Transcript:
Welcome to the Milk Minute Podcast everyone. Hey everybody. We’re back. We are well after several illnesses. Are we well? I’m well. Heather’s like, I’m sick again. I feel unwell.
I still have green boogers in my lungs. God damn it, Heather. In my nose. But I haven’t quite lost my will to live yet. So good. It’s we’re gonna keep going. I love that for you. Maybe one day we won’t start an episode talking about my sickness. So the funny thing is now, too, like, with the time of year that we’re in, now we have to start thinking ahead to the barrage of holidays to come.
Yes. And I go through this debate every year of if I’m going to be, I’m going to be a good family member and actually, like, send things to people I’m related to, or if I’m literally going to do nothing. It’s a lot of work. It is. I used to do it? Mm, mm hmm. Yeah. Were you one of those people that, like, homemade things?
Every single year. Like, well, first of all, it was out of necessity, because I, like, also had no money. But I was like, I want to give every single family member of mine a gift. So I’m going to hand make bath bombs with herbs that I grew. And put little ribbons on them and send them to everybody with unique scents for them.
Wow, that’s really extra. You know, they probably never got used also. Yeah, but the other funny thing is, how old are you? Like in my 20s. Yeah, the funny thing about that is you were so proud of your lifestyle at that point in time. So it was like such an identity thing. Yeah. And you’re like, I just want to share.
This wonderful piece of my identity with you so you can feel it, too. And they were like, thanks for this bath bomb that smells like dirt. Bye! Or like, or like when I’d be like, okay, I’m gonna harvest berries from my yard and make tiny little jars of jam to send to everybody. I would have loved that. I know.
I would have put it on a little piece of cracker and I would have taken a picture. Yeah. And then I would have rated it. 10 out of 10. That’s so nice, because I feel like most of the things I sent my family like that. We’re not consumed in any way. Well at least it was edible because the shit that I used to make was like, I’d learned how to do a random craft and then I’d force it on people that definitely weren’t going to be able to use it or eat it.
Like I learned how to crochet baby shoes. But then they turned out to be way too small, so I just turned them into creepy little baby shoe ornaments. And I would give, and I would just give them to people that had a baby, you know, be like, here’s a weird crocheted shoe. Of how tiny, how tiny baby feet are not.
Yeah. You can throw this right in the garbage. One year I made coasters and I used like stamps and then I did like a splatter paint thing. And I think my parents still actually have a couple of them. I love that. Oh, so that’s nice. I used to do a lot of Christmas ornaments for people. In one year, I like, there was this tree we cut down that was like, we looked at it and I was like, oh, it’s so much older than I thought it was.
Look at all these growth rings. And then we like cut little discs out of it. And I like, cut out like little like red checkered felt critters and like glued them on and like put little ribbons and like. Oh yeah. Honestly they were ugly as shit. But it was the thought that counted. I hope. Yeah. Yeah, I know.
I, I just, I miss that though. I do. Because I feel like I had so much more of the Christmas spirit when I was doing that. We had a lot of joy then. Like I, enjoyed doing those things. I like did not dread the holidays at all because it wasn’t an option to spend a ton of money. And I just started planning in October.
I’d be like, what weird craft can I make for everybody this year? Yes. Well, it was like, what craft can I teach myself to then share with everybody? Right. I know, and like the other night, I, I use Rakuten, not sponsored yet, if I ever had time, I’d love to, but the Rakuten Chrome extension, very helpful. Merry Christmas to you guys.
They were doing like an 11 percent off at Ulta and I put a bunch of stuff in the cart and I was like, maybe I’ll just make this year’s theme skincare so I won’t have to think that hard and I’ll just give everyone skincare stuff and it was like 350 in the cart and I just shut my computer and walked away and I didn’t do it.
Like I didn’t hit purchase and I was just like, no, what if Christmas just didn’t happen? I would love to know what the percentage of shopping carts I make that actually convert into purchases is. Like, Oh, they have that data on you, trust me. I’m sure, I’m sure they do. I, I ordered myself new underwear this week.
Oh, okay. Can I just congrats? Total win. I realized more than 50 percent of the underwear I was wearing had holes in it. Nope. Time to level up. And I realized that like three months ago. And then. Your husband’s like, yeah. A little air conditioning down there. And then, and what would happen is like they were getting holes around like the top and then I’d like pull them up and it would rip like just a little more.
