A friend of mine has to give medicine to her month-old baby. The medicine is liquid, and apparently tastes disgusting. The poor baby HATES it and tries not to swallow it, making the whole thing an ordeal.
What if the mother could take the medicine instead? Then she could nurse the baby as usual and the baby would get her medication without having to deal with the yucky taste.
We know that bad drugs can make their way into breastmilk, so why not good drugs? Obviously this wouldn't be appropriate for every medication or every situation, but wouldn't it be nice to have the option? I'm sure there are quite a few cases where the mother would rather take a bit of unnecessary medication herself than have to make her poor baby miserable several times a day.
Update: The mother of the baby in question informs me that it would change the taste of the milk, which slightly blows my mind. I do think the taste wouldn't be as strong as the taste of the medication itself, and still think science should figure out how to do this on principle.
10 comments:
It seems like a good idea, but I don't know how the dosing could ever be worked out. I doubt substances show up in breast milk in predictable quantities.
I once saw a chart that told you how much alcohol you could safely drink if you're nursing, with variables like the mother's weight and the amount of time between drinking alcohol and feeding the baby. It seemed surprisingly precise, which leads me to think that they could do the same thing for medication.
And there's also the question of how precise the medication dosage needs to be. To use a simplistic example, you know how, in most cases, it doesn't really make a major difference whether you take one advil or two advils, and even if you take four you're not going to die or get sick unless you have some condition that makes you sensitive. I'd imagine the importance of getting the exact right dose would vary depending on the medication.
I'm surprised I wasn't able to google up evidence that anyone has done the science on this. A number of mothers (including the mother of the baby who inspired this post) mentioned to me that they came up with the same idea independently.
I'm thinking dosage is a lot more important in an infant. Because an infant has so little blood, the concentration of medication in her/his blood would be so much higher - the way the tiniest amount of e coli can kill a baby, where an adult would just get sick.
It makes sense that mothers are thinking of this! Maybe a mother will do the research to figure it out.
I think your idea is a good idea in thought, but would not be safe or applicable. I am a nurse and a health fanatic, personally (even though I am a nurse) I do not use any medication. None, unless I am going to die immediately without it I will not take medication, almost all disease is the result of a nutritional problem (excepting genetic disorders of course). Even if I was going to die without treatment there are still some medications I would refuse (such as chemotherapy, this is fate is worse than dying from cancer!)
Anytime you give a medication there are tons of unknowns, you don't know how a person will respond, if they will have allergies, if anything they currently take might interact etc... The less medicine you take the less chance you have for a negative reaction. Doctors always follow a system (or they are supposed to follow it) of weighing the benefits with the risks. If the benefits outweigh the risk then a doctor will prescribe the medication, if not then they will begin to look at other options. The benefits of a drug (no matter how good they may be), would in no way be enhanced by giving something second hand through breastmilk, it would have the potential to definitely be more convenient, but convenience alone would never be enough to inspire a drug company to develop something like that... if it could somehow make them a ton of money, on the other hand, then you could get it produced, lol.
Oh, and Laura K, you are very right. Doses have to be extremely precise in infants. Something that could vary as much as 10-20mg with no effect in an adult could easily kill or severely damage a small child. (part of why I don't want to get into pediatrics!!)
Re: range in dosage, I was thinking it might be reasonable even given how small babies are because such a small proportion of the medication the mother takes would get through to a baby. If the mother takes 10 mg too much, the baby isn't going to get 10 mg too much. Of course, they'd have to actually do the science and quantify how much would get through and how much this varies from person to person to figure out how much leeway they'd have in this regard.
@Shane: If you don't mind my asking, do you ever find yourself in a moral quandary being nurse but being opposed to medication? I guess it would depend on what kind of nursing you're doing, but, for example, do you ever end up in a situation where standard medical protocol dictates administering medication, but you'd refuse it yourself?
Yeah unfortunately I find myself in that position every time I go to work. I am trying my best to work as little as possible and to just focus on following my dream of becoming a Jiu Jitsu world champion, but I still have to have a way to generate some income to live off of. I work in long term care, which is about the worst place to work if you don't believe in medicines, I get to basically do nothing but push hundreds of pills every single day. I do believe there are a small handful of medicines that are a good thing, like insulin for type 1 diabetics,enzymes for cystic fibrosis, etc..., but for the most part I think medications are an unneeded evil in our world.
@Shane
Medications have saved my life and are saving the life of my baby.
Enjoy getting out of the practice of medicine, and have fun getting concussions instead.
I can only hope that someone who believes medication is evil never really needs any.
I also wonder, if medications for genetic diseases are ok, how we are to know if a disease is genetic or not? Most illnesses have some genetic component, and more genetic predispositions are being discovered all the time.
OK, this should be on my own blog. Will do soon. (And for once, I agree with Anonymous.)
In a sort of roundabout way, I admire the ability to do something that requires as much education and effort and dedication as nursing if you not only don't believe in it, but think what you're doing is outright wrong. I don't need to actively believe in or be inspired by my work (I'd be quite happy working on an assembly line), but I couldn't put all the effort into studying complicated subjects like biology and pharmacology just to do something I think is wrong. That's got to take way more self-discipline than I have.
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