, compassion becomes an entry into moving into practices that support global health. As research into ‘kangaroo care’ — skin-to-skin engagement with infants — suggests, full embodiment increases compassion, just as breastfeeding increases oxytocin. Compassion in its broadest sense may become part of the toolbox that can help breastfeeding professionals make a case for exclusive and extended breastfeeding.

This chapter explains why the scientific evidence for breastfeeding's benefits is not nearly as compelling as various advocates insist. Despite overwhelming sentiment to the contrary, epidemiological research does not demonstrate persuasively that breast milk is medically superior to infant formula for most babies in the developed world. While breastfeeding does appear to reduce the risk for various gastrointestinal (GI) infections, the evidence for virtually every other health measure is plagued by unexamined confounding variables, potential selection bias, and inconsistent outcomes. Despite this possibility, which scientists commonly acknowledge in published research, the recommendation to breastfeed goes largely unchallenged, and this unanimity among health professionals has much to do with how science is conducted and findings are communicated in a risk culture committed to total motherhood.

Understanding infant and child feeding and its relationship to child health is a key part of bioarchaeological investigations into children and childhood in the past. Aside from old age, infancy and childhood is the most vulnerable and dependent period of the life course. Infant and child feeding practices—including breastfeeding, non-breast milk substitutes, and weaning—can profoundly affect child growth and development and may have life or death consequences. Studies of infant and child feeding, moreover, give us a view to cross-cultural and temporal variation in practices and attitudes towards children. This chapter reviews anthropological studies of infant–child feeding and health from both past and present. Despite the evolutionary and biological underpinnings of infant and child feeding, the influence of environmental, social, and cultural factors on its diversity underscores the importance of using a biocultural framework.

The 1970s counterculture ethos fostered the growth of homemade baby food, which was touted as economical, more nutritious, and safer. Homemade baby food was emblematic of the emerging ethos of “natural motherhood” popular in the era, and a number of women published popular cookbooks on the subject. Industry, which felt threatened by the growing practice of homemade baby food, responded with tactics designed to preserve market share but was met with criticisms by consumer activists and organizations. Manufacturers eventually removed most of the salt, sugar, starches, and additives, and by the end of the twentieth century, baby food was more popular than ever among a growing female paid workforce who valued the convenience.

In this gallery we will look at the portraits of molecules which can affect us very profoundly, and not only ourselves, but also the life we carry inside us, or the life we would like to create. In a private room at the end of the gallery are a few portraits that were not thought suitable for public exhibition, but which selected individuals will be allowed to view. These are molecules that are deemed undesirable, but their eradication is proving difficult, if not impossible. Few things are more important than creating new life, and yet nature has an almost cavalier attitude to the process, investing in gross overproduction of the raw materials necessary. Women have the ability to produce around three hundred eggs in a lifetime, and men to manufacture three hundred million sperm a week. Despite this abundance the human population has been kept in check in many ways—high infant mortality, famine, disease, war; but even so, today we have a world that is overpopulated with humans. This has come about through the success of science, which has lifted the first three of these natural scourges, although it has made the fourth much worse. Sadly science has so far not elicited the response of better birth control in many parts of the world, but it has made it possible to plan parenthood carefully. Science has also made it possible to ensure that if you decide to have a baby, then the baby you bring into the world should be perfect. The only prayer that potential parents in developed nations deem necessary is ‘please let our baby be all right.’ There are a few simple precautions that a woman can take to ensure her baby has a good chance of avoiding some risks that would seriously affect it. In this part of the gallery there are two molecules that she needs to think about. Folic acid is found in plants, animals and microorganisms such as fungi and yeasts. It is present in grass, butterflies’ wings and fish scales. Humans need it also, as an essential component for several metabolic processes.

In medical school, students learn about the human body by organ system. They spend a few weeks on the heart, then the lung, followed by the gastrointestinal tract. Eventually the whole body is covered. One of the fascinating developments in the last decade has been the functional linkage and new connections of seemingly diverse body systems. Fibromyalgia research finally hit its stride when important studies connected the nervous system, the endocrine (hormone) system, and the immune system. This enabled physicians to devise improved strategies to help fibromyalgia patients. Basic background information provided in this chapter will be expanded upon in later parts of the book when we review treatments. Within the brain is a small region known as the hypothalamus. It makes releasing hormones that travel down a short path to the pituitary gland, which makes stimulating hormones. The stimulating hormones send signals to tissues where hormones are manufactured for specialized functions. Table 3 and Figure 9 show how thyroid, cortisol, insulin, breast milk, and growth hormone are made along the hypothalamic-pituitary axis and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. We have already mentioned that emotional stress can bring on or aggravate fibromyalgia. At the National Institutes of Health and the University of Michigan, studies have firmly established some of the factors important in this relationship. The role of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), the precursor or ancestor of the steroid known as cortisol, has been the focus of much of this work. Even though CRH levels are normal in fibromyalgia, CRH responses (stress responses) to different forms of stimulation are blunted. CRH has many important interactions other than leading to the production of steroids. Its expression can be increased by stress, serotonin, and estrogen. Endorphins promote the secretion of CRH. Decreased sympathetic nervous system activity in the adrenal glands and substance P, as well as nitric oxide, can turn off CRH production. Rats with abnormally low stress responses develop many of the features we associate with fibromyalgia. How do these interrelationships translate into a fibromyalgia patient’s feeling of being unwell? The answer is not clear. However, these studies suggest that fibromyalgia patients do not respond normally to acute stress and do not release enough adrenalin.

Questions

During embryological development, the thyroid gland originates from the floor of the pharynx as an outpouching. Microscopically, the gland is composed of a series of follicles that synthesize thyroglobulin (Tg) and parafollicular (C cells), which secrete calcitonin during adult life.

The embryological origin...

Advocates of practical though controversial lifestyle approaches have always found a sympathetic ear in the United States since the time folk practitioner Sylvester Graham’s principles of health, nutrition, and fitness (in addition to inventing the Graham cracker) achieved cult status in the 1840s. Heroic, misguided therapies were administered by allopathic (mainstream) physicians throughout the nineteenth century. This created fertile ground for promoters of patent medicines and nostrums to those escaping organized medicine’s use of leeches, cupping, phlebotomy (blood drawing) knives, and brutal laxative regimens. During the Progressive Era, medicine started to improve with the establishment of postgraduate training programs at Johns Hopkins University just before the turn of the century and the regulation of medicines as part of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The final revolution occurred when two-thirds of the medical schools in the United States closed following revelations of their inadequacies by the investigative Flexner Report funded by the Carnegie Foundation in 1910. Despite these changes, however, the appeal of alternative therapies to the American public continues unabated. The previous two chapters have described how mainstream, organized, conventional medicine approaches fibromyalgia. Even though their therapies usually provide significant relief of symptoms and signs, traditional physicians to some extent must regard themselves as failures. In the United States, one person in three has consulted a complementary medicine practitioner. These individuals spend $23 billion a year on this approach, $13 billion of which is out-of-pocket and not reimbursed by insurance. This exceeds all expenditures on hospital care in the United States. A 1996 Canadian study found that of several hundred fibromyalgia patients, 70 percent purchased unproven over-the-counter rubs, creams, vitamins, or herbs; 40 percent sought help from alternative medicine practitioners such as chiropractors, massage therapists, homeopaths, reflexologists, or acupuncturists; and 26 percent went on special diets. Since it is logical to believe that people who are tired and hurt want to get better, it follows that some fibromyalgia patients will try anything that is not harmful to improve their medical condition. This chapter is dedicated to patients who wish to “look before they leap” into nontraditional therapies.