And I’d be like. I will order underwear this week, and I didn’t, because they stopped carrying the underwear I actually like at Walmart, and they don’t do that anymore. So then I was like, I’ll order more me undies for me, a thing for me. I must have filled that cart 15 times in the last three months. It’s pretty tough.
The prices of everything, it’s crazy. Yeah, but then, magically this week, I went and I was like, I’m going to order them for real this time, and they’re having a sale. Oh, and every, all the undies were 11 instead of 22. I wonder if they were actually having a sale or if they were just trying to get you to clear out your cart.
Either way, it worked. They’re watching you. Now I have new underwear coming in the mail. Congratulations. I’m actually very excited about it. Thank you. My underwear, weirdly, when I get holes, not in the top, but in the bottom. Sometimes I feel like it wears out right at the top of my pussy crack. Like what is that called?
You know? I don’t really know what we call that. Like where the top of your front butt is. Yeah, it’s like, it’s like where your hood is kind of? Or below there? Yeah, like right where the hood starts. You think your hood is just like very aggressive? Like just like I don’t know why. It just like chafes on your head.
Like I look down I look down and like, when you, when you spread your legs to pee and your underwear kind of stretches and you can see the thin areas and I’m like, what’s going on there? Like, why so much friction like, it’s like right above the double layer, right? That’s what, yeah. Why so much friction and no pleasure?
Get me those underwear. I need the ones that are like steel toed in the front. I think mine are just like a habitual wear pattern where like, I don’t realize I do this till I pull them up in the same exact spot and then it rips a little bit more, you know, and it’s like just on the one side. Oh my god. I don’t know.
If only you could change. Alas. So what are we talking about today? So I’ve actually wanted to get a little bit back to some science for a while. And so I was like noodling on Google as we do. And I found a fun, newer research article. It’s from 2022. And I started reading it and then I realized it was out of Carnegie Mellon.
So it’s like a very local study, which is so cool. And this study was profiling the cells in breast milk, and they found some new things people hadn’t found before. Small study. But I’m really excited to dig into it and just kind of like find a little bit of love in science today with you. This is great because I think the general message that people are getting is that there’s a lot of good stuff in breast milk and then people go, like what?
And they’re like, I don’t know. There’s just a lot of good shit in there. Well, and for a while I’ve wanted to do an episode where we go through like every cell type in breast milk, but honestly it’s a little daunting because there’s a lot and because there’s a lot we don’t know. Yeah. So This might be the way to do it, though, where I just, like, pick a random cell type and a random study, and I’m like, let’s read a study together, friend.
Well, it’s a nice refresher because, you know, All at once, you’re not going to remember it, but if you remember like a story about one type of cell, that might stick with you. So I like that plan. All right, before we start talking about the cellular makeup of breast milk, let’s thank some of our wonderful patrons that help to support the podcast monetarily.
It helps to pay for our audio engineer, Cherie Louise Turner, who is amazing, as well as Tiffany Goetz, who does all of our awesome transcripts and uploads to the website and some of our Instagram. And she sends us lots of text messages telling us to get our act together, and I appreciate that. Yeah, for sure.
Thank you so much, Tiffany. So, we would like to thank Femto and Diana Vargas, so shout out to you girl. I know you’ve been listening for a really long time. And Sonya S, we really greatly appreciate you and we hope that you’re getting something out of this podcast and we’re just really happy to have you in our behind the scenes Patreon so we can share even more.
Ooh, and shout out to my cousin Dee, who just had her baby. She is a patron of ours and she is a listener of Beyond the Boob as well. I love that all of my cousins having babies listen to our podcasts. It’s so sweet. And I’m so. Like, joyful to help my family, as well as all of you guys out there with your birthing and your breastfeeding.
It’s the ultimate Christmas craft. I made you this whole podcast. I learned how to do it, and then I forced it on you. Now, I’m forever an earworm in your brain. Yes. All right. Fantastic. Well, on that note let’s talk about cells. Okay. Doo doo doo doo. Okay, so this study I found in the Science Advances journal, and it’s called Profiling of Mature Stage Human Breast Milk Cells Identifies Six Unique Lactocyte Subpopulations.
