August 21, 2013 • 40 mins
Florence Williams, the author of "Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History," stops by the show to talk about the evolution of breasts, the history of breast implants and how environmental toxins are invading breast tissues.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to stuf mom never told you. From House to
works dot Com, Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And Caroline, I was traveling not
too long ago, and I was sitting in the airport
reading a book called Breasts, A Natural and Unnatural History,
(00:29):
and I'm not gonna lie to you. I got a
couple of sort of awkward looks from guys who were
sitting next to me, and it made me more aware of, Oh,
I'm reading this book that says breast in large font
on the cover, Okay, And I didn't care. I was like,
if anyone wants to ask me about this boom book,
no problem. And I got on the plane and started
(00:52):
reading Breasts and obviously very close quarters, and there's a
woman sitting next to me, also reading, and I've noticed
she had kind of looked over at my book a
little bit, and I was like, oh, she's probably thinking
about how I'm reading Breasts. And then I looked over
at her book. She was reading Fifty Shades of Gray Ah.
And from that moment on, once we kind of exchanged glances,
(01:16):
were like, cool, We're totally fine. Neither of us is
on an e reader. We're owning it. Although I will
say that my book Breast and a Natural and Unnatural
History by Florence Williams far more educational than Fifty Shades
of Gray. I'm sure some people would disagree this is true,
(01:36):
but yeah, I have read Breast and it was such
a great read that I reached out to the author,
Florence Williams, to see if she could chat about it,
because is there a better topic for stuff Mom never
told you then breasts? I I think it's it's Taylor made.
It is Taylor made. We've talked about bras before and
(02:00):
cleavage before, but Florence really dug into the science and
evolution of breasts and also the intersection of breasts and
the environment. Yeah. The New York Times actually likened her
book to Rachel Carson's nineteen sixty two Silent Spring, which
really detailed the impact of industrial chemicals on animals and
(02:21):
the environment. She takes that kind of scientific viewpoint and
applies it to our breasts and talking about how the
fatty tissue that sits atop our chests is like a
magnet for chemicals and pollutants. Yeah, and while a lot
of the environmental interactions that she talks about in the
(02:42):
book and that we also talked about in the interview
are pretty unsettling because it's all the stuff happening, and
it's affecting our breasts and getting passed out via breast milk,
two babies, and then all of those generational effects that
take place. Um. But she also touches on the evolution
of breast, the scientific study of breast, which is often
(03:05):
kind of brushed aside just because of how sexualized they are,
and almost sexualized in kind of a comical way. Um.
And she also touches on the horrifying history of implants
as well, because not only are all of these environmental
threats going on, but we're also paying money to have
(03:30):
people tinker with our breasts and the size of them.
So I was really happy to get Florence on the phone. Breast,
A Natural and Unnatural History one the two thousand thirteen
l A Times Book Prize for Science and Technology, and
it was named the two thousand twelve New York Times
Notable Book. So you should definitely check it out, and
(03:51):
huge thanks to Florence for talking with us. Yes, so
let's hear what she had to say. What got you
interested in writing breasts. It all started when I was
nursing my daughter, uh, and I found out that there
were some toxic chemicals showing up in breath milk. So
(04:13):
I thought it would be interesting to have my own
best milk tested, UM to find out what was in
there and then you know, write an article about that
and kind of what it meant for my health and
for my daughter's self. So so we shifted off a
file of breath milk to a lab in Germany and
it came back positive for flame retardants UM and also
(04:36):
trace amounts of pesticides UM. So so that reason launched
me into this good, bigger question of how else modern
life is changing breaths and what it means UM. Well,
what was what was one of the most surprising things
that you learned with all of the research that you
did for the book. Well, it was just fun to
(04:57):
learn about how it's amazingly complex breasts are. You know,
we tend to in our society, of course, think of
them in one way, and that's um, you know, a
sexualized way, and so I wanted these amazing things about
how they worked. UM. I learned that, for example, when
you're nursing, your breaths are incredibly smart and they actually
(05:19):
know when your baby is, for example, ill or suffering
from an infection. UM and then your breath milk kind
of adjust it's ingredients accordingly. For example, it will put
more antibodies in the best milk. And it looks like
from primate studies that your your breath even somehow no
if you're nursing a male or female infant, uh, and
(05:41):
it it changes um also the competition of the fats
and the proteins based on that. And then I also
learned that actually breaths are very unique in the animal kingdom.
Not kind of assumed that we're all mammals have memory glands,
so there must be some other mammals out there, you know,
that have mammory glands to sort of look like ours.
But it turns up that the human breast is actually
(06:02):
incredibly unique in the animal kingdom, and that no other
primates actually has these sort of permanently enlarged nouns, you know,
on their chest like we do. We have them starting
in puberty and then we essentially have breasts our entire lives,
and with other primates they really only have, you know,
sort of what we would call breasts while they're lactating,
(06:24):
and then they received again. So I thought that I'd
be kind of interesting to know in fact how unusual
breasts are. For example, our breasts are getting bigger in
modern life, which was interesting to me and something unexpected.
And also of course that they're showing up earlier now
in younger and younger girls. So the big question then,
(06:44):
I mean, why were you talking about how unique they
are too humans? Why do we have them? Can you
talk a little bit about that? Well, yes I can,
And in fact it's one of those kind of perennial
biology questions because a lot of people are interested in
breast and a lot of evolutionary biologists have been asking
this question for a while, you know, how did we
(07:06):
get so lucky? Why why do we have breast and
sort of no one else um, And so there's there's
actually a big debate about it, and for a long
time a lot of the sort of dominant theory in
evolutionary biology has been that breath must have evolved as
a sexual signal for men, and that they must be
a sexually selected trait, so that you know, we have
(07:29):
them because men are interested in them. Essentially, and they
must be conveying some kind of you know, important information
to men. But then in the eighties and nineties, you know,
there are more kind of feminists in the field of anthropology,
and some of them started questioning these theories and saying, well,
you know, why why should we su that these breasts
exausts for men? You know, because couldn't there be some
(07:51):
other reasons that breasts exist, for example, to help the
woman survived or to help her infants survive. You know,
if there's something about about breath that um, you know,
enabled their fitness, then it would be a more naturally
selected treat and not a sexually selected treat UM. And
so they have some alternative theories. Most we have having
to do with the fact that humans, human females and
(08:14):
human infants need a greater percentage of body fat in
order to survive UM, and in fact, breath are a
pretty good place to store body fat. And so because
our breaths also have estrogen receptors, estrogen tells fat to
be deposited in our breasts as well, and it couldn't
be that because a sort of combination of estrogen being
(08:35):
in our breast and and the fat showing up there,
that that breaths are in the way kind of accidents
of of just being human. Now, it's interesting you talk
about ebo bio and obviously evolutionary biologists have spent a
lot of time researching breast, but it seems like outside
of that area, and we also hear a lot about
(08:57):
breast cancer research of course, but why and saying that
you touched on a little bit on the book. In
the book is how research on the function of breast
almost is not doesn't seem to be taken as seriously
in the scientific realm Or was I just reading into
that a little bit? No, I think you're right. I
(09:18):
think in many ways breaths are kind of orthan of science,
um because I think because we sexualize them so much,
it's harder to take them seriously as an organ And
in fact, a lot of scientists told me that they
have trouble getting funding for research breast anatomy, or they
have trouble all um, you know, just being taken seriously
(09:40):
studying things like breast milk um, because there's just a
lot of funding in it. And and it's also um,
they feel that that breaths are just not taken seriously,
and in fact, it's true that breath are the only
organ in our body that don't have a medical specialty.
