August 30, 2012 • 34 mins
Mother's Milk: Milk isn't just an infant-sustaining breast beverage. Join Julie and Robert as they explore the world of lactation. How does milk strengthen our bodies against infection? When did humans mutate into cross-species milk guzzlers? Tune in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
You know, milk is one of those things that we
really take for granted. I mean, it's, uh, it's a
certain amount of This is kind of an outragious overstatement
(00:24):
the obvious, but milk is this amazing, nutritious beverage that
is produced by a mammal so that a larval mammal
can can grow and and develop and uh and actually
have a shot at life. Yeah. Yeah, when you think
of milk, you should probably just think about the milk
(00:45):
campaign got milk? Yeah, um, But if you think about
it in a different way, it's it's actually in the
news quite a bit in the form of breastfeeding, and
I just wanted to mention that it's it is interesting
when you think about breastfeeding is becoming this polar de
sized action because it is natural to mammals to do this,
and yet legislation exists so that people, humans can actually
(01:10):
breastfeed in public. Believe it or not. Um, the the
the human human breast exists um solely to to to
nurture another creature. Despite all the other things you see
breast doing UM in our media and in our art
and our world at large. I mean, this is the
one thing that they're here for, and it's the one
(01:32):
thing that some people get up tied about and say, ah,
that needs to be that needs to happen behind closed doors.
So pull that out on the train. Yeah, I know,
it's crazy. Here in the United States, forty five states,
the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands have laws
that specifically allow women to breastfeed in any public or
private location. Twenty eight states, as well as the District
(01:53):
of Columbia and the Virgin Islands again exempt breastfeeding from
public indecency laws. Uh No. In twenty four states, including
d C in Puerto Rico, have laws related to breastfeeding
in the workplace. That the fact that we even have
to have laws in the workplace to make sure that
breastfeeding can occurs is just kind of odd. Yeah, because well,
we're not talking about public urination here or or or defecation.
(02:17):
I mean, this is this and this is a This
is not a waste producing act. This is a UM,
a life giving act. That's part of the natural mammal process. Yeah,
and as we discovered, it's not just mother's milk. Um,
it's it's also someone else's milk. But I'm not gonna
spoil that right now. I'm not going to spoil that plot. Um.
(02:41):
But let's talk about what exactly milk is. Yeah, and
this is this also sounds kind of like an outrageous question.
What is milk? What's that stuff that comes out of
out of a mammal's breast. It's that stuff that you
buy at the grocery market and the big, big containers.
It's that stuff and that can that I take back
to the kitten in the morning and occasionally accidentally drink
(03:03):
out of. Um, it's kind of chalky, you know. Yeah,
but but no, um, Yeah, what what is milk when
you when you break it down and you actually look
at the formula, Well, it's basically a complex emulsion of antibodies,
flat globules and water and a fine dispersion of suspension
(03:23):
or suspension of cassine macellis. And these are proteins that
supply amino acids, carbohydrates, calcium, and phosphorus. And the interesting
thing about this is that fat, protein, and sugar content
differs across the million species. Yeah, and it differs quite
a lot. Um For example, that the fat content of
milk may be as high as six and seals uh
(03:47):
and completely negligible in the early lactation stages of something
like a wallaby. Um. And then you get it into
interesting distinctions there too, because uh, some some mammal milk
is just straight up you know, the pretty much the
same formula nutritions from from the early stages of lactation
through the latter stages of lactation. Other animals, the chemistry
(04:10):
the milk changes a bit as they go on, fulfilling
fulfilling certain biological needs early on and becoming more nutritious
as as the uh, as the the animal progresses. Yeah.
And in humans, breast milk actually isn't even produced right away. Instead,
a substance called colostrum, sometimes called liquid gold, is produced
(04:32):
before a woman's milk comes in, and claustrum is um.
It's high in carbohydrates, high in protein, high in antibodies,
and low and fat. And it's called liquid gold because
there's not a whole lot of it that's produced. But
the stuff that is produced is really dense um. It's
very thick, and it's great for newborns who find it
difficult to digest at that point because it does have
(04:55):
that low fat content, and its role is to coat
the baby's digestive t with beneficial bacteria and act actually
is a laxative and the reason for this is that
it helps the baby clear any excess billy reuben from
its system, which if you didn't clear that would uh
may actually result in having a jaundice or something along
(05:17):
those lines. Then that's like baby poo. Well, the term
for baby pooh actually is maconium. But it's this billy
rub in, this excess amount that that the baby's body
actually wants to get rid of, and it does that
through excreting okay, pop, and this helps facilitate that process.
So it's it's it's like it's not not just milk
(05:38):
as they a product of the mother as much as
like it's this targeted um biological agent. It's really doing
certain unique things that we can continue to discuss here,
a certain unique things that will aid that new creature survival.
That's right, has a lot to do with immunity and
just kind of setting up a kid's system for life really,
(06:00):
So how long have we had mammalion milk? At least
a hundred and sixty million years? And again this seems
sort of like one of those things take totally for granted, like, oh, yes,
we've have hasn't this always been going on? Um? But
the Bovine Lactation Genome Consortium compared one hundred and ninety
seven milk and memory genes from cattle in more than
(06:22):
six thousand memory related genes with other genes in the
bovine KENO. And these genes were then compared with similar
ones from a platypus and a possum human, a dog
and mouse, and a rat. And they use this data
to figure out that the most common ancestor of the
animal or these animals would have lived about a hundred
(06:42):
and sixty million years ago. But mammals origins actually go
back to a mammal like reptile called synapsids, and that's uh,
that actually occurs in the fossil record about three hundred
and ten million years ago, so one d and sixty
million at least. Okay, And from there we see like
(07:05):
again just a number of different varieties of milk. The
nutritional specifics of that milk is going to vary from
species to species. Uh, some of it is just really incredible.
Like I was reading about the blue whale. Um, the
blue a newborn blue whale feeding just on milk will
gain two hundred pounds a day, which is which is incredible.
(07:27):
I mean that, and that just shows you the I
mean the importance of the milk. It's like it's it's
taking this fledgling creature, this um that that by all
rights and purposes, is not long for this world. It
makes all the difference by just pumping just vast amounts
of food and nutrient into the body. Yeah. One of
the things that the researchers found that was similar across
(07:47):
all species is that the milk proteins related to secreting
the milk remain the same, so that across the species,
same thing the place where they diverged with the nutritional
and immunological components of the milk. And of course, if
you've got a baby wheel that's gaining two hundred pounds
a day, it's going to be stocked in a different
way with nutrients. Um. So let's give some more examples
(08:11):
of other species in what they're up to with with
milk and breastfeeding. All right, well this this is a
not particularly scientific but I found it interesting in the
rest on the less, according to a Telegraph article, Um,
the milk of the giraffe is technically kosher. Um. They're
(08:31):
they're the Safari Park Zoo and Rama Ghan it's Israel's
largest zoo. They had a team that took a root
teen samples of milk and found that it clotted in
the way required by Jewish law for kosher certification. Uh.
