When I put Wren to bed last night his eye was crusty and had yellow goop coming out. I had dripped some breastmilk into it about three or four times and thought it was looking better but there was still redness and goop.
This morning I cleaned all the overnight crusted stuff off and washed it out with breastmilk again and ....voila.... his eye is clear with no discharge, redness or swelling. It looks normal!
I shall continue with the BM today but I wonder whether I need to take him to the ped after all. I suspect not.
Apparently this remedy - breastmilk to heal conjunctivitis - is fairly well known. In reading about it I also found this reference to: A recent study showed that adults who were breastfed as children had lower systolic blood pressure rates. The longer they were breast fed, the lower their risk for heart disease was.
I am intrigued. If that's true Wren will be nursing for years. I shall try and hunt down this study and see if it is legit.
Edit:
Here is the study abstract.
2 comments:
An encouraging story about a baby born with a heart condition who has thrived on breastmilk.
http://www.lalecheleague.org/NB/NBMarApr01p51a.html
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Tracy
Okay. 1 more link with an except.
http://www.lalecheleague.org/ba/May06.html
"Intensity of human milk feeding. A study by Singhal and colleagues8 examined the proportion of an infant’s diet provided by human milk in relationship to early markers of cardiovascular disease in adolescence. This study followed up a cohort of preterm infants who had been randomly assigned to receive either donated banked breast milk or formula during early infancy. Mothers had elected either to breastfeed, so that the assigned diet was received as a supplement, or not to breastfeed, so that the assigned diet was received as the infant’s sole nutrition. When participants’ blood was assessed for markers of cardiovascular disease at age 13-16, the LDL-to-HDL ratio was significantly lower for those who had received banked human milk. A greater proportion of the diet provided by human milk was associated with larger reductions in the LDL-to-HDL ratio. The level of C-reactive protein (an indicator of the inflammatory process associated with atherosclerosis) was inversely correlated with the percentage of human milk intake."
The study referenced in the above excerpt was:
8. Singhal, A., T. J. Cole, M. Fewtrell, and A. Lucas. Breast milk feeding and lipoprotein profile in adolescents born preterm: Follow-up of a prospective randomized study. Lancet 2004; 363(9421):1571-78.
Now I gotta go back to work.
Hugs,
Tracy
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