So if you think about it, you know, our other organs,
(10:01):
our kidneys, aswevers, you know, they they have the you know,
a whole sort of specialty of medicine revolving around them,
and we don't. In fact, when a woman gets breast cancer,
because she goes to see a surgeon, or she might
see her gynecologists UM, or she might schang endochronologists, um.
But these aren't specialties that are necessarily dedicated to the breast.
(10:21):
And so because of that, we actually have a really
limited understanding of how breast work. We don't know, for example,
why we get breast cancer. And breast cancer is such
a complicated disease. It's actually the number one cancer killer
of women globally, and in our country, in the United States,
(10:41):
it's the number one killer of women in middle age,
and so it's sort of amazing that we haven't spent
more time trying to figure out how breast cancers start. UM.
And then of course breast milk, and I learned that
we actually know very little about breast milk, even though
it's this perfect food for humans. Either we spend more
(11:02):
money and more resources, more scientific energy studying lead wine
than we do studying breast books. So I think that's
that's kind of telling and interesting and it's so sad really,
you know, in terms of women's health, well, and it
seems like when you're talking about all of the different
medical specialties and how there isn't one for breast, the
(11:23):
first thing that popped into my mind was, well, we
do have plastic surgeons. Is that the closest that we
have to breast experts of sorts? Um? And in the
book you talk about the history of implants um and
really all of the horrific things that we have put
into women's breast over the years UM because you talk
(11:44):
a little bit about why or how implants were invented
and especially this uh, this medical invention of micromastia or
having small breasts. Yeah. Sure, you know, for a long time,
women were more concerned with having breast were too large,
and so the earliest bress surgeries were surgeries that tried
(12:05):
to reduce the size of breath because large breasths really
gotten the way you know of for example, you know,
farm work or field work for for a lot of women,
and so so those are the first surgeries. And then um,
it was actually the women on the stage who who
sang or were actresses who felt that it might be
(12:27):
um sure beneficial to them to have larger breath. And
so the first breast augmentation was performed on an actress
in Germany. UM, and I think you had the date.
I think it was about eighteen in eighteen eighties or
eighteen nineties, was the date that you sided. There you go, thanks,
you had the goodness was the first surgery to try
(12:52):
to enlarge a woman's breath. And in that case, a
surgeon took some fat from her backside and put it
in her breasts, and it actually didn't work very well
because the fat sort of dissipated and migrated around and
basically dissolved. And so this is that failure. There has
been a hundred years of failures of trying to make
(13:12):
women's breasts larger, and the history it's just sort of
this sorry history of um of environmental and health catastrophe
sort visited upon women in the name of medical experimentation.
Doctors tried to augment women's breast with ox cartilage, with
wood ships with the glass balls. In the nineteen nineteen
(13:38):
fifties and early ninettes, they tried to use these new
plastics like even plastic sponges UM, very much like a
kitchen sponge, and in many cases these resulted in horrible infections,
UM in hardening of of the tissue and uh, it
(13:59):
never can work very well. And then uh, in nineteen
sixty two, a surgeon in Houston, Texas had the idea
of using silicone, which had been a material UM invented
for use in World War Two. And the silicone was soft,
and it was cleaner and UM, so it was possible
(14:22):
to use this as an augmentation material that that wouldn't
necessarily cause an instant infection, and it also tended to
stay in place. So the first surgery was actually performed
on a dog named as Morelda, and she did not
like her importance. I can imagine she ended up she
ended up chewing them out. She did not understand the
(14:43):
need for this new endowment. UM. And then of course
it was it was performed on a woman, and the
first woman UH this operation was the n two and
she's actually still alive. So I interviewed her from my
book which was really a lot of fun. She's in
her eaties and she's she's kind of proud, you know,
of dis place in history, and she jokes that when
(15:06):
she dies, she's going to dedicate her breast to science. UM.
I mean that's so fascinating though, that we've been so persistent,
you know, for almost a century of trying to artificially
augment women's breast. UM. But it seems like one of
(15:26):
you know, while while we've been busily trying to put
implants into breast, there have also been environmental contaminants making
their way into breast tissue. UM. And you talk a
lot about that in the book, and um about that
in Endocrine Disruptors. UM. So, could you talk about some
(15:49):
of the most directly uh, some of the chemicals that
are most directly threatening to long term breast health. Yes,
Unfush breasts do seem to attract a lot of environmental
contaminants and industrial pollutants. And a couple of reasons for this.
One is that breast tissue it's so fatty. It's um,
(16:12):
you know, one of the fattiest parts of our bodies.
And many industrial chemicals, such as pesticides, are fat loving chemicals.
Are sort of attracted to fat, and once they get
in fatty tissue, these industrial molecules, they tend to stay
there for a very long time. In the case of
d DP for example, and flame retardants, which I also
(16:36):
tested for in my breast milk. UM. These are substances
that that last in mammalian fatty tissue for UM years
and years and years. UM and PCBs, which are now banned. UM.
But we're an industrial UM chemical used to sort of
insulate electronics. They can last for decades. And so sadly,
(17:01):
some of the chemicals that we've been sort of accumulating
in our breast tissue for you know, since we were
children we end up passing along to our children, some
of the same ones end up staying there for for
the decades of our reproductive lives. So UM. Even the
chemicals that our daughters are exposed to now when their
infants may still be in their blood and in their
(17:23):
fat when they're having babies. UM. So these are things
that can last even for more than one generation in
our bodies. And of course, but the question is really,
well what are they doing there? And unfortunately the science
is very young. UM, it's only been in really the
last ten years or so that we've been able to
(17:46):
sort of easily and affordably detect the presence of these
chemicals UM and and scientists have been looking hard at
animals and seeing what these substances do, uh, you know,
to lab animals, and looks like some of them have
the ability to affect our hormone systems. So they're what
they call endocrine disruptors. And they can either mimic hormones
(18:09):
or they can otherwise interfere with the hormonal signaling in
our body. And and these hormones are really important for
regulating all kinds of biological processes you from metabolism UM
to UM you know, sex drive and preparenting behavior to
neurodevelopment behavior UM and you know your power brains work.
(18:29):
For example, the flame retardants have been shown to UM
particularly affect the thyroid system and the thyroid hormones UM.
So what they're seeing in animals and now in some
human studies is that animals with the highest number the
through the largest number of these molecules in their bloodstreams
and to have UM sort of lacked out thyroid systems
(18:52):
either low thyroid or high thyroid, and the thyroids a
very important especially for infant brain development. So it also
looks like, um that there are some human studies that
are that are sort of confirming some of this too,
um that that women who have the highest levels of
these chemicals in their breast milk have UM infants and
children with some some potentially i Q and bring behavior differences.
(19:17):
So it's something that you know, I think a lot
of people are very concerned about. Well, I know, you
do some experimentation in the book to try to limit
your exposure two chemicals, and you have to go to
really extreme steps to do that. In the book, you
do that for you and also um for your daughter,
including things of having to ride your bike around so
(19:38):
that you're not coming into contact with these chemicals that
are in the materials in our cars for instance. So
I mean, knowing all that, you know, now, how can
women protect their breast because it seems like these environmental
threats are unavoidable. Yeah know, I think these mothers were all,
(20:01):
you know, want to be cautious. I mean, we make
our kids wear bicycle helmets, you know, we make them
wear seatbelts, and we all kind of operate on the
today level using the precautionary principle. And yet then we
find out that there are all these industrial toxicans in
use that have the potential to affect you know, our
children's brains and the timing of puberty for our children,
(20:22):
which is something you know, many of us are concerned
about UM, and yet there's so little we can do
to actually control their exposures and our exposures to these substances.
