Winnie Mading wrote:
> I wonder if the Leningrad moms had a more gradual onset of
> "starvation".  If they gradually had less and less to eat, perhaps
> their bodies did not go into as much of a conservation mode.

Sorry, but there was *nothing* in what the Russian doctor told us that
suggested this, and so nothing that can be extrapolated to dieting women.
Some women with enough milk to share during the siege made it available to
the babies of others.
   I am aware of no studies on how adequate a supply was adequate enough to
share, and how many mothers had their milk supplies depleted by starvation
during the siege.  We were not told this.  I would imagine the main focus at
that time was on surviving, not gathering data!  Obviously, in any ongoing
traumatic event, different individuals have a different experience, based on
pre-siege body weight, location and damage in their own area, access to food
(of any sort), deaths in the immediate family, support network,
psychological makeup, and so on.  I don't think this detailed information is
available.
   What *could* be studied here and now, is effects of the sort of
restrictive maternal diet such at Atkins.  Some of you have skills in
writing a research design, with control group, getting ethical approval, and
conducting the research.  Designing an ethical study would be the issue.
Perhaps this would be a worthwhile topic on which to get some hard data.
         Virginia

PS.  There have been publications in journals fairly recently on long-term
health sequelae in adults who were *fetuses* during the Dutch famine and the
Leningrad siege - but this is a different issue again.

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