Pumped breast milk might not be quite as good as milk that comes directly from mom’s breast, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that breast milk from women who pumped tended to have more potentially bad bacteria — and less abundance and diversity of friendly germs – than milk from women who only fed their infants from the breast.

The study is the latest step in a newer area of research: What determines the makeup of bacteria in breast milk, and what are the potential effects on babies’ health?

“Until about 10 years ago, it was assumed that breast milk is sterile,” explained senior researcher Meghan Azad.

However, the human body is teeming with resident bacteria and other germs. And research is beginning to illuminate how those “bugs” — particularly ones in the gut — affect body processes and disease risks.

Some of those studies have focused on breast milk, finding that it actually contains an abundance of bacteria, according to Azad. But that leaves a lot of questions unanswered, including: Where do those bacteria come from? And what factors make breast milk from one woman different from another’s?

One theory is that bacteria “migrate” from the mother’s intestinal tract to her breast milk, said Azad, an assistant professor of pediatrics and child health at the University of Manitoba in Canada.

But there could be other factors at work, she said. The new findings suggest that the way breast milk is delivered — directly or by pumping — is one of those factors.

Microbial balance

The researchers analysed breast milk samples from nearly 400 mothers a few months after they’d given birth. A wide variation in microbial balance was found among the samples, Azad said.

But the one factor that was consistently associated with that microbial composition was the mode of feeding — whether moms only fed their babies from the breast, or used pumped milk.

Milk from moms who pumped tended to be higher in certain bacterial families that can sometimes cause infections, such as Stenotrophomonas and Pseudomonadaceae.

Beyond that, milk from mothers who fed their babies directly had a greater diversity in good bacteria, which is generally considered better. And that included microbes typically found in the mouth.

That finding suggests that babies’ oral bacteria are one source of the microbes found in breast milk, according to Azad.

Allergy, asthma risk

The big question is, what does it all mean?

It’s not yet clear whether the mode of feeding affects the balance of bacteria in babies’ guts — or, ultimately, their health or development, Azad said.

Past research, she noted, has shown that gut microbes are important in infants’ immune system development. And “disruptions” in those bacteria early in life have been linked to higher risks of allergies and asthma.

Azad said her team plans to look at whether the bacterial composition of breast milk is also related to the risks of those diseases, as well as babies’ growth.

“At the end of the day, that’s what parents care about,” she said.

The findings were published February 13 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

Breast milk best

For now, some things are clear: Breast milk — from the breast or bottle — is the best source of nutrition for infants, said Dr. Lori Feldman-Winter, chair of American Academy of Pediatrics’ section on breastfeeding.

Feeding from the breast is the “ideal,” noted Feldman-Winter, who was not involved in the study. “But the next best thing is expressed [pumped] breast milk,” she said.

“We recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life — however mothers can manage that,” Feldman-Winter said.

And, she added, if moms are able to directly breastfeed for even the first few weeks, that’s better than never doing it.

That’s a critical point in the United States — which lacks paid maternity-leave policies that could allow more women to directly breastfeed for a prolonged period, Feldman-Winter noted.

As researchers learn more about the benefits of direct breastfeeding, she said, the findings will have not only health implications, but “cultural” ones.

“As a society, we’ll have to decide what our values are,” Feldman-Winter said. And that may mean finding “creative solutions” to help more working mothers directly breastfeed, she said

^{Image credit: iStock}

Nearly a year in space put astronaut Scott Kelly’s immune system on high alert and changed the activity of some of his genes compared to his Earth-bound identical twin, researchers said on Friday.

Scientists don’t know if the changes were good or bad but results from a unique NASA twins study are raising new questions for doctors as the space agency aims to send people to Mars.

Tests of the genetic doubles gave scientists a never-before opportunity to track details of human biology, such as how an astronaut’s genes turn on and off in space differently than at home. One puzzling change announced on Friday at a science conference: Kelly’s immune system was hyperactivated.

“It’s as if the body is reacting to this alien environment sort of like you would a mysterious organism being inside you,” said geneticist Christopher Mason of New York’s Weill Cornell Medicine, who helped lead the study. He said doctors are now looking for that in other astronauts.

Since the beginning of space exploration, NASA has studied the toll on astronauts’ bodies, such as bone loss that requires exercise to counter. Typically they’re in space about six months at a time. Kelly, who lived on the International Space Station, spent 340 days in space and set a US record.