So I wanted to find out, you know, if I
really if I really tried, could I affect you know,
for example, UM, how many parabins or how many how
(20:43):
much b p A I had in my bloodstream? And
neither really common chemicals used in UM household personal care
products for example of shampoos UM or you know, in
our water bottles UM. And so, so I've tried, tried
not to eat any food that had touched plastic. I
didn't ride in my car for a few days because
I didn't want to be exposed to the ballates, which
(21:05):
are another in the condestructor found in the interiors of
our cars at off gas UM and I so I
became a vegan, and I didn't use UM any smelly
shampoos or moisturizers or dealers for a few days, and
I tested my blood and my daughter's blood both before
and after um, you know, doing these experiments. So I
(21:28):
tested my my my urine and my daughter's urine because
that's where these chemicals sort of end up. And I
was able to offer the levels in my body about
eighty or nine for some of these substances. We catted
for five or six of them. UM. But so either
substances I could hardly budget even by living in this
(21:50):
sort of extreme, you know, no smelly substances life. And
that was it was really disconcerting feeling that I actually
could not control those exposures. And what it tells me
is that we really don't know where these exposures are
coming from. Part of that is because you know, when
(22:11):
we go to the grocery store and we buy food product,
or we buy a shampoo or a soap, um, the
manufacturers are not required to label those ingredients. So we
don't know if our soap has a salts in it
or if it has triclothes and which is an endercrine
destructing um antibacterial substance. But if you go to Europe,
(22:32):
for example, the manufacturers are required to label, so you
can avoid substances more easily than you can in the
United States. UM. Moreover, the substences are everywhere. They're sort
of in you know, in our homes. They might be
in our roofing tiles, UM, they might be in our
home electronics. UM. We just don't know. There are so
(22:53):
many saltes and uh, there's so many products. It was
overwhelming to me, and it made me feel sort of helpless,
and it also made me feel so angry that you know,
our government has not UM worked harder to study these
substances for half effects, and UM has not really worked
to regulate them when they do of the peer to
(23:15):
have some questionable health properties. So it seems like almost
the best that we can do is remain vigilant about,
you know, maintaining awareness of the ingredients of food and
whatever products when that information is made available to us.
(23:35):
And beyond that, it seems like that's sort of all
you can do. Maybe too, uh to protect yourself against
environmental containments is obviously we can't you know, live in
you know, vacuums away from all of these day lights
and paarabins, etcetera. Well, the problem with that strategy of
trying to be vigilant is that it puts this tremendous burden,
(23:58):
you know, on the individual and on the consumer to
sort of figure this out. And it's just beyond us, frankly,
I mean, you know, we're not most of us are
not chemists. We're not endocnowledgists. Um. And and frankly, we
know we have enough going on, right, I mean, we're busy,
and we have other things to worry about, especially you know,
if you're a mother, there are a lots of other
(24:20):
things you're worrying about too, and so to add this
to the plate um, it just seems um, you know,
kind of impractical and you know, frankly, just annoying. Um.
And so, so I was left with feeling like this
shouldn't be my problem, this should be my government's problem,
and it should be the manufacturer's problem. Um. You know, really,
let's not put you know, if there's a questionable is
(24:40):
there a questionable substances, please let's not use them. You know,
Let's find safer alternatives. And there are safer alternatives for
many of these ingredients. Um. And so you know, I
feel like if we want to do anything useful. It
would be sort of put more pressure on both state
and federal governments to spend more resources testing these substances.
(25:02):
I would like to see them tested for health effects,
specifically in the memory land, which is not done right now.
Sometimes when chemicals are tested UM in a lad animal,
for example, the memory land is just starts thrown out,
like no one's actually looking at effects on the memory land.
And there were some activists who told me about this,
and and it just seems kind of crazy that, you know,
(25:23):
we're living in that in an age of increasing West
cancer UM such a strong concern amongst so many of
us UM that that it really would be helpful to
look at sort of this target tissue rather than completely
ignoring it. But I feel like that, you know, there's
a lot we can do as sort of activists or
as just citizens to kind of you know, ask for testing,
you know, like they do in Europe. Why can't we
(25:44):
do that here? And of course there are a lot
of complicated reasons for that, but with more consumer pressure
and more citizen pressure, I think, you know, it's more
effective than having us try to figure this all out
on a case by case basis. As we walked through
the grocery store. Well, um, you talk a lot in
the book about being a mother. You you know, you
mentioned your children a number of times and talk about
(26:08):
breast milk and uh. And this relates to the issue
with the environmental contaminants because like you said, you know,
those kind of containments can get into breast milk, et cetera. Um,
but in general, you know, there's all this information basically
on how breast milk is kind of perfect in a way.
So knowing though that scientifically like just how good breast
(26:32):
milk is for babies, how do you think though that
we as women kind of can balance that sort of
scientific reality of knowing that but also the realities of
being working moms perhaps or maybe even women who just
have a difficult time breastfeeding. Can you make some sense
I guess of how to balance I don't know, working
(26:52):
mom's life and then also knowing that that perhaps probably
breast is best. Yeah, sure, you know, I as your
breastfeeding is, um, it's it's complicated and demanding and for
for working mothers especially, UM, you know, sometimes it's it's
hard to figure out the balance of you know, how
(27:13):
to how to be home enough, how to pump, how
to get enough support to do it. Um And and
certainly for a lot of women, you know, it's it's
it's just too it's too much, it's too difficult, and
if they have to work, you know, right after their
baby is born. Um. Um, you know, it's it's it's
it has to be sort of up to them to
(27:34):
figure out what's going to work best for them. And
I think I think as a women, we need to
kind of support each other as we make these choices. Um.
But I do think that if you want to make
an argument for which is better for your baby, um,
formula or breast milk. You know, the science is really
emerging more strongly that breast milk is a little bit better,
(27:57):
especially for babies who are born early, for premature babies,
and um, for babies who are born outside of Western
industrial societies, you know, who are growing up in a
pathogen rich environment where they're exposed to dirty water for example.
You know, used to make formula for those babies, breast
(28:19):
milk is actually incredibly important for survival. It's a little
bit harder to make the survival argument in the United States,
where babies actually grow up just fine on formula. But
what we're learning more and more is that nursing is
also good for the mom and I think that's really
interesting too. We know that that by her, but when
(28:40):
she nurses, she's mobilizing the fats that she's accumulated during
pregnancy UM and giving them to her baby, and it
actually helps her recover and sort of regain a healthy
ratio of fats within her own body. So women who
rest feed are at lower risk later on, even you know,
(29:00):
decades later on, for things like heart disease or hypertension. UM,
and we also know that for the baby. You know
that there does seem to be an IQ benefit although
it's small, and UM also a fewer respiratory infections in
the ear infections. UM. We also know, and we're learning
this more and more, that breath milk can refers not
(29:22):
just nutrients to a baby, but it used system support.
So there are ingredients in breast milk that aren't actually
digested by the infant, but that are digested by bacteria
that is helpful to the infant. You know, we all
have these very complicated um communities of microflora in our bodies,
(29:43):
and it turns out that those colonies are started, you know,
the minute we're born and breath. Milk is actually you know,
has evolved over Um. There are millions of years and
mammals UM to sort of confer this colony. UM, that's
that's most optimal for health. And so it looks like
no baby to a breast that also have lower risks
(30:05):
of allergies for example UM and asthma UM. And it's
it's just kind of cool to think about, you know,
how that's all evolved to sort of optimize our health.
And it's something that formula companies, of course, have fallen
all over themselves to try to replicate you know, some
of these for example or logo saccharades um, that are
just unique to human breast milk and nowhere, nowhere else
(30:26):
found on the planet. And they just have not figured
out how to synthesize these products yet in formula. UM. Well, Florence,
I could ask you so many more questions all about breast.
It was a fascinating read, UM. But just to kind
of wrap everything up, UM, do you think that young
(30:47):
women and even older women for that matter, need to
learn more about their breasts or be taught more about
their breasts? Um? Do we do we need better breast education. Yeah,
that's a great question, and I really think we do. UM.
