Hello! Recently, I had the pleasure to attend a seminar in Atlanta for LLL healthcare providers. Dr.Peter Hatman and Dr. Leon Mitoulas both spoke at the conference. It was fabulous! Dr.Mitoulas spoke, at one point, about fatty acids in breast milk; how they are formed or dervied from the diet and secreted into the breast milk. A question was asked of him, specifically about fatty-acid supplementation of the pregnant and breastfeeding mother. This is what I have in my notes (there were no powerpoint slides of this information- just my notes of his comments): 1. Medium chain fatty acids are made by the breast. 2. Long chain fatty acids are dervied from the diet. 3. There are many (>40) fatty acids. They produce aid in the deveopment and maintenance of many different processes in the body- not only in breain and eye development. 4. When supplements are taken (usually containing very large concentrations of long chain fatty acids), it offsets the production of the naturally-produced medium chain fatty acids, thus disrupting the natural concentration of all fatty acids in the breast milk. 5. Therefore, there might be unaturally high levels of long chain fatty acids, and unaturally low levels of medium chain fatty acids in the breast milk. 6. Also, supplementation of fatty acids during pregnancy has a long-term effect due to fatty acids being stored in maternal fat and released later (postpartum) into the beast milk. 7. The recommendation he gave: eat a well-rounded diet; forget the fatty-acid supplements. I hope this is able to help you in understanding the bare basics of fatty acids in breastmilk. Dr.Mitoulas' lecture was awesome and I'd like to know more about his research findings. When I have my copy of his references I will post them for all to see. Kate Cropp WHNP, IBCLC, MSN Mama to nursling,Henry, 22 months! Nashville, Tennessee, USA *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html