“I’ve never felt completely normal in space,” the now-retired Kelly said in an e-mail to The Associated Press, citing the usual congestion from shifting fluid, headaches and difficulty concentrating from extra carbon dioxide, and digestive complaints from microgravity.

Body adapts

But this study was a unique dive into the molecular level, with former astronaut Mark Kelly, Scott’s twin, on the ground for comparison. Full results haven’t yet been published, but researchers presented some findings on Friday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

A number of genes connected to the immune system became hyperactive, Mason said. It’s not a change in DNA but in what’s called “gene expression”, how genes turn off and on and increase or decrease their production of proteins. Mason also spotted a spike in the bloodstream of another marker that primes the immune system.

Yet at the same time, Kelly’s blood showed fewer of another cell type that’s an early defense against viruses.

It’s not a surprise that gene activity would change in space – it changes in response to all kinds of stress.

“You can see the body adapting to the change in its environment,” Mason said.

The good news: Most everything returned to normal shortly after Kelly got back on Earth in March 2016. Those immune-related genes, however, “seemed to have this memory or this need to almost be on high alert” even six months later, Mason said.

Radiation a concern

“On the whole it’s encouraging,” said Craig Kundrot, who heads space life and science research for NASA. “There are no major new warning signs. We are seeing changes that we didn’t necessarily anticipate” but don’t know if those changes matter.

From four Russians living in space for more than a year, NASA already knew prolonged time off Earth is possible, Kundrot said, adding, “We also aim for more than just possible. We want our astronauts to do more than just survive.”

Ultimately, the twin study gives NASA a catalogue of things to monitor on future missions to see if other astronauts react the same way. Astronauts on future missions will be able to do some of this testing in space instead of freezing samples for scientists back home, Mason said.

Immune issues sound familiar to Dr Jerry Linenger, an American astronaut who spent more than four months on the Russian space station Mir. He said he was never sick in orbit, but once he came back to Earth “I was probably more sick than I was in my life.”

Astronauts launch into orbit with their own germs and get exposed to their crewmates’ germs and then after a week with nothing else new in the “very sterile environment” of a space station “your immune system is really not challenged,” Linenger said.

A human mission to Mars, which NASA hopes to launch in the 2030s, would take 30 months, including time on the surface, Kundrot said.

Radiation is a top concern. The mission would expose astronauts to galactic cosmic radiation levels higher than NASA’s own safety standard. It’s “just a little bit over”, he said.

On Earth and even on the space station, Earth’s magnetic field shields astronauts from lots of radiation. There would be no such shielding on the way to Mars and back, but tunnels or dirt-covered habitats could help a bit on Mars, Kundrot said

Kelly, who turns 55 next week, said he’d go to Mars. He said a trip that long “wouldn’t be worse than what I experienced. Possibly better. I think the big physical challenge, radiation aside, will be a mission where you are in space for years.

^{Image credit: iStock}

“It felt like I was living in a body that wasn’t mine.” During her mid-twenties, Kaitlyn Hoever felt increasingly depressed and exhausted. “I didn’t want to see my friends or return their texts,” recalls the now-31-year-old entrepreneur. She was gaining weight even though she worked out religiously and was meticulous about her eating habits.

Read more: 7 ways your thyroid is messing with your body

When the doctor dismisses you…

Kaitlyn didn’t have a regular doctor to discuss her symptoms with, so it wasn’t until she was 26, and Googling them, that she began to suspect she had an underachieving thyroid. She visited a GP, but he was dismissive, saying she just needed to eat less and work out more to lose weight.

Read more: 11 thyroid symptoms in women that could point to a serious problem

Kaitlyn begged him to test her thyroid and her TSH was 20. Another physician later said that, based on her symptom history, she likely had hypothyroidism for at least five years.

Kaitlyn’s experience is far from rare…

Hypothyroidism’s symptoms are often shrugged off, which can have deleterious results. Left untreated, the condition can raise your bad LDL cholesterol, increase your risk for heart disease and infertility and in rare cases, lead to a life-threatening condition known as a myxedema coma.

Read more: The best way to lose weight when you have hypothyroidism

Kaitlyn started taking medication just over two years ago. She’s since lost much of the weight and her emotional state and energy levels have mostly returned to normal. Still, it’s taken several years to arrive at a treatment plan that works. Finding the right dose is often a dance between symptoms and side effects, says endocrinologist Dr Martin Surks.