For one thing, young people learn about their bodies right
now from the internet and uh, you know, this is different,
(31:08):
of course from when I was growing up, UM and
I saw somewhere a statistic that something like the average
teenage boy will have seen something like twelve thousand images
of breath, you know, by the time you finished his
high school. And then this is stors happening about this
is that many of the breaths that that these both
boys and girls are seeing are not natural breaths, you know.
(31:30):
They they're either surgically authored breath uh. You know, there
are common in pornography, common in uh in Hollywood, or
their photoshops breaths. So this is also something that's really
pervasive in media. UM. And so so I think both
boys and girls are kind of growing up with his
expectation of what breasts are supposed to look like. And
(31:51):
I think, of course that there's a great disservice you
know to the sort of wonderful variety of natural breasts
that you see at their um and you know, and
not to be so helpful for girls self esteem as
they're growing up and their bodies kind of look different
from an ideal. I also think that, um, just the
more we know about how breaths work and sort of
how amazingly for complicated and miraculous they are. Um, you know,
(32:16):
the more that that we will listen to them and
what do our breaths have to tell us, you know,
as they kind of get thicker and as breast cancer
becomes unfortunately more common throughout the world, really an important
um medical challenge to sort of figure out how to
try to prevent breast cancer. So that's something that I
think many of us can agree we're not spending enough
(32:38):
resources on currently. Well how can we How can we
support working moms who also want to breastfeed, but obviously
there's only so much time in the day. I think
there a couple of ways that we can encourage and
support breastfeeding. One is we can, um try to support
(32:58):
breastfeeding in public, because right now there's a great level
of discomfort in our society still with breastfeeding. And you
see this when women are asked to stop breastfeeding in public,
or when even they're arrested for breastfeeding in public. Um,
this is you know, every once in a while, you
hear news reports of this UM, which I think is
(33:18):
you know, tragic. I mean, we we are so comfortable
with sort of boobs hanging out all over the place
right in the media and then billboards and then posters, UM,
and then lingerie shops, and yet if a woman is
actually just bearing a little bit of breast at a
shop in wall because her babies is crime for food, um,
you know, we asked her to leave. So I think,
you know, I think it's important to kind of grow
(33:40):
more comfortable with the idea of breastfeeding and to support
it in public. I think one way to do that
also is to encourage famous people and celebrities to breastfeed.
And I loved it when bayon today, you know, breastfeed
in public. I think that sent a really powerful message
and I think that that can be helpful, um and supportive.
And then of course our social policies too that that
(34:01):
we don't have in this country that are common in many, many,
many other countries. UM longer maternality, longer maternal leaves policies,
for example, UM longer family leads policies, more support for
women who stay at home a little bit longer, UM
these have proven to be really effective for increasing breastfeeding rates. Great, well,
(34:23):
if people want to learn more about you and learn
more about breasts and where to get a copy of Breasts? Um,
where can people go? I don't, thanks so much for asking.
I do have a website, It's Florence Williams dot com.
And um there are links to the book and a
video about the book and more descriptions there, and the
(34:46):
paperback is available now. UM just cave out last month.
Really book stories everywhere, and there's also an audio version
of the book and an electronic version of the book,
so the plays to read it. So thanks so much
again to Florence Williams for really enlightening us about so
(35:08):
many different aspects of our breasts that maybe people don't
really think about that often. Yeah, and I'll be curious
to hear from especially maybe mom's out there who have
considered what is in their breast milk, both on that
fascinating side of how nature seems to provide exactly the
right compounds for whether it is a male or female baby,
(35:30):
but then also the scarier side with those environmental contaminants
as well. UM, let us know your thoughts and don't
forget to check out Breasts, a Natural and Unnatural History,
published by W. W. Norton Company and written by Florence Williams.
You can email us at Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot com,
(35:52):
or tweet us at mom Stuff Podcast, or hit us
up on our Facebook and leave a note there. And
now back to our letters. Christ and I have one
here from Athena about our Pet Parents episode. She has
a slightly different experience from just the run of the
mill cats and dogs. She says, so, I'm one of
(36:12):
those who doesn't understand how crazy people get over their pets.
That is, until about a month ago, my long term
boyfriend and I were adopted by an adorable funny I
say adopted by because while at the shelters bun run
where they let all of their bunnies out into a
room where you can play with them, one bunny chinned us,
(36:33):
marking us, and then chased off all other bunnies they
wanted to come near us. That's the pretty territorial rabbits.
My boyfriend has been hesitant about getting a pet, afraid
of them dying, but her actions helped us decide then
and there, so we brought our little flopster home and
quickly turned into crazy parents. Rabbits need all organic vegetables,
(36:57):
and so we now only buy organic for us so
that she can have our vegetables too. We've built her
cardboard castles and tunnels to play in, and now my
boyfriend is talking about dressing her for Halloween. Can you
tell that I'm just like overcome by the adorable nous
of this. Yeah, I kind of want a bunny. Shoot. Okay,
me too, Um, she says, well we one day soon.
(37:17):
I hope want a child. Flopster is a great friend
to have, so I cannot imagine ever pushing a pet
into stroller. I will not say never, since those big
bunny eyes have already gotten me to do things I've
said never to before. On a personal note, I would
like to point out that bunnies are not great Easter
presents for kids. Most of the bunnies in the shelter
(37:38):
were Easter bunnies rejected after the kids got tired of them.
Bunnies will bond with their human owners, so this is
heartbreaking for them to be rejected. Bunnies can die from heartbreak,
she says, So thank you for your incredibly adorable story.
I'm going to be happy the rest of the afternoon
picturing Flopster playing in your cardboard castles. And you know
who else has pet Bunny? Some of them? Amy Sadaris.
(38:01):
Oh yeah, just why I really want to buy out? Okay, Well,
this email that I have is from Jeff and he
is not down with pet parenting, so he just just
for background. He is married with a little girl, and
he writes pet parenting is something that has pissed me
(38:21):
off since my sister referred to me as the uncle
of her pet cats. I don't hate people loving their
pets or even spoiling their pets. I hate the humanizing
of animals. The fact that people would risk their lives or,
as you pointed out, put the life of a pet
over a human just sickens me. I should explain that
I don't look down on people who choose not to
have kids or can't have kids. Honestly, I think there
(38:42):
are too many people in the world to sustain it.
I didn't realize how prevalent the pet parenting trend was, though,
until this past Mother's Day, when my Facebook wall was
flooded with Happy Mother's Day to all parents of pets.
So my response was a simple status update of pets
aren't children, and while did that blow up quickly, friends
were telling me about how they risk life and limb
(39:02):
to protect their pets, and some of these people had
actual children too. All I could think was imagine your
child losing their parents because Fluffy was going to be
hit by a car. It seemed preposterous to me, but again,
I don't find fault within pet ownership until they start
to anthropomorphize their pets. We even own a cat who
snuggles on my chest every night. I like the cate
a great deal. We had two cats for one right away,
(39:24):
and while I didn't cry or get upset about it,
I was sad because it wasn't adjusted to be outside anyway.
Those are my thoughts as an anti pet parenting person,
and there were a couple of other people who wrote
in similarly saying I don't get it. Pets are not people.
