(Yeah, I wish it was more aliterative, too...)

Hello All,

        I have only a minute or two to tap on the keyboard here, but I
wanted to follow up on a couple of the acidophilus questions.

        First, I'm not at all sure how l. bifidus factors get into
breastmilk, but they are already there.  I can't recall from memory which
lactation physiology reference I saw it in, but do remember that it was one
of the bifidus strains, not the acidopholus.  No matter, most pillform
concentrations of lactobacilli have several.  I'll look it up when I get to
work on Tues.

        My ignorance also extends to *how* intensive dosing (500 mg.
capsules 3x a day) is actually vehiculated to the breast.  But I've been
using this as a firstline strategy with babies with diarrhea or
constipation for several years with consistently good results.   It was
first suggested to me by my midwife when I expressed concerns about using
yogurt directly (she had advised the use of *only the whey* for a stubborn
case of constipation with my last child).



<<Date:    Sun, 20 Feb 2000 20:49:06 +0800
From:    Joy Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Lactobacilli traveling?

>My b-i-l, a physician, assures me that this is the case, and that it is
>therefore impossible that, for instance, taking acidophilus orally would
>decrease vaginal yeast infections.
>
>However, I am one of the zillions of women who can testify from personal
>experience that oral acidophilus do indeed seem to decrease vaginal yeast.

Elisheva, my underastanding of how acidophilus works in places of the
body it doesn't actually reach is this:

The body's immune system normally copes with a low density of yeast
that is there all the time. When resistence is lowered from other
causes (stress from a variety of sources, bacterial infection, being
'run-down', etc), you may get overgrowth of the yeast which
overwhelms the immune system and so causes symptoms.>>


        I agree that this is one of the ways that acidopholus works, but
redundancy is one of the nature's great habits, great habits, great...
(heh)...  So it may also travel.  Or perhaps the mechanism is more subtle,
such as those under-the-radar transversations that tell mom's body to
change the fat or protein or iron levels in her milk according to the
developmental needs of her co-self (i.e, the baby).

        In any case, with dosing the mom, there is clearly a change in the
babies' intestinal flora.  Most of the time they go poopless within a
couple of hours of the first dose.  With constipation its a little longer,
but not more than twelve.

Oh, I am SO out of time...


More on Tuesday...


Mysti

























"The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion."

'Proverbs of Hell'
                 William Blake

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