"dumping toxins into the milk"

[moonmirror]

Has this actually been proven? So all the nursing women who dropped a lot of weight quickly through any weightloss plan were endangering their babies?

This gets thrown around a lot, but I'm not convinced. I do know the medical community has recently decided to ignore the word "toxins" completely, since it seems to come from alternative ideas rather than medical science.

What about in times gone by? During harsh winters, when all there was to eat was hunted game; were nursing women endangering their babies?

I don't get how rapid weightloss can be bad; especially if a nursing woman is maintaining her own nutrient stores as well as her muscle mass and the baby is getting enough milk and gaining weight.

I just question this because there are a lot of us who find it nearly impossible to lose weight when we up our carbs...it starts a downward spiral of bad eating and feeling unhealthy. Some of us feel better and less depressed on lower carbs which is also much better for the mom-baby relationship.

I'm not trying to start an argument here, I just thought it was worth discussing.

[MicheleS]

Hi moonmirror,
I don't that LC would be any worse than any other *diet* in this regard but I *do* know that most environmental toxins are fat soluble and are therefore in higher concentrations in body fat... (think about mercury in fatty fish). So... when you mobilize lots of fat, the toxins go into your circulation. Since breastmilk is a high fat content, these toxins easily disolve in the milk (rather than *say* your urine which is lowest in fat and highest in H2O). As a result, the toxin load in your milk can go up. Of course, there are lots of variables to this... how many toxins you are storing, how much fat you have, what your milk output is... etc.
For example *if* you ate lots of tuna, you *might* have a largish depot of mercury in your fat stores... When you mobilize this fat, it has to go somewhere... some will go back into your remaining fat, some into feces, and some into breastmilk...
Fat soluable toxins in breastmilk can be dangerous to a baby because the brain has a high fat content... Some of the consumed toxins will go to baby's brain which is developing rapidly...
With all of that said... LC is NO WORSE than any other weightloss diet... It is the process of body fat being mobilized that is the issue... NOT THE WOE!!!

In times past, I suspect that the exposure of a mom to environmental toxins was lower... Also, I'd venture to guess that you'd have to have body fat stores pretty laden with mercury and other fat soluable chemicals to cause a problem for your baby.

With all of that said, *if* you are making plenty of milk and baby is gaining well, then I doubt that you are losing weight too rapidly. Milk supply tends to drop *if* dieting becomes too extreme.

Does that make sense?
Michele S

[kbeth]

Wow. Great explanation. I never got it before.

Thanks