Take off that tiny, tiny shirt that is on that
(39:45):
dog a stuff. So thanks Jeff and everyone else who
has written in. Mom Stuff of Discovery dot com is
where you can send your letters and pictures of your pets,
especially if they were bunnies, and you can also tweet
us at mom stuff pot cast, find us on Facebook,
and follow us on Tumbler at stuff Mom Never Told
You dot tumbler dot com, and of course you can
(40:07):
also find us and watch us on the YouTube where
at YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom Never Told You
already have like sixty or something videos up, so you
should go watch them and don't forget to subscribe for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Doesn't how
Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to stuf mom never told you. From House to
works dot Com, Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And Caroline, I was traveling not
too long ago, and I was sitting in the airport
reading a book called Breasts, A Natural and Unnatural History,
(00:29):
and I'm not gonna lie to you. I got a
couple of sort of awkward looks from guys who were
sitting next to me, and it made me more aware of, Oh,
I'm reading this book that says breast in large font
on the cover, Okay, And I didn't care. I was like,
if anyone wants to ask me about this boom book,
no problem. And I got on the plane and started
(00:52):
reading Breasts and obviously very close quarters, and there's a
woman sitting next to me, also reading, and I've noticed
she had kind of looked over at my book a
little bit, and I was like, oh, she's probably thinking
about how I'm reading Breasts. And then I looked over
at her book. She was reading Fifty Shades of Gray Ah.
And from that moment on, once we kind of exchanged glances,
(01:16):
were like, cool, We're totally fine. Neither of us is
on an e reader. We're owning it. Although I will
say that my book Breast and a Natural and Unnatural
History by Florence Williams far more educational than Fifty Shades
of Gray. I'm sure some people would disagree this is true,
(01:36):
but yeah, I have read Breast and it was such
a great read that I reached out to the author,
Florence Williams, to see if she could chat about it,
because is there a better topic for stuff Mom never
told you then breasts? I I think it's it's Taylor made.
It is Taylor made. We've talked about bras before and
(02:00):
cleavage before, but Florence really dug into the science and
evolution of breasts and also the intersection of breasts and
the environment. Yeah. The New York Times actually likened her
book to Rachel Carson's nineteen sixty two Silent Spring, which
really detailed the impact of industrial chemicals on animals and
(02:21):
the environment. She takes that kind of scientific viewpoint and
applies it to our breasts and talking about how the
fatty tissue that sits atop our chests is like a
magnet for chemicals and pollutants. Yeah, and while a lot
of the environmental interactions that she talks about in the
(02:42):
book and that we also talked about in the interview
are pretty unsettling because it's all the stuff happening, and
it's affecting our breasts and getting passed out via breast milk,
two babies, and then all of those generational effects that
take place. Um. But she also touches on the evolution
of breast, the scientific study of breast, which is often
(03:05):
kind of brushed aside just because of how sexualized they are,
and almost sexualized in kind of a comical way. Um.
And she also touches on the horrifying history of implants
as well, because not only are all of these environmental
threats going on, but we're also paying money to have
(03:30):
people tinker with our breasts and the size of them.
So I was really happy to get Florence on the phone. Breast,
A Natural and Unnatural History one the two thousand thirteen
l A Times Book Prize for Science and Technology, and
it was named the two thousand twelve New York Times
Notable Book. So you should definitely check it out, and
(03:51):
huge thanks to Florence for talking with us. Yes, so
let's hear what she had to say. What got you
interested in writing breasts. It all started when I was
nursing my daughter, uh, and I found out that there
were some toxic chemicals showing up in breath milk. So
(04:13):
I thought it would be interesting to have my own
best milk tested, UM to find out what was in
there and then you know, write an article about that
and kind of what it meant for my health and
for my daughter's self. So so we shifted off a
file of breath milk to a lab in Germany and
it came back positive for flame retardants UM and also
(04:36):
trace amounts of pesticides UM. So so that reason launched
me into this good, bigger question of how else modern
life is changing breaths and what it means UM. Well,
what was what was one of the most surprising things
that you learned with all of the research that you
did for the book. Well, it was just fun to
(04:57):
learn about how it's amazingly complex breasts are. You know,
we tend to in our society, of course, think of
them in one way, and that's um, you know, a
sexualized way, and so I wanted these amazing things about
how they worked. UM. I learned that, for example, when
you're nursing, your breaths are incredibly smart and they actually
(05:19):
know when your baby is, for example, ill or suffering
from an infection. UM and then your breath milk kind
of adjust it's ingredients accordingly. For example, it will put
more antibodies in the best milk. And it looks like
from primate studies that your your breath even somehow no
if you're nursing a male or female infant, uh, and
(05:41):
it it changes um also the competition of the fats
and the proteins based on that. And then I also
learned that actually breaths are very unique in the animal kingdom.
Not kind of assumed that we're all mammals have memory glands,
so there must be some other mammals out there, you know,
that have mammory glands to sort of look like ours.
But it turns up that the human breast is actually
(06:02):
incredibly unique in the animal kingdom, and that no other
primates actually has these sort of permanently enlarged nouns, you know,
on their chest like we do. We have them starting
in puberty and then we essentially have breasts our entire lives,
and with other primates they really only have, you know,
sort of what we would call breasts while they're lactating,
(06:24):
and then they received again. So I thought that I'd
be kind of interesting to know in fact how unusual
breasts are. For example, our breasts are getting bigger in
modern life, which was interesting to me and something unexpected.
And also of course that they're showing up earlier now
in younger and younger girls. So the big question then,
(06:44):
I mean, why were you talking about how unique they
are too humans? Why do we have them? Can you
talk a little bit about that? Well, yes I can,
And in fact it's one of those kind of perennial
biology questions because a lot of people are interested in
breast and a lot of evolutionary biologists have been asking
this question for a while, you know, how did we
(07:06):
get so lucky? Why why do we have breast and
sort of no one else um, And so there's there's
actually a big debate about it, and for a long
time a lot of the sort of dominant theory in
evolutionary biology has been that breath must have evolved as
a sexual signal for men, and that they must be
a sexually selected trait, so that you know, we have
(07:29):
them because men are interested in them. Essentially, and they
must be conveying some kind of you know, important information
to men. But then in the eighties and nineties, you know,
there are more kind of feminists in the field of anthropology,
and some of them started questioning these theories and saying, well,
you know, why why should we su that these breasts
exausts for men? You know, because couldn't there be some
(07:51):
other reasons that breasts exist, for example, to help the
woman survived or to help her infants survive. You know,
if there's something about about breath that um, you know,
enabled their fitness, then it would be a more naturally
selected treat and not a sexually selected treat UM. And
so they have some alternative theories. Most we have having
to do with the fact that humans, human females and
(08:14):
human infants need a greater percentage of body fat in
order to survive UM, and in fact, breath are a
pretty good place to store body fat. And so because
our breaths also have estrogen receptors, estrogen tells fat to
be deposited in our breasts as well, and it couldn't
be that because a sort of combination of estrogen being
(08:35):
in our breast and and the fat showing up there,
that that breaths are in the way kind of accidents
of of just being human. Now, it's interesting you talk
about ebo bio and obviously evolutionary biologists have spent a
lot of time researching breast, but it seems like outside
of that area, and we also hear a lot about
(08:57):
breast cancer research of course, but why and saying that
you touched on a little bit on the book. In
the book is how research on the function of breast
almost is not doesn't seem to be taken as seriously
in the scientific realm Or was I just reading into
that a little bit? No, I think you're right. I
(09:18):
think in many ways breaths are kind of orthan of science,
um because I think because we sexualize them so much,
it's harder to take them seriously as an organ And
in fact, a lot of scientists told me that they
have trouble getting funding for research breast anatomy, or they
have trouble all um, you know, just being taken seriously
(09:40):
studying things like breast milk um, because there's just a
lot of funding in it. And and it's also um,
they feel that that breaths are just not taken seriously,
and in fact, it's true that breath are the only
organ in our body that don't have a medical specialty.
So if you think about it, you know, our other organs,
(10:01):
our kidneys, aswevers, you know, they they have the you know,
a whole sort of specialty of medicine revolving around them,
and we don't. In fact, when a woman gets breast cancer,
because she goes to see a surgeon, or she might
see her gynecologists UM, or she might schang endochronologists, um.