They submitted more milk for verification. So the rabbi's waged
in and they found that giraffe milk, but also giraffe
(08:52):
meat was acceptable for observant juice. So there you go,
giraffe on the menu. Um. Okay, Well, let's look at
our friends, chimpanzees and binobos. They actually wean they're young
at the age of four or five, whereas guerrillas do
about a year earlier. Um. And they you know, anthropologists
aren't quite sure why that's the case, like why there
(09:14):
would be a differentiation there. Um. You know, you I
guess you could guess that it had to do with
maybe the society or the community that these animals are
living in and um, some of the different things that
they're up against. UM. But one of the things I
wanted to point out is that anthropologists have studied the
weaning customs of hunter gatherer societies, societies, human societies, and
(09:37):
they found a significant variation within them. They actually talked
about the Kung sand of the Kahlari Desert and they
stopped breastfeeding at around four or five years of age.
The Hodsa of Tanzania ween about six months earlier than
the Kung, and the Auchi people of Paraguay queen earlier
(09:58):
at about three years of a. So again there's there's
this idea of that human culture and lifestyles influenced that.
Now here in the West, UM. And this is from
the Christian Science Monitor, only an estimated thirty five percent
of American moms are exclusively breastfeeding their children at three months,
even though the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests about six
(10:21):
months to be the cutoff date. And then less than
half of moms nurse at all at six months, So
you can see there's obviously a huge decline in the
West when it comes to breastfeeding and UM and weaning UM.
And then of course the numbers of breastfeeding moms dropped
significantly as the child get older. As the child gets older,
(10:43):
And this has been in the media a lot because
Time recently ran this cover. I don't know if you
remember this, but it was I think it was maybe
a model who was still breastfeeding her child at the
age of three. Yeah. Yeah, this was the cover that
was kind of controversial, and it was one of those
situations where the the internet. I don't know that I
ever saw the original cover. I just saw various um
(11:05):
takes on it and where they would like replace the
mom with I don't know, like the creature from Alien
or something, you know, and I forget, we forget what
all the other versions were. But but but yeah, it's
caused quite sure it did, and well because it's it's
uncommon um again in you know, the West, particularly United States,
for a mother to breastfeed at that age. But also
(11:28):
there was you know, a firestorm of controversy because people
thought that the way that it was portrayed it was
sexualizing the act. And again going back to breastfeeding and laws,
at least here in the United States, it makes me
think about how we sometimes really trying to divorce ourselves
from our animal selves and why this topic becomes um
(11:49):
controversial in the first place. Yeah, and you you do
often see it and just thinking of a various like
you know, the sitcom's movies, even the there's a there's
a character in Game of Thrones where it's this sort
of crazy mom character and she's still breastfeeding her sickly
child at a very um in a fairly advanced age. Um,
(12:11):
and it's you know, it's it's depicted as something unnatural
and kind of monstrous. But but but again that's from
the western uh viewpoint on the topic. And and certainly,
like like a lot of things that end up disgusting
some people, it's it's the idea that anything that connects
us to our animal nature, be it uh, be it
something like like breastfeeding or something having to do with
(12:33):
our digestive properties. Um it, you know, it reminds us
of our bodies in a way that we don't like
to think about. Yeah. And but of course there are
a lot of proponents of breastfeeding. They're out there. They're
again trying to influence legislation and try to educate people
about the benefits of that. The problem is is that
not only do you have this this idea of the
(12:54):
animal self that that people sort of need to try
to get their heads around. Um. But you also have
the problem of modern society itself where it does it's
not really set up to support a breastfeeding woman. Yeah,
and I mean you end up with the situation, Yeah,
it's not set up to support breastfeeding women. And then
so and and if it is, it's something that's in
(13:16):
a closet somewhere, right, you're referring to a lot of work. Um,
so it remains the thing you stick away in a
closet or like O, I'll do that at home. And
and so there's no I mean, there's reduced public awareness
of it. So it remains kind of taboo because it's
not out in the open um right right. In Maternity
(13:36):
leave is pretty spotty too, because I mean it's like
what six weeks fm L a Family Medical Leave Act
that that you're allowed to take unpaid, but not every
business actually um will pay you or actually say okay,
take that six weeks and then take some more vacation time. UM.
(13:58):
So anyway, it's spotty cross the board, and it's not
really set up to do that. Um. Okay, so I
think that we have covered some the basics of breast
milk humans and and other species. Uh, so we should
probably take a break. When we get back, we'll talk
about whether or not possible from man to breash speed. Alright,
(14:22):
we're back mail like cation now. I've certainly heard of
cases where individuals who use antibox steroids UM can can
produce milk through their nipples. And in fact, that's what
I think of every time I see a container of
muscle milk in the store. I think of like a big, big, beefy,
bald headed like pro wrestler, just like squeezing off container
(14:43):
after container and putting directly in the fridge at the store.
That's frightening. What is muscle milk? Um? It is a
it is a I've never had it, but my understanding,
it's say, like a nutritious like bodybuilding kind of macho beverage.
It's like like, hey, brow, we're gonna go out and
we're gonna let's list some weights and then we're gonna
have some muscle milk in the car, gonna dunk our
(15:04):
oreos into our muscle milk. Yeah, that's not very much.
It was. It's just I mean, it's one of those
things like it's not it's like it's a milk I product,
it's mussel milk. It's supposed to sound like macho and inviting,
but it sounds weird and unnatural. Yeah, which maybe it is.
Maybe it's up um, but yes, okay, so you you
know of it in that instance, right, where the body
(15:26):
has been tinkered with a bit because of steroids or medication,
and all of a sudden a man starts producing breast milk. Yeah,
or just in general sort of trauma to the body. Right.
You had an anecdote about foreign prisoners of war, right, Yeah,
I don't remember that. It's World War Two. They were
starving and when they finally started to get some nutrition
(15:49):
sorted to eat, their body was so out of sorts
that all of their hormones spiked, including prolactin, which actually
caused them to start actating as well. And this prolactin
is really important and pregnant women, it begins to really
sort of um, get flowing through the body. And this
(16:10):
is an advance of this idea that you're going to
go ahead and breastfeed, and so your body starts to
prepare itself. But this Prolactin is produced by the pituitary gland.
So the pituitary gland really important obviously in producing this.
And the pituitary gland can be influenced also by say
another medical condition like a tumor, and UH inadvertently start
(16:30):
producing prolactin. That's another way that a male could start lactating.
But this is really interesting to me, is this um
these instances where men start lactating because of a dire need.
And what I mean to say is that they're in
a situation where they're um, the mother of their child
(16:51):
may have passed away or be gravely ill in psychologically.