Who is it by? Who are these awesome authors that care enough about breast milk? There’s a lot of them, hold on. Okay authors of this study, and I think they are all out of Carnegie Mellon, which is awesome. John P. Gleeson, Namit Chaudhary, Katherine Fien, Rose Doerfler, Patricia Hredzak-Showalter, and Katherine A. Whitehead.
Wow! That’s a whole team studying breast milk at the same time. It’s a whole team and it was really fun. I actually feel like this study too is written pretty accessibly. Like there’s a, there is a lot of science jargon, but there’s also some like pretty readable narrative in it. So if anyone wants to go read this, cause I’m going to skip over a whole bunch of stuff, please go to the link in our, in our show notes and check it out.
But. What’s kind of fun about this study is at this point in time, or at the point that this study was published, maternal cells were pretty much the least studied part of breast milk. Like, you know, other, it’s like we were looking at macronutrients and immune factors and things like that. And we knew for, we’ve known for a long time, there are a bunch of maternal cells hanging out in breast milk.
And we’re like, how could there not be? Right. Well, they’re there. We make this out of our body and, and we haven’t really looked into the function of all of them. And we also haven’t even like figured out what they all are. Especially because like everybody’s milk profile is unique, which is a fun challenge for this.
Right. Anyway. So. One of the, you know, so, so I was reading about like the methodology and the challenges and you know, they, they did a lot of digging in this study using flow cytometry and RNA sequencing to identify the predominant cell populations, right? And mostly in this study, they looked at epithelial cells.
Which, as a reminder, those are what we would think of as skin cells, but they cover both the outside and the inside of our body. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. That’s why we always make you wipe twice before you pee in the cup. No, it’s exactly why. And they also looked at groups of macrophages, which are the, like, attack white blood cells.
They’re like the ones that surround and kill organisms. And T cells, which are a couple of different things, but they’re also white blood cells, and sometimes they destroy infected cells, and sometimes they’re sending messages. And anyway, both macrophages and T cells are part of the immune system. With all the macrophages and the T cells that are in there, that’s basically when we tell you that you pump your breast milk and it sits at room temperature that it’s not going to spoil immediately because it has its own microbiome.
It has its own immune system essentially, functionally. Right. Yeah. Right, exactly, which is really crazy. So that’s why when people are like, can I pool my breast milk that it’s different temperatures? It’s like, yeah, probably. You totally can. Yeah, it’s going to be fine because. I mean, there’s T cells in there and macrophages that are going to eat things.
I mean, it gets harder once they’re frozen. Right. Which we will get into just a little bit. Oh, really? That’s kind of As, as a side note to this, but anyway so this study actually looked more at those epithelial cell subpopulations, and they found at least three previously unidentified groups of these cells that, you know, the hypothesis is that they are geared toward mucosal defense and intestinal development.
Mucosal defense of the mom’s mucus membrane in the breast? Of the baby. Of the baby. That’s, that’s the thought, right? These are just cells that we’re studying and looking at and they’re coming to conclusions based on like what they see in these cells. So the researchers, it’s a very small study. It appears to be from a pool of about 12 unique donors and the researchers collected fresh, Breast milk, okay, which is really important because freezing breast milk destroys some cells.
And that is one of the limitations that we’ve seen in many, many previous studies, is that they weren’t able to obtain fresh milk. So by the time we’re getting expressed milk, frozen, shipped to a lab, and then looked at, our cell viability is very low. Yeah. So this study only looked at fresh milk. They had recruiter, like recruitment for donors was open basically to everybody, but they ended up with a pool of donors who were all more than a month postpartum and the average was about seven months postpartum.
They should have called us. We could have had a milk in and we could have gotten way more than 12 people for that. I know, I know. When I was reading this, like looking at their charts and their graphs, and I was like, oh my god, like, I would love to get together with these researchers and bring them like 300 breastfeeding women.
Oh yeah. But anyway, you know, they collected all the standard information. One of the fun things is that they provided lactation suites at Carnegie Mellon University for collection, which I felt was so sweet. Like they were like, here’s the room and they like set everything up really nicely. And then you mean they controlled the environment to make sure that the outcome was favorable?
Which I feel like when we read. studies on expressed breast milk is almost never addressed. No. It’s never written mentioned like, oh yeah, we provided spaces for people to express their milk in so that also we could collect it fresh and chill it and bring it immediately to the lab to maintain cellular integrity.
