[MUSIC] Welcome back. We want to continue this exploration of these ideas of lactation the absence of pregnancy. Non-puerperal lactation Again, often times wrapping back into the idea of galactorrhea. Let's go to the next slide. What I want to do is to introduce some other kind of offshoots so this idea of lactation in the absence of pregnancy. So we talked a little bit about this idea of induction of lactation, process of inducing lactation in a mother that has never lactated before Or had not lactated for some period of time. And we're going to explore that a little bit more for humans. Recall an earlier video, we went through a kind of a protocol on how to induce lactation in cows starting with high estrogen progesterone and then that also enhances just, the estrogen increases prolactin secretion. Eventually we just start. Removing milk or whatever the mammary secretion is in the animal, starting to remove that. Sometimes people then put a galactagogue on there in that case, provide somatotropin to increase and help maintain that lactation process. So that's a fairly well-established kind of a protocol. And we'll talk about that here in a moment, in terms of What people do in our own species to induce lactation. So this is, again, the idea that the animal has either never lactated before. Or has not lactated for a good period of time. Let's distinguish that from re-lactation. Relactation is the. Reinitiation of lactation after a period and usually a relatively short period when nursing's been stopped for some fairly short period of time and we'll get back to that one here in just a moment. Allosuckling, allosuckling is suckling by an offspring, a female's other than their own mother. So they're taking milk from some other Lactating animal basically. Communal nursing sometimes referred to as allonursing is the sharing of the milk with nonoffspring. So offspring that are their own and so we'll get back to examples of that here in a moment. Let's go the next slide. So induction of lactation, again the animal is either never lactated or has not lactated for some period of time. In the case of the cows that we did in an earlier video, they're usually multiparous cows, that is, they had lactated before. They're not lactating. They've been dried off. And then you're trying to re-ignitiate lactation or induce lactation in the animal. using hormones. And this is more of a protocol that you might typically find for people who are wanting to do this in our our own species, in women. Contraception pills, again the idea is the source of estrogen and progesterone elevated estrogen and progesterone Remember, during pregnancy, those are some of the key drivers of mammary development. I have a question mark here, because some sources say, those aren't really necessary, other sources do recommend that. So that just dependant upon what kind of information you're getting. Enhancing prolactin secretion, this shouldn't be very surprising, because we know prolactin's very heavily involved. Domperidone's very often used, again, a dopamine antagonist. So again, it's releasing that negative inhibition of the dopamine, so prolactin secretion can be enhanced. And that's really critical, one way or the other, to get that prolactin secretion enhanced, and going in the woman. And then somehow, a breast pump to remove whatever secretions there are. Okay, remember that's really critical for maintaining lactation, but also then to continue stimulating prolactin secretion. So certainly these are important. And then, again, sometimes people recommend using some sort of a galactagogue, in this case, herbs of one sort of another. Blessed thistle and fenugreek are a couple that are sometimes recommended. Clearly, especially this part of it used to be under some a Doctor's oversight. Especially the using this sort of a drug. The breast pump, the herbs and so on. Not necessarily like that's necessary in that particular case. To the next slide. Relactation, again, this idea that the woman or the animal, whichever the case may be, has lactated, stopped lactating for some reason, for usually a fairly short period of time, maybe Weeks to, maybe a couple of months or something like that. And then for whatever reason it wants to start lactating again, so again this idea is suckling induced, and I can use relactation here, so I could use the lactation but here we're talking about relactating. And it really blows down to again this idea of stimulating The nipples stimulating the mammary glands, stimulating those nerves to cross to cause the release. So again frequent suckling, 8 to 10 times a day, for 15 to 20 minutes sessions is some of the kind of protocols you might find. Sometimes may need for the infant may need a nursing supplementer. Basically, it's just providing additional fluid in addition to the breast milk but also this additional fluid to the infant when it's nursing. Breast massage, repeated breast massage. And then certainly using a breast pump to keep that Moving the milk but also then keep that prolactin being secreted and that's the fairly typical kind of way that people are talking about this Relactation. The next one, Allosuckling, suckling by offspring by females other than their own mother. I show you this image because you see this sometimes in sheep. Sheep, ewes, will typically have lambs, one, two or three lambs, sometimes four, typically one, two, or three. This one has twins and you can see that one of them over here is suckling, from the side. Remember, the ewe has two mammary glands, one on each side, there. The group down here, on the other hand. So what happens sometimes and typically they're doing this in a group. So there are multiple ewes that have lambs that are lactating in a pen or in a group or in a pasture or something like that. And if she has two lambs, she has two glands. If she has one lamb, then there's one gland not being suckled. And so, what will happen sometimes is that a lamb from another ewe Particularly