What happens is that this kicks up the pituitary gland
and to produce a the prolactin. And so there have
been documented cases of this. There was a a case
in two thousand and two of a thirty eight year
old managed Sri Lanka, who nursed his two daughters through
their infancy after his wife died during childbirth. Yeah, and
(17:14):
again it's important to stress not every male mammal had
even has the equipment. They lacked both the memory glands
and a maturity glands to to get things pumping. But
but male humans have those, so it's just a matter
of kickstarting them. Yeah. We've talked about this before about
how we're pretty much all stocked with the same stuff
when when we're first developing, and then of course horn
(17:36):
wounds helped to define those boundaries as biological boundaries. Um,
because you're gonna again look at them. The male human
as just a necessary mutation, as the female is more
or less species and male is a take on that
particular model to fulfill a certain evolutionary purpose. Yeah. Jack Newman,
he's a Toronto based doctor and breastfeeding expert, has said
(17:58):
that this isn't too crazy that that men would have nipples,
need have some breast tissue that would allow us to happen.
He says, up until certain age, boys and girls as
fetuses are indistinguishable, so women retain some remnants of the
vast difference, which is then which then becomes the vaginal
canal that sperm follows. So again we're all sort of
hard baked with this stuff here. And if we look
(18:20):
elsewhere in the animal kingdom, we do find at least
one example of a mammalian creature that has uh parental lactation.
That's uh, that's males that are not only producing milk,
but they're actually breastfeeding as part of their natural behavior.
And that is a particular fruit bat called the day
(18:41):
at fruit bat, which will find in Malaysia, Thailand, and
the Philippines and uh and it is the only known
occurrence of parental lactation where the males are actually producing
milk perhaps two. The theory is that it's to help
alleviate the the lactation pressure placed on the females in
the fruit back community. Okay, so in certain dire um
(19:05):
circumstances as well in a different way, right, Yeah, I
mean it's um. I mean it would be kind of like,
you know, on an evolutionary basis, if it's like mom
and dad, and like Mom's just super busy, Mom has
a job on top of looking after the kids, and
daddy fruit bat eventually develops the ability to nurse them
as well. It's like it's like Buster, not Buster Michael Keaton,
(19:27):
Was it Mr Mom? Right? Like? Imagine him as the
fruit bat with lacktating nipples. Wow? Yeah, I don't want to.
So are you saying in the future, as women continue
to um dominate the workforce of academia, that men might
start breastfeeding perhaps, I mean, I mean it's uh, it's
it's the it's the sort of thing that that happens.
(19:49):
So we look at the fruit bats as a potential model,
and you could you could see that happening over a
long period of time, because again, we have the equipment.
It's just a matter of kickstarting that equipment. Yeah, evidence
of happening happening when arises. Alright, So okay, that's breastfeeding
within your own species. What about this idea that we
(20:12):
started not breastfeeding from other uh species, although some that
does happens. And remus right to the classic image of
the of the two children drinking the milk of the
Was it a cow or was it a sheep? I
always focus on the children and the outer I tend
not to notice what the animals, to see what the
utter is attached to. Um. Yeah, so when did we
(20:34):
actually start drinking other species milk? Is the question. Years ago,
we have these humans and obviously up until an age
of about four or five, they are drinking milk. They're
drinking their mother's milk. But then uh that the ability
to consume milk fades away. They become a lactose intolerant, okay,
And because they don't have what is called lact taste,
(20:59):
which is an design that we eventually developed. It allows
us to digest the complex milk sugar lactose um. Without lactase,
we are lactose intolerant, and consuming milk causes diarrhea. Well,
and it's interesting to see that this UM, this is
coinciding with populations turning to agrarian societies. UM. In other words,
(21:23):
they're cattle, and the cattle are producing milk, and we'll
find and they'll find themselves in situations probably where the
there's there's less water available, there's less food available. So
what do you do. You turn to the milk. And
when you turn to the milk, some people are going
to be able to tolerate it more than others. And
(21:44):
the theory is then that when times get particularly dire,
the people who are able to turn to animal milk
for survival survive, and those who can't end up either
having to starve or they're just or they're dying from
the intense diarrhea that results from lactose intolerant. And and
again this is in Central Europe. We're not talking about
(22:04):
other parts of the world here. Yeah, we are talking
about pioneer a Grarians who are based initially in Central
Europe and then moving to northern Europe. So hence the
pioneer part, and hence the fact that they would have
crops or cattle that that weren't doing so well and
so they'd have to turn to the milk um for nutritions. So,
(22:25):
I mean, it's pretty crazy because it's um and you
think of lactose intolerant. Like, growing up, I just knew that, oh,
some people can't drink milk. That's kind of weird, right, um.
But but but when you, you you know, you become educated
on the on the topic, you realize that the reality
is a lot weirder. It's like, at one point in
our path, um, you know, years ago, a genetic mutation
(22:49):
allows us to drink the milk of other creatures. Again,
think of milk. Is this immune system boosting, nutritious, targeted
um fluid that is secreted by a specific mother for
her offspring within that species, and then we we suddenly
have a genetic mutation that allows us to drink from
it as well too. In a way, um, like it's
(23:11):
it's almost like this parasitic relationship that we evolve to
have with our cattle. Yeah, and the evidence is there. Um.
Using genetic and archaeological data, Mark Thomas and colleagues at
University College in London were able to trace down the
first evidence of black case um being actually used in
(23:32):
adulthood to exactly when you see the beginning of the
linear bandcarum um nick culture. Quite the word twister there,
tongue twister and this is an ancient Neolithic culture. So
you see that you've got some evidence there that this
is happening then um and yeah, I mean when it
comes the choice between life and death, your you know,
(23:54):
these cultures are going to adapt and as you say,
we're going to be able to thenly enough change our
our own biology to be able to handle this. Yeah.
I mean like when when I have accidentally tasted some
of the kitten milk formula and it can and not
in a bottle, I wasn't nursing good. But you know,
(24:16):
if times we're rough, if I was, if it was
like if there was nothing else in the fridge and
there was just kitten milk, you know, I might throw
back a cannibate. See what happens and it's the same situation, right,
and then if it caused me to have intense diarrhea,
I might die, And if it didn't then I might
survive and we would have a new breed of humans
that would take over the household. Who who can handle
(24:39):
kitten chitten lectas? Yeah, pretty interesting. This is a news
item for about from about a year and a half ago.
But scientists in China are actually trying to create cows
who produce more human like milk. It is interesting and
some people say this is not necessarily a bad thing
because um, you know, imparts the world's very difficult to
(25:02):
to get breast milk uh for human babies and as
you say, this is this is so important to their lives.
Can be rather inpensive, Yes, for me, can be really expensive.
For this may be something that may be readily available.
