The Curse of Milk Sickness | Hacker News Reader

The Curse of Milk Sickness

appalachianhistory.net

85 pointssamclemens17 comments

Part 2: https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2019/02/the-curse-of-milk...

Interesting how important an animal's diet can be, something I didn't fully appreciate.

Also it's nice to see accounts of how science semi-functioned historically. I'm fascinated by the role of human-factors in our attempts at objective-science.

You are what you eat eats.

That's cute, but partially false, and is the main reason animals eating other animals exists.

Obligate carnivores, as an example, eat other animals not as a shortcut to the diets of the other animals, but because the other animals' livers manufacture amino acids that the obligate carnivores' livers do not.

Should be "You are what what you eat eats."

Chaining more also works nicely: "You are what what what you eat eats eats," or, "You are what what what what what what you eat eats eats eats eats eats," and so on. All of which are true in some small proportion, of course.

You find this out pretty quickly when you have kids. The mother's diet has a huge affect on her milk (and thence, on the infant).

Do you have an example of these huge effects you observed?

Yep, a couple. First one, if the mum eats anything spicy, it gets passed on through the milk and the kid gets colicky. Secondly, one of ours has a milk protein allergy. If the mum drinks cow's milk, the baby gets nasty nappy rash. Both completely repeatable, and tried enough times to go beyond anecdata (imnsho).

One example: Mom drinks coffee close to breastfeeding makes babies hyper and unable to sleep

I still distinctly remember milk sickness being used as the "story" behind some experiments they had us do in early science classes in middle or high school. Basically, a teenager was sick/had died and we had to figure out where the milk came from(then the experiment was to study density of different plastics to determine which dairy had bottled it). One thing that stood out to me was that the parents in the story described the victim's breathe as smelling like nail polish. One of the symptoms is the build up of ketone bodies like acetone, which might be noticeable in the breathe.

Friendly correction: you meant "breath" not "breathe."

Pretty interesting story. A little history, a little science. hi-sci?

I like it, very interesting informaton. Thank you for sharing this:)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageratina_altissima

... continued tomorrow

Perhaps could use a repost tomorrow then :)

That "tomorrow" was earlier this year.

https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2019/02/the-curse-of-milk...

It's already posted.

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