If we are to analyze what has environmentally impacted us to be different
from our grandmothers' generation, it may well be *the water,* as in
fluoridation of our community water supplies.  Instituted from the early
1950's, we are now seeing the 4th generation being exposed to daily doses in
water and all our foods made with that water.  Ingestion happens during
pregnancy and lactation.  In addition to targeted teeth, fluoride readily
accumulates in the pineal gland, which affects timing of sexual maturity.
http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/pineal/luke-1997.html

Fluoride also affects the thyroid gland.  In 2003, the AACE, American
Association of Clinical Endocrinologists changed the blood lab TSH values to
catch all the people with hypothyroidism they believed they were missing.
They said they were missing fully one half of the US population with low
thyroid function.  Untreated hypothyroidism affects milk production.
http://www.aace.com/newsroom/press/2003/index.php?r=20030118

Our grandmothers' generation also did not take The Pill.  As I emailed
someone this week, having breasts hormonally impacted without a real
pregnancy for year upon year changes breasts, perhaps even functionally--no
one has studied it.  One African-American mother who is a bra client was
stunned when her 16 year old teenage daughter's breast size grew from A-cup
to G-cup when she was put on the birth control pill.
Judy


Subject: Re: Rates of insufficient milk

I believe that the numbers we see will vary in different regions and
countries.  Two forces that I think have affected us are environmental
contaminants, and infertility treatments.  The first may well play into the
need for the second as it interferes with reproductive hormones. I've often
joked, only it seems more real than joke, that *it must be in the water* in
my area because I see more than anyone should rightly see.  My area is
largely agricultural, which comes with all the most modern farming methods,
for better and for worse. How else do you explain a grandmother with
well-developed breast tissue nursing a two year old while her older teen
daughter makes maybe a half-ounce and has horrendously misshapen breasts
that also don't respond to pregnancy much? And the twenty-something young
mother from Mexico whose own mother breastfed them all, but whose baby gets
10g at a really good feeding from breasts like the teen mother?   

It is my hope that we will not doubt or undermine the observations of anyone
in their various locales. Some areas really do have little true
insufficiency, while other areas seem to exhibit more. The question to ask
is not *if* it exists or *if* it is on the rise, but why--- which has become
a major quest for me. 

~Lisa Marasco

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