It seems a bit odd, yes, but there's definitely a
need for it. Um. I should also point out there
are there are also scientists who think we need to
(25:24):
turn to other creatures milk to depend on rather than
cows uh. International team of scientists from the Marine Research
Institute in the Netherlands. UH. They might be argument that
that whales are the answer, particularly the minky whale which
has a has the milk from this particular whale has
a higher fat content, but it's but it's full of
(25:44):
Omega three three fatty acids. So um. They've actually conducted
experiments with like milking pods for milking bays for the
whales in in the fields of the Norway, which is
which is pretty interesting. The idea that you might be
able to go to the store one day and you're
not depending on it's much on cow milk, but maybe
whale milk or wilk. I guess, I don't know. I
(26:07):
feel like I'll have a little bit of whale milk
with my herring. It just seems so, I don't know.
And if you're staying kosher or you can stick with
your raft, right, I see the Mega three part because
that's great for inflammation and for keeping disease at bay.
But the other thing about these about the whales, I
told you about the two hundred pounds a day that
the baby blues are packing on. Well, um, the minkies
(26:29):
that they had in these milking bays, they found that uh,
once they were hooked up, the milking took about fifty
minutes and produced uh one thousand, six hundred liters of
milk or uh two thousand, eight hundred and fifteen pints
compared with a typical cow's forty of milk. So would
they just keep these whales in these bays? Is that
(26:50):
the idea? Um? I would hope they get to sort
of free range a little bit, like they get to
swim around and then they come in and uh, and
then they milk them there, because I don't like the
idea of keeping him well, you know, prisoned and producing
milk whatll I was just thinking about cows in the
way that those um are dairy cows and the way
(27:11):
that their milk is extracted and all the antibiotics and
all the issues surrounding that. Um. So, yeah, you would
hope that the whales wouldn't have the same plan. I
guess you'd have to hurt him in or hire you know,
some sort of traditional like Norwegian mermaid creature to do
it for you. Oh yeah, and they are readily available. Yeah, well,
a lot of them as as we'll discussing a Mermaid
(27:31):
episode that we're going to record, a lot of the
Mermaids you encounter in various full tales are herdsmen or
hurts women, and they are hurts people and they are
attending to like aquatic bovine herds, which I guess maybe whales.
So it all comes back around. All right, let's talk
about some of the really cool healing properties of breast milk,
(27:52):
because we talked about the benefit to the kids, to
the babies. But um, you know, it turns out that
and this is very interesting, that breast milk has a
protein in it that could, or rather a substance that
can actually kill some cancer cells. Um. This is from
a two thousand and ten study carried out by researchers
(28:13):
at Lund University in the University of Gothenburg and Sweden.
Patients with cancer of the bladder who were treated with
the substance excreted dead cancer cells in their urine after
each treatment, and the substance has been dubbed hamlet okay
human alpha lactical human made lethal to tumor cells interesting okay,
(28:37):
and laboratory experiments have shown that hamlet kills forty different
types of cancer, and researchers are not going on to
study its effects on skin, cancer tumors in the mucous
membranes and brain tumors. Um and and this is the
really great part about this is that these hamlets, uh,
this hamlet substance killed only cancer cells and does not
affect healthy cells. It's cool. And that just comes back
(28:59):
around to you to our defining of milk and and
looking at it is not merely this food product that's
like that that is coming out of a creature, but
it is, uh, it is it is something that is
I mean in a sense, it's like like all food
is more than just the thing that you eat to
satisfy what you're doing. And I mean, it is the
thing that you build your body out of, and it
(29:20):
that heals the body and and uh and and that's
what what milk is. Yeah, And let's talk about third
world countries where where you have different diseases that we
don't necessarily have to deal with um in first world countries.
Among the infectious diseases, diarrheal disease is one of the
leading causes of morbidity and mortality, causing an estimated five
(29:40):
million deaths per year in children under the age of
five years of age, eighty percent of which occurs in
the first two years of life. So there was a
study called anti microbial activity of breast milk against common
pediatric pathogens. And what they said is that the spectrum
of anti microbial activity of breast milk was deter amend
using nine common bacterial pathogens of infants and children on
(30:04):
in vitriol essays. And they said using a commercial milk
formula as a control, breast milk was found to exert
bacterial bacterial tidal activity in other words, killing the bacteria
in these pathogens against Vibrio cholera and bacteriostasis for enteric
pathogens like E. Coli, seminila, and chicola. Wow. So again
(30:28):
it comes back to boosting up the newborn and just
enhancing its ability to survive or I mean making its
survival possible, but also boosting its immunity against other potentially
lethal diseases and ailments. So there you go, milk. Well
we should there's one there's one last thing, uh that
we should mentioned in talking about the evolution of of
(30:52):
this this mutation that allowed Europeans to actually drink the
milk of other animals. There's also the macho milk theory.
Oh yeah, I forgot about this. Yeah, And this one
is this is a this is not a very probable idea,
but it's it's so amusing that we have to mention it.
So the theory is that you go back to Neolithic
times and um, you know, everybody's hanging out. Uh, the
(31:14):
men are hanging out, and they're they're engaging in these
drinking games with uh, with what's around to drink. Right,
there's a bunch of cow milk not getting used. So
they they line and line them up, line up a
few I don't know, bowls or skull caps full of
the stuff, right, and they start throwing them back, um,
you know, and seeing who can, who can drink the
(31:35):
most without becoming horribly ill and if you can, if
you can take you know, several skull caps full of
of cow's milk and you don't get sick, and you're
one of the boys and you can hang and if not,
then you're not very cool, I guess. But that's the
theory that that did this serve to to kick start
our our lactose tolerance. I'm just trying to imagine it.
(31:58):
Put hair on your chest, you feel like, and it's
the original muscle milk in this stuff. Yeah, it is
all right milk. Yeah, So uh, and milk. Milk is
one of those topics we get into milk and breasting.
There are a number of topics that that stem off
from this um and you can really get into into
into into a little more lengthy discussions of of culture
(32:22):
and and then there's this whole area of of lactophilia
that we we may uh cover at some future point,
but but hopefully this will serve as a nice introduction
and a reminder of just how amazing uh milk is
and how it really uh puts such mammals apart, and
uh you know, and why I should think about it
(32:43):
when you when you have a glass of of of
real milk or or or fake milk. I mean, that's
the other thing to think about. Like when we we
have like the glass of soy, we're still replicating the experience,
uh somewhat of the of the the actual a million milk.
Always think it's funny that we call it soy milk.
It's like this psychological you know, chasm that we're trying
(33:03):
to you know, breach because we're like, okay, I can't
it's milk, right, it's white, um, but it's not milk.
