2024-04-16 07:26:50
A post posted by famous American broadcaster Kourtney Kardashian (44) on her Instagram story a few days ago attracted a lot of attention.
“I felt sick, so I had a glass of breast milk,” he wrote, with a photo of him raising his right thumb on a bed in the background. The mother of four children had a son, Rocky, with drummer Travis Barker, whom she remarried in November last year. It is believed that Kardashian drank breast milk intended for her child.
Several media outlets from around the world covered this. And naturally, this question arose. Can adults drink their own or someone else’s breast milk to help improve immunity?
In 2015, an editorial article was published in the Royal Journal of Medicine in the UK, describing breast milk as a superfood and claiming that it has benefits such as promoting recovery, strengthening muscles, and supporting the immune system. In fact, in the United States, breast milk is sold at a fairly high price for adult buyers.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), breast milk is primarily designed to help feed babies, but it can also help support your baby’s health in the early years of life.
“It is known that breast milk contains a variety of substances that stimulate the newborn’s immune system, including antibodies,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security in the US. This was explained in the specialized magazine Women’s Health.
Can drinking breast milk boost your immunity?
A conclusion on this has not yet been reached. There is some evidence that consuming breast milk may help lower the risk of infection and prevent mild illness. However, this was not studied through placebo-controlled, double-blind, peer-reviewed studies, which are considered the gold standard in science.
There are also research results that show that applying breast milk to the skin without drinking it can help alleviate atopic dermatitis.
However, there is little data on whether drinking breast milk helps prevent disease in adults. “It is unclear what benefit breast milk may have for adults with mature immune systems,” Adalja said.
“Human breast milk is nutritious and beneficial for infants and toddlers, but consumption by adults provides the same nutritional benefits,” Sierra Woods, a lactation counselor and nurse who founded and runs a non-profit organization serving black mothers, told USA Today. “They may not do so and may expose consumers to health risks,” he pointed out. He added that, to date, no clinical trials have studied whether a mother can benefit from drinking her own breast milk to boost her immunity, and there is no other evidence to support a benefit for adults from consuming breast milk.
Experts explain that mothers who are breastfeeding their babies have no reason to drink their own breast milk for health reasons.
“For breastfeeding mothers, the benefits are limited or negligible. Because the mother already has those antibodies,” said Dr. Thomas Russo, an infectious disease expert and professor at the University at Buffalo in New York. He added, “I don’t think breast milk is beneficial to the mother.”
Are there any safety issues?
Experts said there would be no particular health risks if mothers drank their own breast milk, other than feeling weird. However, she warned that since her breast milk is her body’s fluid, it’s really not a good idea to drink breast milk from someone else.
The explanation is that there is a risk of exposure to food poisoning and infectious diseases similar to raw milk that has not been pasteurized.
Park Hae-sik, Donga.com reporter [email protected]
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2024-04-16 07:26:50