But these aren't specialties that are necessarily dedicated to the breast.
(10:21):
And so because of that, we actually have a really
limited understanding of how breast work. We don't know, for example,
why we get breast cancer. And breast cancer is such
a complicated disease. It's actually the number one cancer killer
of women globally, and in our country, in the United States,
(10:41):
it's the number one killer of women in middle age,
and so it's sort of amazing that we haven't spent
more time trying to figure out how breast cancers start. UM.
And then of course breast milk, and I learned that
we actually know very little about breast milk, even though
it's this perfect food for humans. Either we spend more
(11:02):
money and more resources, more scientific energy studying lead wine
than we do studying breast books. So I think that's
that's kind of telling and interesting and it's so sad really,
you know, in terms of women's health, well, and it
seems like when you're talking about all of the different
medical specialties and how there isn't one for breast, the
(11:23):
first thing that popped into my mind was, well, we
do have plastic surgeons. Is that the closest that we
have to breast experts of sorts? Um? And in the
book you talk about the history of implants um and
really all of the horrific things that we have put
into women's breast over the years UM because you talk
(11:44):
a little bit about why or how implants were invented
and especially this uh, this medical invention of micromastia or
having small breasts. Yeah. Sure, you know, for a long time,
women were more concerned with having breast were too large,
and so the earliest bress surgeries were surgeries that tried
(12:05):
to reduce the size of breath because large breasths really
gotten the way you know of for example, you know,
farm work or field work for for a lot of women,
and so so those are the first surgeries. And then um,
it was actually the women on the stage who who
sang or were actresses who felt that it might be
(12:27):
um sure beneficial to them to have larger breath. And
so the first breast augmentation was performed on an actress
in Germany. UM, and I think you had the date.
I think it was about eighteen in eighteen eighties or
eighteen nineties, was the date that you sided. There you go, thanks,
you had the goodness was the first surgery to try
(12:52):
to enlarge a woman's breath. And in that case, a
surgeon took some fat from her backside and put it
in her breasts, and it actually didn't work very well
because the fat sort of dissipated and migrated around and
basically dissolved. And so this is that failure. There has
been a hundred years of failures of trying to make
(13:12):
women's breasts larger, and the history it's just sort of
this sorry history of um of environmental and health catastrophe
sort visited upon women in the name of medical experimentation.
Doctors tried to augment women's breast with ox cartilage, with
wood ships with the glass balls. In the nineteen nineteen
(13:38):
fifties and early ninettes, they tried to use these new
plastics like even plastic sponges UM, very much like a
kitchen sponge, and in many cases these resulted in horrible infections,
UM in hardening of of the tissue and uh, it
(13:59):
never can work very well. And then uh, in nineteen
sixty two, a surgeon in Houston, Texas had the idea
of using silicone, which had been a material UM invented
for use in World War Two. And the silicone was soft,
and it was cleaner and UM, so it was possible
(14:22):
to use this as an augmentation material that that wouldn't
necessarily cause an instant infection, and it also tended to
stay in place. So the first surgery was actually performed
on a dog named as Morelda, and she did not
like her importance. I can imagine she ended up she
ended up chewing them out. She did not understand the
(14:43):
need for this new endowment. UM. And then of course
it was it was performed on a woman, and the
first woman UH this operation was the n two and
she's actually still alive. So I interviewed her from my
book which was really a lot of fun. She's in
her eaties and she's she's kind of proud, you know,
of dis place in history, and she jokes that when
(15:06):
she dies, she's going to dedicate her breast to science. UM.
I mean that's so fascinating though, that we've been so persistent,
you know, for almost a century of trying to artificially
augment women's breast. UM. But it seems like one of
(15:26):
you know, while while we've been busily trying to put
implants into breast, there have also been environmental contaminants making
their way into breast tissue. UM. And you talk a
lot about that in the book, and um about that
in Endocrine Disruptors. UM. So, could you talk about some
(15:49):
of the most directly uh, some of the chemicals that
are most directly threatening to long term breast health. Yes,
Unfush breasts do seem to attract a lot of environmental
contaminants and industrial pollutants. And a couple of reasons for this.
One is that breast tissue it's so fatty. It's um,
(16:12):
you know, one of the fattiest parts of our bodies.
And many industrial chemicals, such as pesticides, are fat loving chemicals.
Are sort of attracted to fat, and once they get
in fatty tissue, these industrial molecules, they tend to stay
there for a very long time. In the case of
d DP for example, and flame retardants, which I also
(16:36):
tested for in my breast milk. UM. These are substances
that that last in mammalian fatty tissue for UM years
and years and years. UM and PCBs, which are now banned. UM.
But we're an industrial UM chemical used to sort of
insulate electronics. They can last for decades. And so sadly,
(17:01):
some of the chemicals that we've been sort of accumulating
in our breast tissue for you know, since we were
children we end up passing along to our children, some
of the same ones end up staying there for for
the decades of our reproductive lives. So UM. Even the
chemicals that our daughters are exposed to now when their
infants may still be in their blood and in their
(17:23):
fat when they're having babies. UM. So these are things
that can last even for more than one generation in
our bodies. And of course, but the question is really,
well what are they doing there? And unfortunately the science
is very young. UM, it's only been in really the
last ten years or so that we've been able to
(17:46):
sort of easily and affordably detect the presence of these
chemicals UM and and scientists have been looking hard at
animals and seeing what these substances do, uh, you know,
to lab animals, and looks like some of them have
the ability to affect our hormone systems. So they're what
they call endocrine disruptors. And they can either mimic hormones
(18:09):
or they can otherwise interfere with the hormonal signaling in
our body. And and these hormones are really important for
regulating all kinds of biological processes you from metabolism UM
to UM you know, sex drive and preparenting behavior to
neurodevelopment behavior UM and you know your power brains work.
(18:29):
For example, the flame retardants have been shown to UM
particularly affect the thyroid system and the thyroid hormones UM.
So what they're seeing in animals and now in some
human studies is that animals with the highest number the
through the largest number of these molecules in their bloodstreams
and to have UM sort of lacked out thyroid systems
(18:52):
either low thyroid or high thyroid, and the thyroids a
very important especially for infant brain development. So it also
looks like, um that there are some human studies that
are that are sort of confirming some of this too,
um that that women who have the highest levels of
these chemicals in their breast milk have UM infants and
children with some some potentially i Q and bring behavior differences.
(19:17):
So it's something that you know, I think a lot
of people are very concerned about. Well, I know, you
do some experimentation in the book to try to limit
your exposure two chemicals, and you have to go to
really extreme steps to do that. In the book, you
do that for you and also um for your daughter,
including things of having to ride your bike around so
(19:38):
that you're not coming into contact with these chemicals that
are in the materials in our cars for instance. So
I mean, knowing all that, you know, now, how can
women protect their breast because it seems like these environmental
threats are unavoidable. Yeah know, I think these mothers were all,
(20:01):
you know, want to be cautious. I mean, we make
our kids wear bicycle helmets, you know, we make them
wear seatbelts, and we all kind of operate on the
today level using the precautionary principle. And yet then we
find out that there are all these industrial toxicans in
use that have the potential to affect you know, our
children's brains and the timing of puberty for our children,
(20:22):
which is something you know, many of us are concerned
about UM, and yet there's so little we can do
to actually control their exposures and our exposures to these substances.