But it's okay because we call the milk. I'm a
proponent of swim, don't get me wrong, but I find
that interesting. Well, tell us what you have to thank
if you would like to reach out to us and
(33:24):
uh and chat with us about about milk, as it's
produced by mammals, as it's purchased at the store, as
it may or may not have played into drinking games
in the past. Uh, let us know we'd love to
hear from you. You You can find us on Facebook for starters,
where our handle is stuff to Blow Your Mind, and
on Twitter you can find us under blow the Mind
and you can always drop us a line that blew
(33:45):
the mind at how Stafford's dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Works dot com. You are out the pony
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
You know, milk is one of those things that we
really take for granted. I mean, it's, uh, it's a
certain amount of This is kind of an outragious overstatement
(00:24):
the obvious, but milk is this amazing, nutritious beverage that
is produced by a mammal so that a larval mammal
can can grow and and develop and uh and actually
have a shot at life. Yeah. Yeah, when you think
of milk, you should probably just think about the milk
(00:45):
campaign got milk? Yeah, um, But if you think about
it in a different way, it's it's actually in the
news quite a bit in the form of breastfeeding, and
I just wanted to mention that it's it is interesting
when you think about breastfeeding is becoming this polar de
sized action because it is natural to mammals to do this,
and yet legislation exists so that people, humans can actually
(01:10):
breastfeed in public. Believe it or not. Um, the the
the human human breast exists um solely to to to
nurture another creature. Despite all the other things you see
breast doing UM in our media and in our art
and our world at large. I mean, this is the
one thing that they're here for, and it's the one
(01:32):
thing that some people get up tied about and say, ah,
that needs to be that needs to happen behind closed doors.
So pull that out on the train. Yeah, I know,
it's crazy. Here in the United States, forty five states,
the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands have laws
that specifically allow women to breastfeed in any public or
private location. Twenty eight states, as well as the District
(01:53):
of Columbia and the Virgin Islands again exempt breastfeeding from
public indecency laws. Uh No. In twenty four states, including
d C in Puerto Rico, have laws related to breastfeeding
in the workplace. That the fact that we even have
to have laws in the workplace to make sure that
breastfeeding can occurs is just kind of odd. Yeah, because well,
we're not talking about public urination here or or or defecation.
(02:17):
I mean, this is this and this is a This
is not a waste producing act. This is a UM,
a life giving act. That's part of the natural mammal process. Yeah,
and as we discovered, it's not just mother's milk. Um,
it's it's also someone else's milk. But I'm not gonna
spoil that right now. I'm not going to spoil that plot. Um.
(02:41):
But let's talk about what exactly milk is. Yeah, and
this is this also sounds kind of like an outrageous question.
What is milk? What's that stuff that comes out of
out of a mammal's breast. It's that stuff that you
buy at the grocery market and the big, big containers.
It's that stuff and that can that I take back
to the kitten in the morning and occasionally accidentally drink
(03:03):
out of. Um, it's kind of chalky, you know. Yeah,
but but no, um, Yeah, what what is milk when
you when you break it down and you actually look
at the formula, Well, it's basically a complex emulsion of antibodies,
flat globules and water and a fine dispersion of suspension
(03:23):
or suspension of cassine macellis. And these are proteins that
supply amino acids, carbohydrates, calcium, and phosphorus. And the interesting
thing about this is that fat, protein, and sugar content
differs across the million species. Yeah, and it differs quite
a lot. Um For example, that the fat content of
milk may be as high as six and seals uh
(03:47):
and completely negligible in the early lactation stages of something
like a wallaby. Um. And then you get it into
interesting distinctions there too, because uh, some some mammal milk
is just straight up you know, the pretty much the
same formula nutritions from from the early stages of lactation
through the latter stages of lactation. Other animals, the chemistry
(04:10):
the milk changes a bit as they go on, fulfilling
fulfilling certain biological needs early on and becoming more nutritious
as as the uh, as the the animal progresses. Yeah.
And in humans, breast milk actually isn't even produced right away. Instead,
a substance called colostrum, sometimes called liquid gold, is produced
(04:32):
before a woman's milk comes in, and claustrum is um.
It's high in carbohydrates, high in protein, high in antibodies,
and low and fat. And it's called liquid gold because
there's not a whole lot of it that's produced. But
the stuff that is produced is really dense um. It's
very thick, and it's great for newborns who find it
difficult to digest at that point because it does have
(04:55):
that low fat content, and its role is to coat
the baby's digestive t with beneficial bacteria and act actually
is a laxative and the reason for this is that
it helps the baby clear any excess billy reuben from
its system, which if you didn't clear that would uh
may actually result in having a jaundice or something along
(05:17):
those lines. Then that's like baby poo. Well, the term
for baby pooh actually is maconium. But it's this billy
rub in, this excess amount that that the baby's body
actually wants to get rid of, and it does that
through excreting okay, pop, and this helps facilitate that process.
So it's it's it's like it's not not just milk
(05:38):
as they a product of the mother as much as
like it's this targeted um biological agent. It's really doing
certain unique things that we can continue to discuss here,
a certain unique things that will aid that new creature survival.
That's right, has a lot to do with immunity and
just kind of setting up a kid's system for life really,
(06:00):
So how long have we had mammalion milk? At least
a hundred and sixty million years? And again this seems
sort of like one of those things take totally for granted, like, oh, yes,
we've have hasn't this always been going on? Um? But
the Bovine Lactation Genome Consortium compared one hundred and ninety
seven milk and memory genes from cattle in more than
(06:22):
six thousand memory related genes with other genes in the
bovine KENO. And these genes were then compared with similar
ones from a platypus and a possum human, a dog
and mouse, and a rat. And they use this data
to figure out that the most common ancestor of the
animal or these animals would have lived about a hundred
(06:42):
and sixty million years ago. But mammals origins actually go
back to a mammal like reptile called synapsids, and that's uh,
that actually occurs in the fossil record about three hundred
and ten million years ago, so one d and sixty
million at least. Okay, And from there we see like
(07:05):
again just a number of different varieties of milk. The
nutritional specifics of that milk is going to vary from
species to species. Uh, some of it is just really incredible.
Like I was reading about the blue whale. Um, the
blue a newborn blue whale feeding just on milk will
gain two hundred pounds a day, which is which is incredible.
(07:27):
I mean that, and that just shows you the I
mean the importance of the milk. It's like it's it's
taking this fledgling creature, this um that that by all
rights and purposes, is not long for this world. It
makes all the difference by just pumping just vast amounts
of food and nutrient into the body. Yeah. One of
the things that the researchers found that was similar across
(07:47):
all species is that the milk proteins related to secreting
the milk remain the same, so that across the species,
same thing the place where they diverged with the nutritional
and immunological components of the milk. And of course, if
you've got a baby wheel that's gaining two hundred pounds
a day, it's going to be stocked in a different
way with nutrients. Um. So let's give some more examples
(08:11):
of other species in what they're up to with with
milk and breastfeeding. All right, well this this is a
not particularly scientific but I found it interesting in the
rest on the less, according to a Telegraph article, Um,
the milk of the giraffe is technically kosher. Um. They're
(08:31):
they're the Safari Park Zoo and Rama Ghan it's Israel's
largest zoo. They had a team that took a root
teen samples of milk and found that it clotted in
the way required by Jewish law for kosher certification. Uh.