That’s crazy. So cool. I thought that was amazing. I love it. Yeah. And you know, a lot of the study was about like the details of the methodologies they used to analyze milk is beyond my pay grade, girl. So we’re gonna, we’re just, we’re gonna breeze by it. But again, the paper is linked in our notes. If that is your jam, please go read about it.
But yeah, among these donors, they didn’t, they found like no significant statistical shifts sort of regardless of the health status or the parity of the donors or things like that. And then in this donor group, they even selected a slightly smaller group that they asked for repeat samples from because they wanted to do more advanced RNA sequencing.
even sooner after milk expression. So they sequenced the cells in this milk within one to two hours of expression. Badass. Really? I love an emergency breastfeeding scientific experiment. I mean, and it makes so much sense. And this has always been a question in our minds when we’re reading studies is just, okay, like, you know, we look at the conclusions and we think, great.
And we look at the methodology and we think, well, What? Like, how was it collected? When was it collected? Where was it stored? A lot of that is just not always documented. Yeah. So, loving this. Yeah, someone was like, this might be important. Turns out it’s really important. Turns out it has like everything to do with what we find in breast milk.
That’s so funny. Which, you know, we think of this as a live food source. It’s fresh and it’s alive. And the longer it sits out, the less that that is true. Yeah. So, throughout the work of the study, they found that the population of sort of stem cells, like stem like cells is what they called them, over the entire sample size is about 5%.
And there are a lot of other studies that focus on stem cells and breast milk because This is a big potential research, you know, hub, a big potential moneymaker, a big potential medicine creation, you know, place to start. So there are a lot of other studies that focus on that and they decided not to, which I understand.
Overall, the data that they collected suggests that the unique lactocytes subtypes were specifically suited to the development of those mother infant dyads and would strengthen the infant’s immune system during early development. What does that mean? Okay, so essentially that means that they, like, the cells they found, their conclusion was they were specific to those mothers and babies in like what they needed at that time.
You know what I mean? Like, it’s kind of what we say to people about breast milk all the time, but we don’t have a lot of information to actually back that up. Mm. Right? They found that immune cell populations in milk were modulated or, like, changed by, by the, the basis of the health of mother and baby, okay?
So, they noted that immune cell numbers were a baseline of, like, 7 percent of milk content, and they increased to 63 percent when the infant was sick and 36 percent when the mother was sick. That’s crazy as hell. Super crazy. Again, small sample size, but amazing information to work from for future studies.
Well, yeah, because, you know, what I hear from my patients all the time when their babies are sick are like, I thought they weren’t supposed to get sick. They’re breastfed. And I’m like, no, no, no. Right. They’re going to get sick. They’re just, they’re You know, scientifically speaking, they’re supposed to recover faster than their formula fed counterparts.
And this is why, because if your breast milk is literally changing to accommodate the specific bacteria or virus that your baby is struggling with, then why wouldn’t they get better faster? Right. And your milk can’t recover. Predict the future, it’s responsive, right? But it is responsive to the present situation and to what your body is exposed to, right?
And again, like we’ve seen other studies that hint at this and we talked about that like salivary exchange thing, you know, being part of this process. But I haven’t actually seen a lot of numbers when we’re like, we look at the cellular content of breast milk, how much of it is actually immune, you know?
Yeah, I. I guess my question with this is, like, we kind of knew that already, so what you’re saying is they, they found some subtypes of that, so, like, they’re going deeper on that? Yeah, they were going, well, let me think. So, part of it is that they were profiling, like, percentages, right? Like, we don’t have a lot of studies that say, like, hey, when mom is sick, this happens specifically, when baby’s sick, this, you know, percentage happens.
So that’s, that’s a cool piece to know. The subtypes of those epithelial cells that they found, let’s get into a little bit. So, the information they collected suggests that the, those like subtypes of lactocytes were pretty similar among all their donors. And, Those specialized subtypes were possibly, like, things that could be enriched for specific needs of the babies.
For example, intestinal stem cell development some of them were specific for insulin resistance or intestinal immune defense. So Sorry, let me just clarify. So we’re saying a lactocyte is a milk making cell. Yeah, which are, they’re technically epithelial cells. Okay, that’s good. So we have milk making cells, which are epithelial cells that secrete milk, but we also have subtypes of those, like baked in that we can enhance.