^{This article was originally published on www.womenshealthmag.com}

^{Image credit: iStock}

Emily Cane’s dance career was cut short and now she has communication difficulties.

Lara Rebecca, 18, says she knows the “darkest of the darkest” after recovering from her eating disorder.

While the polyester leisure suit was a 1970s mistake, polyester and other synthetic fibers like nylon are still around and are a major contributor to the microplastics load in the environment, according to a Penn State materials scientist, who suggests switching to biosynthetic fibers to solve this problem.

Humankind may be eating hundreds of species of large wild animals into extinction, a new study says.

Researchers looked at nearly 300 species of large animals (megafauna) – defined as mammals and fish weighing 220 pounds (99.7kg) or more, and amphibians, birds and reptiles weighing at least 88 pounds (39,9kg).

An important conservation tactic

The investigators found that 70% (200) of the species are in decline, and 59% (more than 150 species) face extinction. People’s use of them for food or medicine is a major reason.

“Direct harvest for human consumption of meat or body parts is the biggest danger to nearly all of the large species with threat data available,” said study corresponding author William Ripple. He’s a professor of ecology at Oregon State University College of Forestry.

“Thus, minimising the direct killing of these vertebrate animals is an important conservation tactic that might save many of these iconic species as well as all of the contributions they make to their ecosystems,” Ripple said in a university news release.

These large species are under greater threat and have a higher percentage of decreasing populations than all other vertebrate species combined, Ripple said.

As humans’ ability to kill wildlife at a safe distance improved over the past 500 years, 2% of large animal species have gone extinct. That compares to 0.8% of all sizes of vertebrates going extinct, according to the study.

Snares and traps

“Our results suggest we’re in the process of eating megafauna to extinction,” Ripple said.

The use of various animal parts in Asian traditional medicine is also taking a heavy toll on the largest species.

“In the future,” Ripple warned, “70% will experience further population declines and 60% of the species could become extinct or very rare.”

In the past 250 years, nine large animal species have either gone extinct overall or disappeared from their natural habitats. That includes two species each of deer and giant tortoise (one of which went extinct in 2012).

“In addition to intentional harvesting, a lot of land animals get accidentally caught in snares and traps, and the same is true of gill nets, trawls and longlines in aquatic systems,” Ripple said.

The last of the Earth’s megafauna

“And there’s also habitat degradation to contend with. When taken together, these threats can have major negative cumulative effects on vertebrate species,” he stressed.

Preserving the large animals that remain will be complicated, with economic arguments against it as well as cultural and social obstacles, Ripple said.

“But if we don’t consider, critique and adjust our behaviours,” he concluded, “our heightened abilities as hunters may lead us to consume much of the last of the Earth’s megafauna.”

The study was published in the journal Conservation Letters.

^{Image credit: iStock}

There are plenty of good reasons to seek a higher education, but avoiding Alzheimer’s disease probably isn’t one of them, new research suggests.

The study found that a person’s level of education wasn’t related to the onset of memory and thinking (“cognitive”) troubles, or the rate at which dementia progressed.

A more definitive answer

“Education is related to cognitive growth in early life, but it wasn’t associated with cognitive change as you age. What’s more important is what you’re doing now, than what you did 40 or 50 years ago,” explained study author Robert Wilson. He’s a neuropsychologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Wilson said that continuing to do things such as learning a new language, social activities, having a purpose in life, or engaging in mentally demanding work may help keep your brain sharper as you get older.

Previous research has hinted that there might be a link between education and a person’s risk of developing dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, or how fast the disease advances. But the results of a number of studies looking at this possible link have had mixed results.

To try to get a more definitive answer, the investigators looked at two groups of people who participated in previous studies. One group included older Catholic clergy members from across the United States. The other group was adults from the Chicago area who had been in the Rush Memory and Aging Project.

Nearly 3 000 people were included. All of the study participants had annual testing and agreed to a brain autopsy when they died.

Age of onset unaffected

The average age of participants at the start of the study was 78 years old. Most (74%) were women, and the majority (89%) were white.

The study volunteers were well-educated, with an average of 16 years of education. The researchers split them into three groups: education of 12 or fewer years; 13 to 16 years of education; and 17 or more years.