They submitted more milk for verification. So the rabbi's waged
in and they found that giraffe milk, but also giraffe
(08:52):
meat was acceptable for observant juice. So there you go,
giraffe on the menu. Um. Okay, Well, let's look at
our friends, chimpanzees and binobos. They actually wean they're young
at the age of four or five, whereas guerrillas do
about a year earlier. Um. And they you know, anthropologists
aren't quite sure why that's the case, like why there
(09:14):
would be a differentiation there. Um. You know, you I
guess you could guess that it had to do with
maybe the society or the community that these animals are
living in and um, some of the different things that
they're up against. UM. But one of the things I
wanted to point out is that anthropologists have studied the
weaning customs of hunter gatherer societies, societies, human societies, and
(09:37):
they found a significant variation within them. They actually talked
about the Kung sand of the Kahlari Desert and they
stopped breastfeeding at around four or five years of age.
The Hodsa of Tanzania ween about six months earlier than
the Kung, and the Auchi people of Paraguay queen earlier
(09:58):
at about three years of a. So again there's there's
this idea of that human culture and lifestyles influenced that.
Now here in the West, UM. And this is from
the Christian Science Monitor, only an estimated thirty five percent
of American moms are exclusively breastfeeding their children at three months,
even though the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests about six
(10:21):
months to be the cutoff date. And then less than
half of moms nurse at all at six months, So
you can see there's obviously a huge decline in the
West when it comes to breastfeeding and UM and weaning UM.
And then of course the numbers of breastfeeding moms dropped
significantly as the child get older. As the child gets older,
(10:43):
And this has been in the media a lot because
Time recently ran this cover. I don't know if you
remember this, but it was I think it was maybe
a model who was still breastfeeding her child at the
age of three. Yeah. Yeah, this was the cover that
was kind of controversial, and it was one of those
situations where the the internet. I don't know that I
ever saw the original cover. I just saw various um
(11:05):
takes on it and where they would like replace the
mom with I don't know, like the creature from Alien
or something, you know, and I forget, we forget what
all the other versions were. But but but yeah, it's
caused quite sure it did, and well because it's it's
uncommon um again in you know, the West, particularly United States,
for a mother to breastfeed at that age. But also
(11:28):
there was you know, a firestorm of controversy because people
thought that the way that it was portrayed it was
sexualizing the act. And again going back to breastfeeding and laws,
at least here in the United States, it makes me
think about how we sometimes really trying to divorce ourselves
from our animal selves and why this topic becomes um
(11:49):
controversial in the first place. Yeah, and you you do
often see it and just thinking of a various like
you know, the sitcom's movies, even the there's a there's
a character in Game of Thrones where it's this sort
of crazy mom character and she's still breastfeeding her sickly
child at a very um in a fairly advanced age. Um,
(12:11):
and it's you know, it's it's depicted as something unnatural
and kind of monstrous. But but but again that's from
the western uh viewpoint on the topic. And and certainly,
like like a lot of things that end up disgusting
some people, it's it's the idea that anything that connects
us to our animal nature, be it uh, be it
something like like breastfeeding or something having to do with
(12:33):
our digestive properties. Um it, you know, it reminds us
of our bodies in a way that we don't like
to think about. Yeah. And but of course there are
a lot of proponents of breastfeeding. They're out there. They're
again trying to influence legislation and try to educate people
about the benefits of that. The problem is is that
not only do you have this this idea of the
(12:54):
animal self that that people sort of need to try
to get their heads around. Um. But you also have
the problem of modern society itself where it does it's
not really set up to support a breastfeeding woman. Yeah,
and I mean you end up with the situation, Yeah,
it's not set up to support breastfeeding women. And then
so and and if it is, it's something that's in
(13:16):
a closet somewhere, right, you're referring to a lot of work. Um,
so it remains the thing you stick away in a
closet or like O, I'll do that at home. And
and so there's no I mean, there's reduced public awareness
of it. So it remains kind of taboo because it's
not out in the open um right right. In Maternity
(13:36):
leave is pretty spotty too, because I mean it's like
what six weeks fm L a Family Medical Leave Act
that that you're allowed to take unpaid, but not every
business actually um will pay you or actually say okay,
take that six weeks and then take some more vacation time. UM.
(13:58):
So anyway, it's spotty cross the board, and it's not
really set up to do that. Um. Okay, so I
think that we have covered some the basics of breast
milk humans and and other species. Uh, so we should
probably take a break. When we get back, we'll talk
about whether or not possible from man to breash speed. Alright,
(14:22):
we're back mail like cation now. I've certainly heard of
cases where individuals who use antibox steroids UM can can
produce milk through their nipples. And in fact, that's what
I think of every time I see a container of
muscle milk in the store. I think of like a big, big, beefy,
bald headed like pro wrestler, just like squeezing off container
(14:43):
after container and putting directly in the fridge at the store.
That's frightening. What is muscle milk? Um? It is a
it is a I've never had it, but my understanding,
it's say, like a nutritious like bodybuilding kind of macho beverage.
It's like like, hey, brow, we're gonna go out and
we're gonna let's list some weights and then we're gonna
have some muscle milk in the car, gonna dunk our
(15:04):
oreos into our muscle milk. Yeah, that's not very much.
It was. It's just I mean, it's one of those
things like it's not it's like it's a milk I product,
it's mussel milk. It's supposed to sound like macho and inviting,
but it sounds weird and unnatural. Yeah, which maybe it is.
Maybe it's up um, but yes, okay, so you you
know of it in that instance, right, where the body
(15:26):
has been tinkered with a bit because of steroids or medication,
and all of a sudden a man starts producing breast milk. Yeah,
or just in general sort of trauma to the body. Right.
You had an anecdote about foreign prisoners of war, right, Yeah,
I don't remember that. It's World War Two. They were
starving and when they finally started to get some nutrition
(15:49):
sorted to eat, their body was so out of sorts
that all of their hormones spiked, including prolactin, which actually
caused them to start actating as well. And this prolactin
is really important and pregnant women, it begins to really
sort of um, get flowing through the body. And this
(16:10):
is an advance of this idea that you're going to
go ahead and breastfeed, and so your body starts to
prepare itself. But this Prolactin is produced by the pituitary gland.
So the pituitary gland really important obviously in producing this.
And the pituitary gland can be influenced also by say
another medical condition like a tumor, and UH inadvertently start
(16:30):
producing prolactin. That's another way that a male could start lactating.
But this is really interesting to me, is this um
these instances where men start lactating because of a dire need.
And what I mean to say is that they're in
a situation where they're um, the mother of their child
(16:51):
may have passed away or be gravely ill in psychologically.
