I always feel worried to post here because it so exposes my 
ignorance.  But this question of freezing yeasty milk highlights one 
of these points of extreme confusion that I'm sure someone will be 
generous enough to clarify for me.

As I understand it, thrush is the medical condition that occurs as a 
manifestation of an overgrowth of the fungus C. albicans.  It is a 
fungal infection.  Then how this situation relates to "mastitis" is 
where I get lost.  I gather mastitis is the name for inflammation 
that follows infection, so mastitis could be the result of a fungal 
infection, or a bacterial infection -- it is a term that is not 
specific regarding the origin of this symptom.

So then what's confusing is the source of the problems a mother 
experiences following thrush.  Because I gather there is a high risk 
of *secondary* bacterial infection following the condition of 
albicans overgrowth.  And what is confusing is whether this secondary 
infection itself is the cause of the symptoms (i.e., nursing pain as 
opposed to, say, white oral lesions).  I'm sure it is at least 
sometimes, or when it's present; what's not clear to me is whether 
this is *always* the case.  That is, if a mom has "thrush", is the 
real problem the fungal symptoms that we are treating, or an 
underlying bacterial infection?

And all this matters to the question of freezing yeasty milk.  If 
it's the subsequent bacterial infection that's the problem, and not 
the fungal infection, or the presence of excess fungus (or even the 
conditions that facilitate this excess growth, independent of the 
fungus itself), then it wouldn't matter if there were excess fungus 
("yeasty milk") in the milk.  When we treat thrush, is it the fungus 
or bacteria that we are attacking?

While considering the question recently of thrush-laced milk, and 
whether to toss a frozen store of it, I did notice some molecular 
work isolating a cell membrane protein in yeast that protects it from 
freezing.  Theoretically, it does seem that yeast is not destroyed by 
freezing.  But whether the resulting yeasty milk results in 
subsequent problems for a nursing dyad is still unclear to me, in 
part because the source of the problem is unclear.  Help!?  -- and 
thanks a lot for it!
-- 
	-Sara ([log in to unmask]; LLLL in LA, USA).

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