Before I had a baby, my main understanding of breastfeeding is that it's something people get encouraged to do because it helps newborns build their immune system. But I didn't understand just how personalized breastmilk is to babies and their needs. There's a whole system in place that helps a person's body figure out the nutritive and immunological demands of their child, and then produce that milk. And in the past year, I've been able to experience how cool, but also taxing that process is.
So given how amazing breast milk is, you might be wondering: why don't we keep drinking it when we're older and sick? Trace from That's Absurd Please Elaborate asked me if I was interested in taking on a listener question about just that, and I loved diving into the long history of people turning to breast milk for medicine. In exchange, I got to learn from Trace about how we know about time in dreams. Listen to this episode if you want to learn about:
- why you probably shouldn't be ordering breast milk on the internet
- the potentially medicinal compounds in breastmilk that scientists are investigating
- how scientists rely on lucid dreamers to study the mechanics of dreaming