What happens is that this kicks up the pituitary gland
and to produce a the prolactin. And so there have
been documented cases of this. There was a a case
in two thousand and two of a thirty eight year
old managed Sri Lanka, who nursed his two daughters through
their infancy after his wife died during childbirth. Yeah, and
(17:14):
again it's important to stress not every male mammal had
even has the equipment. They lacked both the memory glands
and a maturity glands to to get things pumping. But
but male humans have those, so it's just a matter
of kickstarting them. Yeah. We've talked about this before about
how we're pretty much all stocked with the same stuff
when when we're first developing, and then of course horn
(17:36):
wounds helped to define those boundaries as biological boundaries. Um,
because you're gonna again look at them. The male human
as just a necessary mutation, as the female is more
or less species and male is a take on that
particular model to fulfill a certain evolutionary purpose. Yeah. Jack Newman,
he's a Toronto based doctor and breastfeeding expert, has said
(17:58):
that this isn't too crazy that that men would have nipples,
need have some breast tissue that would allow us to happen.
He says, up until certain age, boys and girls as
fetuses are indistinguishable, so women retain some remnants of the
vast difference, which is then which then becomes the vaginal
canal that sperm follows. So again we're all sort of
hard baked with this stuff here. And if we look
(18:20):
elsewhere in the animal kingdom, we do find at least
one example of a mammalian creature that has uh parental lactation.
That's uh, that's males that are not only producing milk,
but they're actually breastfeeding as part of their natural behavior.
And that is a particular fruit bat called the day
(18:41):
at fruit bat, which will find in Malaysia, Thailand, and
the Philippines and uh and it is the only known
occurrence of parental lactation where the males are actually producing
milk perhaps two. The theory is that it's to help
alleviate the the lactation pressure placed on the females in
the fruit back community. Okay, so in certain dire um
(19:05):
circumstances as well in a different way, right, Yeah, I
mean it's um. I mean it would be kind of like,
you know, on an evolutionary basis, if it's like mom
and dad, and like Mom's just super busy, Mom has
a job on top of looking after the kids, and
daddy fruit bat eventually develops the ability to nurse them
as well. It's like it's like Buster, not Buster Michael Keaton,
(19:27):
Was it Mr Mom? Right? Like? Imagine him as the
fruit bat with lacktating nipples. Wow? Yeah, I don't want to.
So are you saying in the future, as women continue
to um dominate the workforce of academia, that men might
start breastfeeding perhaps, I mean, I mean it's uh, it's
it's the it's the sort of thing that that happens.
(19:49):
So we look at the fruit bats as a potential model,
and you could you could see that happening over a
long period of time, because again, we have the equipment.
It's just a matter of kickstarting that equipment. Yeah, evidence
of happening happening when arises. Alright, So okay, that's breastfeeding
within your own species. What about this idea that we
(20:12):
started not breastfeeding from other uh species, although some that
does happens. And remus right to the classic image of
the of the two children drinking the milk of the
Was it a cow or was it a sheep? I
always focus on the children and the outer I tend
not to notice what the animals, to see what the
utter is attached to. Um. Yeah, so when did we
(20:34):
actually start drinking other species milk? Is the question. Years ago,
we have these humans and obviously up until an age
of about four or five, they are drinking milk. They're
drinking their mother's milk. But then uh that the ability
to consume milk fades away. They become a lactose intolerant, okay,
And because they don't have what is called lact taste,
(20:59):
which is an design that we eventually developed. It allows
us to digest the complex milk sugar lactose um. Without lactase,
we are lactose intolerant, and consuming milk causes diarrhea. Well,
and it's interesting to see that this UM, this is
coinciding with populations turning to agrarian societies. UM. In other words,
(21:23):
they're cattle, and the cattle are producing milk, and we'll
find and they'll find themselves in situations probably where the
there's there's less water available, there's less food available. So
what do you do. You turn to the milk. And
when you turn to the milk, some people are going
to be able to tolerate it more than others. And
(21:44):
the theory is then that when times get particularly dire,
the people who are able to turn to animal milk
for survival survive, and those who can't end up either
having to starve or they're just or they're dying from
the intense diarrhea that results from lactose intolerant. And and
again this is in Central Europe. We're not talking about
(22:04):
other parts of the world here. Yeah, we are talking
about pioneer a Grarians who are based initially in Central
Europe and then moving to northern Europe. So hence the
pioneer part, and hence the fact that they would have
crops or cattle that that weren't doing so well and
so they'd have to turn to the milk um for nutritions. So,
(22:25):
I mean, it's pretty crazy because it's um and you
think of lactose intolerant. Like, growing up, I just knew that, oh,
some people can't drink milk. That's kind of weird, right, um.
But but but when you, you you know, you become educated
on the on the topic, you realize that the reality
is a lot weirder. It's like, at one point in
our path, um, you know, years ago, a genetic mutation
(22:49):
allows us to drink the milk of other creatures. Again,
think of milk. Is this immune system boosting, nutritious, targeted
um fluid that is secreted by a specific mother for
her offspring within that species, and then we we suddenly
have a genetic mutation that allows us to drink from
it as well too. In a way, um, like it's
(23:11):
it's almost like this parasitic relationship that we evolve to
have with our cattle. Yeah, and the evidence is there. Um.
Using genetic and archaeological data, Mark Thomas and colleagues at
University College in London were able to trace down the
first evidence of black case um being actually used in
(23:32):
adulthood to exactly when you see the beginning of the
linear bandcarum um nick culture. Quite the word twister there,
tongue twister and this is an ancient Neolithic culture. So
you see that you've got some evidence there that this
is happening then um and yeah, I mean when it
comes the choice between life and death, your you know,
(23:54):
these cultures are going to adapt and as you say,
we're going to be able to thenly enough change our
our own biology to be able to handle this. Yeah.
I mean like when when I have accidentally tasted some
of the kitten milk formula and it can and not
in a bottle, I wasn't nursing good. But you know,
(24:16):
if times we're rough, if I was, if it was
like if there was nothing else in the fridge and
there was just kitten milk, you know, I might throw
back a cannibate. See what happens and it's the same situation, right,
and then if it caused me to have intense diarrhea,
I might die, And if it didn't then I might
survive and we would have a new breed of humans
that would take over the household. Who who can handle
(24:39):
kitten chitten lectas? Yeah, pretty interesting. This is a news
item for about from about a year and a half ago.
But scientists in China are actually trying to create cows
who produce more human like milk. It is interesting and
some people say this is not necessarily a bad thing
because um, you know, imparts the world's very difficult to
(25:02):
to get breast milk uh for human babies and as
you say, this is this is so important to their lives.
Can be rather inpensive, Yes, for me, can be really expensive.
For this may be something that may be readily available.