So I wanted to find out, you know, if I
really if I really tried, could I affect you know,
for example, UM, how many parabins or how many how
(20:43):
much b p A I had in my bloodstream? And
neither really common chemicals used in UM household personal care
products for example of shampoos UM or you know, in
our water bottles UM. And so, so I've tried, tried
not to eat any food that had touched plastic. I
didn't ride in my car for a few days because
I didn't want to be exposed to the ballates, which
(21:05):
are another in the condestructor found in the interiors of
our cars at off gas UM and I so I
became a vegan, and I didn't use UM any smelly
shampoos or moisturizers or dealers for a few days, and
I tested my blood and my daughter's blood both before
and after um, you know, doing these experiments. So I
(21:28):
tested my my my urine and my daughter's urine because
that's where these chemicals sort of end up. And I
was able to offer the levels in my body about
eighty or nine for some of these substances. We catted
for five or six of them. UM. But so either
substances I could hardly budget even by living in this
(21:50):
sort of extreme, you know, no smelly substances life. And
that was it was really disconcerting feeling that I actually
could not control those exposures. And what it tells me
is that we really don't know where these exposures are
coming from. Part of that is because you know, when
(22:11):
we go to the grocery store and we buy food product,
or we buy a shampoo or a soap, um, the
manufacturers are not required to label those ingredients. So we
don't know if our soap has a salts in it
or if it has triclothes and which is an endercrine
destructing um antibacterial substance. But if you go to Europe,
(22:32):
for example, the manufacturers are required to label, so you
can avoid substances more easily than you can in the
United States. UM. Moreover, the substences are everywhere. They're sort
of in you know, in our homes. They might be
in our roofing tiles, UM, they might be in our
home electronics. UM. We just don't know. There are so
(22:53):
many saltes and uh, there's so many products. It was
overwhelming to me, and it made me feel sort of helpless,
and it also made me feel so angry that you know,
our government has not UM worked harder to study these
substances for half effects, and UM has not really worked
to regulate them when they do of the peer to
(23:15):
have some questionable health properties. So it seems like almost
the best that we can do is remain vigilant about,
you know, maintaining awareness of the ingredients of food and
whatever products when that information is made available to us.
(23:35):
And beyond that, it seems like that's sort of all
you can do. Maybe too, uh to protect yourself against
environmental containments is obviously we can't you know, live in
you know, vacuums away from all of these day lights
and paarabins, etcetera. Well, the problem with that strategy of
trying to be vigilant is that it puts this tremendous burden,
(23:58):
you know, on the individual and on the consumer to
sort of figure this out. And it's just beyond us, frankly,
I mean, you know, we're not most of us are
not chemists. We're not endocnowledgists. Um. And and frankly, we
know we have enough going on, right, I mean, we're busy,
and we have other things to worry about, especially you know,
if you're a mother, there are a lots of other
(24:20):
things you're worrying about too, and so to add this
to the plate um, it just seems um, you know,
kind of impractical and you know, frankly, just annoying. Um.
And so, so I was left with feeling like this
shouldn't be my problem, this should be my government's problem,
and it should be the manufacturer's problem. Um. You know, really,
let's not put you know, if there's a questionable is
(24:40):
there a questionable substances, please let's not use them. You know,
Let's find safer alternatives. And there are safer alternatives for
many of these ingredients. Um. And so you know, I
feel like if we want to do anything useful. It
would be sort of put more pressure on both state
and federal governments to spend more resources testing these substances.
(25:02):
I would like to see them tested for health effects,
specifically in the memory land, which is not done right now.
Sometimes when chemicals are tested UM in a lad animal,
for example, the memory land is just starts thrown out,
like no one's actually looking at effects on the memory land.
And there were some activists who told me about this,
and and it just seems kind of crazy that, you know,
(25:23):
we're living in that in an age of increasing West
cancer UM such a strong concern amongst so many of
us UM that that it really would be helpful to
look at sort of this target tissue rather than completely
ignoring it. But I feel like that, you know, there's
a lot we can do as sort of activists or
as just citizens to kind of you know, ask for testing,
you know, like they do in Europe. Why can't we
(25:44):
do that here? And of course there are a lot
of complicated reasons for that, but with more consumer pressure
and more citizen pressure, I think, you know, it's more
effective than having us try to figure this all out
on a case by case basis. As we walked through
the grocery store. Well, um, you talk a lot in
the book about being a mother. You you know, you
mentioned your children a number of times and talk about
(26:08):
breast milk and uh. And this relates to the issue
with the environmental contaminants because like you said, you know,
those kind of containments can get into breast milk, et cetera. Um,
but in general, you know, there's all this information basically
on how breast milk is kind of perfect in a way.
So knowing though that scientifically like just how good breast
(26:32):
milk is for babies, how do you think though that
we as women kind of can balance that sort of
scientific reality of knowing that but also the realities of
being working moms perhaps or maybe even women who just
have a difficult time breastfeeding. Can you make some sense
I guess of how to balance I don't know, working
(26:52):
mom's life and then also knowing that that perhaps probably
breast is best. Yeah, sure, you know, I as your
breastfeeding is, um, it's it's complicated and demanding and for
for working mothers especially, UM, you know, sometimes it's it's
hard to figure out the balance of you know, how
(27:13):
to how to be home enough, how to pump, how
to get enough support to do it. Um And and
certainly for a lot of women, you know, it's it's
it's just too it's too much, it's too difficult, and
if they have to work, you know, right after their
baby is born. Um. Um, you know, it's it's it's
it has to be sort of up to them to
(27:34):
figure out what's going to work best for them. And
I think I think as a women, we need to
kind of support each other as we make these choices. Um.
But I do think that if you want to make
an argument for which is better for your baby, um,
formula or breast milk. You know, the science is really
emerging more strongly that breast milk is a little bit better,
(27:57):
especially for babies who are born early, for premature babies,
and um, for babies who are born outside of Western
industrial societies, you know, who are growing up in a
pathogen rich environment where they're exposed to dirty water for example.
You know, used to make formula for those babies, breast
(28:19):
milk is actually incredibly important for survival. It's a little
bit harder to make the survival argument in the United States,
where babies actually grow up just fine on formula. But
what we're learning more and more is that nursing is
also good for the mom and I think that's really
interesting too. We know that that by her, but when
(28:40):
she nurses, she's mobilizing the fats that she's accumulated during
pregnancy UM and giving them to her baby, and it
actually helps her recover and sort of regain a healthy
ratio of fats within her own body. So women who
rest feed are at lower risk later on, even you know,
(29:00):
decades later on, for things like heart disease or hypertension. UM,
and we also know that for the baby. You know
that there does seem to be an IQ benefit although
it's small, and UM also a fewer respiratory infections in
the ear infections. UM. We also know, and we're learning
this more and more, that breath milk can refers not
(29:22):
just nutrients to a baby, but it used system support.
So there are ingredients in breast milk that aren't actually
digested by the infant, but that are digested by bacteria
that is helpful to the infant. You know, we all
have these very complicated um communities of microflora in our bodies,
(29:43):
and it turns out that those colonies are started, you know,
the minute we're born and breath. Milk is actually you know,
has evolved over Um. There are millions of years and
mammals UM to sort of confer this colony. UM, that's
that's most optimal for health. And so it looks like
no baby to a breast that also have lower risks
(30:05):
of allergies for example UM and asthma UM. And it's
it's just kind of cool to think about, you know,
how that's all evolved to sort of optimize our health.
And it's something that formula companies, of course, have fallen
all over themselves to try to replicate you know, some
of these for example or logo saccharades um, that are
just unique to human breast milk and nowhere, nowhere else
(30:26):
found on the planet. And they just have not figured
out how to synthesize these products yet in formula. UM. Well, Florence,
I could ask you so many more questions all about breast.
It was a fascinating read, UM. But just to kind
of wrap everything up, UM, do you think that young
(30:47):
women and even older women for that matter, need to
learn more about their breasts or be taught more about
their breasts? Um? Do we do we need better breast education. Yeah,
that's a great question, and I really think we do. UM.