Maybe? I’m not totally sure about that. That’s crazy to think about. I think also maybe in this context lactocytes is a larger group of cells. Do you know what I mean? But anyway, you know this is just, and again like these are cells they’re finding, they’re identifying, and then they are hypothesizing on the purpose of based on like all of their Analysis.
Mm hmm. Right? So they’re finding these subgroups and like for these specific ones it was, you know, they were like cell clusters two, six, and seven respectively do this, this, and this. You know, but looking into things like, okay, there are these group of epithelial cells that are specific to intestinal development.
You know, could that be used in the future to help babies with necrotizing enterocolitis? You know? Yeah. Or, you know, we have some cells that have something to do with insulin resistance. Like, is that because pregnancy is a state of increased insulin resistance? And this is part of like, sort of like a byproduct of, you know, when we mentioned lactation is sort of a fix it for insulin resistance.
Like, is that part of it? Or again, like intestinal immune defense, your immune system. is extremely present in your digestive system. I think a lot of people don’t know this. They’re like, oh, it’s in the lymph and it’s in your blood. No, it’s in your gut. Which means it would make sense that it’s in your breast milk because that has to be in your infant’s gut.
It has to be because your gut is where you encounter the, like, the most bacteria and viruses is from things that are getting into your mouth and you’re eating. Hmm. Right? And so your intestines are just full of, I don’t know, I can’t remember what they’re called. There’s these little like sites that, oh gosh, they’re like, it starts with a P.
Anyway just like these little immune sites that are responding to what’s going on and, you know, sending out these body wide signals of what to do. Yeah, actually there is a TED talk. Love TED Talks on poop, just by the way. Baseline, if there’s a TED Talk on poop, I will listen. Okay, it’s like 10 minutes, and let me actually drop this in here because It’s amazing.
Okay, this TED Talk is called The Surprisingly Charming Science of Your Gut by Julia Enders and her voice is incredible, she’s so sweet, and she makes you really truly think that your poop is charming and explains the immune system piece and it’s a very quick, very funny, And very charming little talk that I think would really help kind of set the tone for the rest of this podcast.
You know, take a pause, go listen to that, come back. Come back, come back for our conclusion here. And the conclusion really is that, like, this study doesn’t have strong conclusions, right? They’re, it’s sort of like, yippee, we found new cells and that’s amazing, and we’re going to guess at what they do, and they used new methodology, and like that, that’s a really big focus of it.
And they’re sort of nailing they’re, Working towards refining their methodology, where their understanding, that’s the main takeaway for me. It’s like, ah, yeah, we knew that there was like good shit in breast milk and like, obviously that’s going to help the baby’s gut and you know, that’s cool that there’s subtypes and I’d like to see more.
But the thing that’s really exciting to me is that they’re, they are. doing things like, Oh yeah, this is time sensitive. Oh yeah, the mom probably needs to be in a place where she’s comfortable so she can express breast milk. And also we can’t freeze it. And also, so like moving forward, instead of seeing those barriers and being like, that sounds like a pain in the ass, let’s not study it.
They’re like, no, let’s meet. Let’s meet the breast milk where it’s at. Yeah. Well, and you know, in their big conclusion section too, there were lots of mentions of other studies and how this could tie in, you know, like there was a discussion of reports of maternal stem and immune cells that were going into the infant GI tract and exiting and then functionally integrating into other organs of the infant.
Yes, like I did just read that to about the growth hormone factors that are in colostrum specifically, where they’re able to identify growth hormones specifically for the intestines growth hormone that goes to other places to, you know, so that’s pretty neat, which makes sense because the gut is sterile when they’re born.
So it’s like, of course, you got to hit the on switch somehow. Of course, yeah. I mean, every time I read a study like this, I’m like, oh, breast milk’s so cool. It is. We’re freaking magic. It’s just really fun. And then there’s also that side of me that’s like, oh my God, I hope they don’t find out how magic we are and start exploiting us and make milking us for stem cells and Well, you know, where my brain goes is I’m like, wait, breast milk is cool.