It seems a bit odd, yes, but there's definitely a
need for it. Um. I should also point out there
are there are also scientists who think we need to
(25:24):
turn to other creatures milk to depend on rather than
cows uh. International team of scientists from the Marine Research
Institute in the Netherlands. UH. They might be argument that
that whales are the answer, particularly the minky whale which
has a has the milk from this particular whale has
a higher fat content, but it's but it's full of
(25:44):
Omega three three fatty acids. So um. They've actually conducted
experiments with like milking pods for milking bays for the
whales in in the fields of the Norway, which is
which is pretty interesting. The idea that you might be
able to go to the store one day and you're
not depending on it's much on cow milk, but maybe
whale milk or wilk. I guess, I don't know. I
(26:07):
feel like I'll have a little bit of whale milk
with my herring. It just seems so, I don't know.
And if you're staying kosher or you can stick with
your raft, right, I see the Mega three part because
that's great for inflammation and for keeping disease at bay.
But the other thing about these about the whales, I
told you about the two hundred pounds a day that
the baby blues are packing on. Well, um, the minkies
(26:29):
that they had in these milking bays, they found that uh,
once they were hooked up, the milking took about fifty
minutes and produced uh one thousand, six hundred liters of
milk or uh two thousand, eight hundred and fifteen pints
compared with a typical cow's forty of milk. So would
they just keep these whales in these bays? Is that
(26:50):
the idea? Um? I would hope they get to sort
of free range a little bit, like they get to
swim around and then they come in and uh, and
then they milk them there, because I don't like the
idea of keeping him well, you know, prisoned and producing
milk whatll I was just thinking about cows in the
way that those um are dairy cows and the way
(27:11):
that their milk is extracted and all the antibiotics and
all the issues surrounding that. Um. So, yeah, you would
hope that the whales wouldn't have the same plan. I
guess you'd have to hurt him in or hire you know,
some sort of traditional like Norwegian mermaid creature to do
it for you. Oh yeah, and they are readily available. Yeah, well,
a lot of them as as we'll discussing a Mermaid
(27:31):
episode that we're going to record, a lot of the
Mermaids you encounter in various full tales are herdsmen or
hurts women, and they are hurts people and they are
attending to like aquatic bovine herds, which I guess maybe whales.
So it all comes back around. All right, let's talk
about some of the really cool healing properties of breast milk,
(27:52):
because we talked about the benefit to the kids, to
the babies. But um, you know, it turns out that
and this is very interesting, that breast milk has a
protein in it that could, or rather a substance that
can actually kill some cancer cells. Um. This is from
a two thousand and ten study carried out by researchers
(28:13):
at Lund University in the University of Gothenburg and Sweden.
Patients with cancer of the bladder who were treated with
the substance excreted dead cancer cells in their urine after
each treatment, and the substance has been dubbed hamlet okay
human alpha lactical human made lethal to tumor cells interesting okay,
(28:37):
and laboratory experiments have shown that hamlet kills forty different
types of cancer, and researchers are not going on to
study its effects on skin, cancer tumors in the mucous
membranes and brain tumors. Um and and this is the
really great part about this is that these hamlets, uh,
this hamlet substance killed only cancer cells and does not
affect healthy cells. It's cool. And that just comes back
(28:59):
around to you to our defining of milk and and
looking at it is not merely this food product that's
like that that is coming out of a creature, but
it is, uh, it is it is something that is
I mean in a sense, it's like like all food
is more than just the thing that you eat to
satisfy what you're doing. And I mean, it is the
thing that you build your body out of, and it
(29:20):
that heals the body and and uh and and that's
what what milk is. Yeah, And let's talk about third
world countries where where you have different diseases that we
don't necessarily have to deal with um in first world countries.
Among the infectious diseases, diarrheal disease is one of the
leading causes of morbidity and mortality, causing an estimated five
(29:40):
million deaths per year in children under the age of
five years of age, eighty percent of which occurs in
the first two years of life. So there was a
study called anti microbial activity of breast milk against common
pediatric pathogens. And what they said is that the spectrum
of anti microbial activity of breast milk was deter amend
using nine common bacterial pathogens of infants and children on
(30:04):
in vitriol essays. And they said using a commercial milk
formula as a control, breast milk was found to exert
bacterial bacterial tidal activity in other words, killing the bacteria
in these pathogens against Vibrio cholera and bacteriostasis for enteric
pathogens like E. Coli, seminila, and chicola. Wow. So again
(30:28):
it comes back to boosting up the newborn and just
enhancing its ability to survive or I mean making its
survival possible, but also boosting its immunity against other potentially
lethal diseases and ailments. So there you go, milk. Well
we should there's one there's one last thing, uh that
we should mentioned in talking about the evolution of of
(30:52):
this this mutation that allowed Europeans to actually drink the
milk of other animals. There's also the macho milk theory.
Oh yeah, I forgot about this. Yeah, And this one
is this is a this is not a very probable idea,
but it's it's so amusing that we have to mention it.
So the theory is that you go back to Neolithic
times and um, you know, everybody's hanging out. Uh, the
(31:14):
men are hanging out, and they're they're engaging in these
drinking games with uh, with what's around to drink. Right,
there's a bunch of cow milk not getting used. So
they they line and line them up, line up a
few I don't know, bowls or skull caps full of
the stuff, right, and they start throwing them back, um,
you know, and seeing who can, who can drink the
(31:35):
most without becoming horribly ill and if you can, if
you can take you know, several skull caps full of
of cow's milk and you don't get sick, and you're
one of the boys and you can hang and if not,
then you're not very cool, I guess. But that's the
theory that that did this serve to to kick start
our our lactose tolerance. I'm just trying to imagine it.
(31:58):
Put hair on your chest, you feel like, and it's
the original muscle milk in this stuff. Yeah, it is
all right milk. Yeah, So uh, and milk. Milk is
one of those topics we get into milk and breasting.
There are a number of topics that that stem off
from this um and you can really get into into
into into a little more lengthy discussions of of culture
(32:22):
and and then there's this whole area of of lactophilia
that we we may uh cover at some future point,
but but hopefully this will serve as a nice introduction
and a reminder of just how amazing uh milk is
and how it really uh puts such mammals apart, and
uh you know, and why I should think about it
(32:43):
when you when you have a glass of of of
real milk or or or fake milk. I mean, that's
the other thing to think about. Like when we we
have like the glass of soy, we're still replicating the experience,
uh somewhat of the of the the actual a million milk.
Always think it's funny that we call it soy milk.
It's like this psychological you know, chasm that we're trying
(33:03):
to you know, breach because we're like, okay, I can't
it's milk, right, it's white, um, but it's not milk.
But it's okay because we call the milk. I'm a
proponent of swim, don't get me wrong, but I find
that interesting. Well, tell us what you have to thank
if you would like to reach out to us and
(33:24):
uh and chat with us about about milk, as it's
produced by mammals, as it's purchased at the store, as
it may or may not have played into drinking games
in the past. Uh, let us know we'd love to
hear from you. You You can find us on Facebook for starters,
where our handle is stuff to Blow Your Mind, and
on Twitter you can find us under blow the Mind
and you can always drop us a line that blew
(33:45):
the mind at how Stafford's dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Works dot com. You are out the pony
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