one that maybe had triplets for example, will try to sneak up from behind the ewe, from back there, and sneak up and nurse that mammary gland that's not being nursed at that particular moment. That's okay, except that many times the ewe will then urinate, defecate, that's going to fall right on the top of the lamb. And that' what you see here. This little guy, some times they call them pee heads or pee lambs. Because this is what, this brown stuff is basically the urine and feces coming from the ewe that is was coming up behind and suckling. So that would be a case of allosuckling. An example of allosuckling. Go to the next slide. We also know that in our own species, not at all uncommon, the idea of wet nursing. So historically it's been very, very, common. And certainly in some countries, it's still very common. It's the woman who breastfeeds someone else's child. So either she's already had her own child and is still lactating, or perhaps induced lactation, or relactation, whatever the case may be. But she is then nursing someone else's infant and that would be an example of allosuckling. The next slide, and then communal nursing. This is the sharing of milk with nonoffspring. And so, one example, there are a number of kinds of examples of this we find in nature, Common Dwarf Mongoose Usually found in Eastern and Southern Central Africa. Live in extended family groups. And this is the idea. It's kind of a matriarchal system, where we have a dominant female gives birth to the young. Four to six pups. But then kind of it's the other females in the group that actually do the lactating and supporting those pups. So the dominant female doesn't do that much lactating. She has the young and then usually there either a daughters of the dominant female or cousins those kinds of things. So subordinate females and produce the milk. To feed the dominant female's pups. So that's an example of communal nursing and this is just one example of the species, there's one in right there. Go to next slide. And I want to digest just a little bit and I'll be honest with you, I couldn't exactly figure out where to put this in the series of videos that we've been doing here. Something called witches milk This occurs in our own species. It occurs in newborn human infants where there's galactorrhea in the sense that there's some colostrum white secretion, a few drops of that that are coming out of the nipples, out of the breasts. There's really not very much mammary tissue there but there certainly is a nipple. But there is mammary tissue inside, not very much of it. Secretion starts three to four days postpartum. And lasts for one to two weeks, something like that. And then clearly this is not happening on the basis of being stimulated by the hormones in the infant. It's being stimulated by the maternal hormones that have crossed the placenta. And are then impacting, getting into the blood of the infant. So let's go to the next slide. So we've talked about this in terms of immunoglobulin transport, but let's think about it here in terms of what can happen in terms of the hormones. So again we have different kinds of species, cows, pigs, horses, dogs, cats, and humans, and rodents. And really this line represents the line between the fetal tissues. And then the maternal tissues, so the red here are the blood systems, so blood system of the foetus, the blood system of the son and the foetus and the blood system of the mother and lots of layers for things to go through here from maternal blood to foetal blood On the other hand, in our own species not as many layers to go through. So it's not to be unexpected that some of those hormones, the same hormones that are causing mammogenesis, lactogenesis in the mother, can get across into the blood system of the young, and the infant, the fetus, basically. And then when that fetus is born Remember progesterone is the inhibitor of lactogenesis. Well progesterone will go away pretty quickly once the young are born. So then those other elevated prolactin, probably elevated glucocorticoid, those can cause that lactogenesis, and then ending up with this witches milk. Again it's transient, Doesn't last very long, and really it doesn't move that all the way into the second stage of lactogenesis. We're really talking about a colostrum-like secretion. So it's really just kind of getting that into that first stage of lactogenesis. Let's go to the next slide. So just to review very quickly here. Again, a wide range of kinds of things, ways of thinking about this idea of lactation in the absence of pregnancy. So clearly, lactation can occur, can occur, glycogenesis can occur in the absence of the animal having been pregnant. Again, we call this in just overall non-puerperal lactation. A lot of times, again, the lactorrhea is a component of this. We talked about induction of lactation, so an animal that has either not lactated before or not lactated very recently. We actually induce that and usually by some mechanism of either administering hormones and, or Causing internal hormones to be elevated. The ones involved in mammary growth and lactogenesis. Relactation, the same idea. Again, this is often times, suckling induced. Where, the animal. Or, in this case, usually in women, have lactated for a bit. Stopped lactating for one reason. And then. Later on, when it'll lactate again. And again it's really more of a suckling-induced lactation at that point. That's the process. Allosuckling, suckling of offspring other than their own mother. And again, sometimes wet nursing is purposeful. The lamb example I gave you is, the lamb is basically trying to take milk from a different female. And then communal nursing, this idea we talked about the dwarf mongoose is just part of their, how they work as a group and reproductively sharing the milk with non-offspring. So these are just a few examples of kinds of ways we can think about lactation outside the context of Lactation in the presence of pregnancy. [SOUND]