For one thing, young people learn about their bodies right
now from the internet and uh, you know, this is different,
(31:08):
of course from when I was growing up, UM and
I saw somewhere a statistic that something like the average
teenage boy will have seen something like twelve thousand images
of breath, you know, by the time you finished his
high school. And then this is stors happening about this
is that many of the breaths that that these both
boys and girls are seeing are not natural breaths, you know.
(31:30):
They they're either surgically authored breath uh. You know, there
are common in pornography, common in uh in Hollywood, or
their photoshops breaths. So this is also something that's really
pervasive in media. UM. And so so I think both
boys and girls are kind of growing up with his
expectation of what breasts are supposed to look like. And
(31:51):
I think, of course that there's a great disservice you
know to the sort of wonderful variety of natural breasts
that you see at their um and you know, and
not to be so helpful for girls self esteem as
they're growing up and their bodies kind of look different
from an ideal. I also think that, um, just the
more we know about how breaths work and sort of
how amazingly for complicated and miraculous they are. Um, you know,
(32:16):
the more that that we will listen to them and
what do our breaths have to tell us, you know,
as they kind of get thicker and as breast cancer
becomes unfortunately more common throughout the world, really an important
um medical challenge to sort of figure out how to
try to prevent breast cancer. So that's something that I
think many of us can agree we're not spending enough
(32:38):
resources on currently. Well how can we How can we
support working moms who also want to breastfeed, but obviously
there's only so much time in the day. I think
there a couple of ways that we can encourage and
support breastfeeding. One is we can, um try to support
(32:58):
breastfeeding in public, because right now there's a great level
of discomfort in our society still with breastfeeding. And you
see this when women are asked to stop breastfeeding in public,
or when even they're arrested for breastfeeding in public. Um,
this is you know, every once in a while, you
hear news reports of this UM, which I think is
(33:18):
you know, tragic. I mean, we we are so comfortable
with sort of boobs hanging out all over the place
right in the media and then billboards and then posters, UM,
and then lingerie shops, and yet if a woman is
actually just bearing a little bit of breast at a
shop in wall because her babies is crime for food, um,
you know, we asked her to leave. So I think,
you know, I think it's important to kind of grow
(33:40):
more comfortable with the idea of breastfeeding and to support
it in public. I think one way to do that
also is to encourage famous people and celebrities to breastfeed.
And I loved it when bayon today, you know, breastfeed
in public. I think that sent a really powerful message
and I think that that can be helpful, um and supportive.
And then of course our social policies too that that
(34:01):
we don't have in this country that are common in many, many,
many other countries. UM longer maternality, longer maternal leaves policies,
for example, UM longer family leads policies, more support for
women who stay at home a little bit longer, UM
these have proven to be really effective for increasing breastfeeding rates. Great, well,
(34:23):
if people want to learn more about you and learn
more about breasts and where to get a copy of Breasts? Um,
where can people go? I don't, thanks so much for asking.
I do have a website, It's Florence Williams dot com.
And um there are links to the book and a
video about the book and more descriptions there, and the
(34:46):
paperback is available now. UM just cave out last month.
Really book stories everywhere, and there's also an audio version
of the book and an electronic version of the book,
so the plays to read it. So thanks so much
again to Florence Williams for really enlightening us about so
(35:08):
many different aspects of our breasts that maybe people don't
really think about that often. Yeah, and I'll be curious
to hear from especially maybe mom's out there who have
considered what is in their breast milk, both on that
fascinating side of how nature seems to provide exactly the
right compounds for whether it is a male or female baby,
(35:30):
but then also the scarier side with those environmental contaminants
as well. UM, let us know your thoughts and don't
forget to check out Breasts, a Natural and Unnatural History,
published by W. W. Norton Company and written by Florence Williams.
You can email us at Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot com,
(35:52):
or tweet us at mom Stuff Podcast, or hit us
up on our Facebook and leave a note there. And
now back to our letters. Christ and I have one
here from Athena about our Pet Parents episode. She has
a slightly different experience from just the run of the
mill cats and dogs. She says, so, I'm one of
(36:12):
those who doesn't understand how crazy people get over their pets.
That is, until about a month ago, my long term
boyfriend and I were adopted by an adorable funny I
say adopted by because while at the shelters bun run
where they let all of their bunnies out into a
room where you can play with them, one bunny chinned us,
(36:33):
marking us, and then chased off all other bunnies they
wanted to come near us. That's the pretty territorial rabbits.
My boyfriend has been hesitant about getting a pet, afraid
of them dying, but her actions helped us decide then
and there, so we brought our little flopster home and
quickly turned into crazy parents. Rabbits need all organic vegetables,
(36:57):
and so we now only buy organic for us so
that she can have our vegetables too. We've built her
cardboard castles and tunnels to play in, and now my
boyfriend is talking about dressing her for Halloween. Can you
tell that I'm just like overcome by the adorable nous
of this. Yeah, I kind of want a bunny. Shoot. Okay,
me too, Um, she says, well we one day soon.
(37:17):
I hope want a child. Flopster is a great friend
to have, so I cannot imagine ever pushing a pet
into stroller. I will not say never, since those big
bunny eyes have already gotten me to do things I've
said never to before. On a personal note, I would
like to point out that bunnies are not great Easter
presents for kids. Most of the bunnies in the shelter
(37:38):
were Easter bunnies rejected after the kids got tired of them.
Bunnies will bond with their human owners, so this is
heartbreaking for them to be rejected. Bunnies can die from heartbreak,
she says, So thank you for your incredibly adorable story.
I'm going to be happy the rest of the afternoon
picturing Flopster playing in your cardboard castles. And you know
who else has pet Bunny? Some of them? Amy Sadaris.
(38:01):
Oh yeah, just why I really want to buy out? Okay, Well,
this email that I have is from Jeff and he
is not down with pet parenting, so he just just
for background. He is married with a little girl, and
he writes pet parenting is something that has pissed me
(38:21):
off since my sister referred to me as the uncle
of her pet cats. I don't hate people loving their
pets or even spoiling their pets. I hate the humanizing
of animals. The fact that people would risk their lives or,
as you pointed out, put the life of a pet
over a human just sickens me. I should explain that
I don't look down on people who choose not to
have kids or can't have kids. Honestly, I think there
(38:42):
are too many people in the world to sustain it.
I didn't realize how prevalent the pet parenting trend was, though,
until this past Mother's Day, when my Facebook wall was
flooded with Happy Mother's Day to all parents of pets.
So my response was a simple status update of pets
aren't children, and while did that blow up quickly, friends
were telling me about how they risk life and limb
(39:02):
to protect their pets, and some of these people had
actual children too. All I could think was imagine your
child losing their parents because Fluffy was going to be
hit by a car. It seemed preposterous to me, but again,
I don't find fault within pet ownership until they start
to anthropomorphize their pets. We even own a cat who
snuggles on my chest every night. I like the cate
a great deal. We had two cats for one right away,
(39:24):
and while I didn't cry or get upset about it,
I was sad because it wasn't adjusted to be outside anyway.
Those are my thoughts as an anti pet parenting person,
and there were a couple of other people who wrote
in similarly saying I don't get it. Pets are not people.
Take off that tiny, tiny shirt that is on that
(39:45):
dog a stuff. So thanks Jeff and everyone else who
has written in. Mom Stuff of Discovery dot com is
where you can send your letters and pictures of your pets,
especially if they were bunnies, and you can also tweet
us at mom stuff pot cast, find us on Facebook,
and follow us on Tumbler at stuff Mom Never Told
You dot tumbler dot com, and of course you can
(40:07):
also find us and watch us on the YouTube where
at YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom Never Told You
already have like sixty or something videos up, so you
should go watch them and don't forget to subscribe for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Doesn't how
Stuff Works dot com
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.