Mammals. Placental mammals? What? Like, we’re just amazing, by the way. What can’t we do? Like, we, like, every time I kind of think of how this is not just humans, but this is like a global animal adaptation for survival that has, like, increased our infant survival rate just exponentially from when, you know, we were, like, egg laying creatures where, like, you know, maybe one in, like, 200 eggs survived.
Like, really, we’re doing way better than that. And it’s because of Milk. Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah. I love it. Well, thanks for reading into that. That’s pretty cool. I love these research updates. We haven’t done one in a while and it’s good to know that they’re still out there fighting the good fight on the research side.
Yeah, and we are working on getting a really fun interview together for another great study I was reading. And on that note, if you are a researcher, Okay, working on breast milk research. We want to hear from you. We want to have you on our podcast. We want to know the weird details of things. Like, did you, like, you know, give everybody the same breast pump?
And did you use, you know, specific containers that weren’t going to, like, contaminate the breast milk? The cell count and like, did you put pictures up in the lactation rooms? Like we want to know all that stuff. We want you to geek out on your methodology with you. Yeah. Or like, where did the guy named Bob have a huge beef where he was like, we can’t do that.
I’m not doing that. That’s not something we should do. Yeah. Did you fight him? Did you win? We want to know that. We want to know. We want to know, like, the drama from your nap. I want to know all the research drama about breast milk. I always, I, there’s got to be one out there in the world. Heather and I love gossip, by the way.
Like, we don’t do it meanly, but, like, we love to hear it. We love a little hot goss. If somebody’s talking about it, we’re like, just speak a little louder so I can hear. It’s not that we are bored in our lives. We have plenty to do. But sometimes we just need it to not be so heavy and not be about us at all.
Exactly. Or my kids. If someone’s like, can I talk to you? Like one of my friends is like, I’m so sorry to lay this on you. And I’m like, please, I would love to hear your shit right now. It’s not mine and I can hold it. Go ahead. Yeah. Like whenever friends of mine are like, Oh, like, you know, Yeah. This got sent through my group chat, and I’m like, tell me, can I read your entire group chat with people I don’t know?
Like, can I see, just, I won’t tell anybody, but I really want to read that. Well, that’s funny you say that, because I really won’t tell anybody, because in the moment, it feels like I’m taking shots of whiskey. That’s how good it feels to hear other people’s shit, and then I immediately forget. Oh, yeah, it’s not important.
I mean, I, I don’t forget that I care about my friend, but I definitely forget that it was your sister in law’s boyfriend that did this weird thing at this weird holiday. I want to know it. My brain will not retain it and I want to forget it. And I just want to feel good after. Your secret’s safe with us.
All right. Well, I would like to give an award to an anonymous person that I know that you don’t know who yes Who went to court today? For a custody hearing about her four month old baby, and I don’t know how it went yet. She hasn’t reached out to me, but we spent, we spend a lot of time together kind of working out some of the details like her must haves and her concessions that she’s willing to, you know, concede to kind of get the custody arrangement she wants because breastfeeding is such a big deal to her.
And you know, of course in these assumed 50 50 custody states, that’s really difficult. And of course, depending on the state, sometimes they give you a six month leeway on the 50 50 for a baby who’s under six months of age. But anyway. Shout out to you because that is really fucking hard to put your big girl pants on and fight for your kid when you have only been a mom for four months.
Yeah. That’s like you’re, you’re a first time mama bear and everyone’s coming after your baby. And it’s not like they, it’s not like they don’t want to care for your baby, but it’s like every mom’s worst nightmare and you did it. And I’m really proud of you. And I hope everything went. Well, in your favor, there’s no winning in court, but I hope that you won a little bit more than he did.
That little rat bastard. Yeah, absolutely. Now we wish you the best. We’re gonna give you the Mama Bear Award. I like that, that’s good. Yep, keep on fighting for your kid. Yes, and thank you for listening to another episode of the Milk Minute. The way that we change this system that is not built to support us is by supporting ourselves and our friends and spreading the best information that we can about lactation.
Yeah, and also spreading some of the new exciting things about lactation. We’re not done yet. It’s still happening. People ask us, how are you going to keep making episodes? Wow. Ha, ha, ha. Keep doing research, friends, and we’ll keep making episodes. Yeah, as long as you’re working, we’re working. All right. Well, thanks y’all I hope you have a great night, and we’ll see you next week.