The average follow-up time during the study was eight years. During the follow-up, nearly 700 people developed dementia, the researchers said.

People who had a higher education did have greater thinking and memory skills when the study began. But, there was no association between higher education and a slower decline in thinking and memory.

More education also didn’t seem to affect the age people were when they had noticeable thinking and memory issues. Wilson said the autopsies showed that education level didn’t appear to affect the way dementia changes the brain either.

Lifelong learning

The researchers noted that one limitation of this study is that they started with a group of very educated people. If a wider range of education levels were compared, it’s possible there might be a difference.

Keith Fargo, director of scientific programmes and outreach for the Alzheimer’s Association, agreed that the high level of education among the population studied may have made any differences more difficult to tease out.

“I think the jury is still out on the formal education question,” Fargo said.

“I don’t want people to walk away from this study thinking there’s nothing they can do. This study was very specific to how many years of formal education someone has. But it doesn’t say anything about ongoing cognitive stimulation,” he noted.

Lifelong learning and continuing to participate in activities that stimulate your brain may be protective, Fargo said. Exercising and eating a healthy diet also appear to keep the brain healthy as you age.

The findings were published online in the journal Neurology.

^{Image credit: iStock}

Parents of sick babies need more paternity and maternity leave, a neonatal charity says.

Just a few weeks ago 17-year-old Robbie Eddles was enjoying being back at school and basking in the fact he’d made it onto the basketball team.

Now, he’s bravely fighting cancer in a Durban hospital bed, while waiting for a bone marrow match — with people from all over the world rallying behind him.

Robbie was diagnosed with leukaemia for the third time about three weeks ago, and this time his bone marrow is 90% leukemic.

He faced his first battle with the blood cancer when he was just five but conquered it and two years later went into remission after what his aunt Kerry Moller (48) describes as “aggressive chemotherapy”.

The second time, Kerry tells us, Robbie was 10 but was in remission at 12 after two more years of chemo. He was clean of the disease for almost five years.

“They always say the magic marker is five years. We were just short of five years when he relapsed,” Kelly tells us. “It’s not fair.”

Robbie’s mother, Colleen Eddles (57) — who, along with her husband Mike (60) currently aren’t able to speak to the media — suspected that Robbie had relapsed when he returned from a 10-day school exchange programme in India last December.

“He came back from that exchange very tired and my sister phoned me about four times saying she has a gut feeling [the cancer was back] because he’s very tired,” says Kerry, who’s Colleen’s younger sister.

Robbie has now been in an isolation room for three weeks, but the plucky Grade 11 Clifton College learner isn’t fighting alone — after news of his hospitalisation broke people from all over the country registered to become bone marrow donors in an attempt to find a match for Robbie.

The support, Kerry says, has been overwhelmingly positive. After making her Facebook account public and sharing the boy’s story she’s received more than 16 000 messages from all over the world.

On 7 February, Clifton College hosted a drive that saw many pupils signing up. Durban Girls’ College will also host a Valentine’s Day Drive called #Loving Robbie #Robbieswarriors on 14 February.

Kerry says attempts to find a donor started back when Robbie was first diagnosed and so far they’ve haven’t found a match from the millions of registered donors worldwide, including the 77 000 people on the South African Bone Marrow Registry (SABMR).

“The SABMR is linked to the international registry,” Kerry says. “Although our registry is pitiful — it has to be bigger because as South Africans we have a unique gene pool — we do have access to millions of donors from overseas. Sadly, out of all those millions Robbie still hasn’t found a match — he has a very unique [human leukocyte antigen] protein.

“Don’t let that detract from the fact that South Africans need to rally, because our bone marrow registry will work for our population.”

Kerry says Robbie wants his legacy to be that he helped the registry to grow.

“He’s the bravest, wisest little soul.”

You can register to become a bone marrow donor if you’re…

• Between 18 and 45 years old
• Committed to helping others
• In good health (not at risk of contracting hepatitis or other sexually transmitted infections)
• Over 50kg and have a body mass index (BMI) of <40
• A regular blood donor (preferable but not necessary)
• Prepared to remain on the SABMR until you’re 60.

Courtesy of www.westerncape.gov.za

& For information on how to become a donor go to the South African Bone Marrow Registry website, www.sabmr.co.za or www.robbieeddles.co.za.

Lesego Maja