Oatmeal for Increasing Milk Supply

By Kelly Bonyata, BS, IBCLC

Eating a bowl of oatmeal, if nothing else, is healthy for mom. At best, it may be a simple way to increase milk supply.

Eating a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast each morning is a frequently heard recommendation for increasing milk supply. Although there is no scientific evidence regarding oatmeal and milk supply, oatmeal does seem to work for some. Many working moms have noticed that on the days they eat oatmeal for breakfast, they can pump more milk than on the days they eat something else. In some countries, "traditional wisdom" recommends eating oatmeal as a way to increase milk supply. A number of lactation consultants recommend eating oatmeal as a way to increase supply.

Some possible explanations:

• Oatmeal is is a good source of iron. It is known that maternal anemia/low iron levels can result in a decreased milk supply, so it makes sense that eating something high in iron might increase milk supply in some women.
  
• Oatmeal is a comfort food for many women. Anything that increases relaxation in mom can encourage let-down, and hence also influence milk supply.
  
• A use that some of the milk-increasing herbs share is that of decreasing cholesterol levels. Herbs used for both increasing milk production and decreasing cholesterol levels include fenugreek and alfalfa. Oat bran, which is in oatmeal, is also known to help lower cholesterol.

Suggested dosage:	One bowl of hot oatmeal (any type) every day. Some moms say that they see an increase in supply when they eat anything made with oats, including instant oatmeal and oatmeal cookies.
Side effects:	Oats are not associated with any adverse effects Those with gluten sensitivity (celiac disease) should eat oats with caution

Making Smart Nutrition Choices Can Save You Money

By: Amanda Bog

The headlines are full of news that people are more overweight than ever, that there's an epidemic. Even children have been affected by this trend. Illnesses typically associated with adulthood, such as heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, are becoming much more common among children, as so many are carrying far more weight than they should be. Making smart nutrition choices can help save money - not only in the day-to-day food bill, but also over the long-term by helping to promote better health and helping to prevent disease.

Many people choose fast foods and convenience foods under the mistaken impression that preparing nutritionally sound meals of whole foods inevitably means complex or time intensive processes and expensive ingredients. Highly processed foods - typical drive-through and convenience fare - are often nutritionally lacking, as well as high in fat, sugars and sodium. With careful shopping, eating well doesn’t have to be expensive. When it comes to meal planning and preparation, there are plenty of choices that are fast and fairly simple to make.

Choosing fresh, in season vegetable and fruits is usually more affordable than out of season or exotic produce shipped in from far away. Local farmers markets or fresh produce co-ops can also be more affordable means of buying fresh produce. In a co-op, members pool their money and get a volume discount. Some pay a local farmer at the beginning of the season and receive deliveries throughout the growing season, which are then distributed among members. Area health food stores are a good source of information for how to get involved with a food co-op.

Another aspect of getting the most nutrition for your food dollar is knowing how to choose the most nutritionally dense types of produce. A general rule of thumb is that the darker the color, the more nutrients the vegetable or fruit contains. Butternut squash, sweet potatoes and other deep orange vegetables contain a lot more vitamin A than do such light yellow vegetables as corn and summer squash. Collard greens, mustard greens, spinach, romaine lettuce and other dark green leafy vegetable have more to offer nutritionally than do the lighter colored ones such as iceberg lettuce.

Meals can be simple, delicious and nutritious. It takes just minutes, for example, to broil a piece of fish with a touch of cumin, a scraping of fresh ginger, a squeeze of lime and drizzle of olive oil. Serve on a bed of couscous, which takes a mere five minutes, with steamed baby carrots and spinach or broccoli. Follow up with some fresh fruit and you have a healthy and tasty meal in just minutes. A little research will turn up countless quick and easy meals - food that can help to promote health and well-being.

Making smart nutrition choices can help prevent some of the health conditions that are most common today. With a bit of planning, eating well can be affordable, and even result in saving money. That is especially true if the potential savings in health care costs are factored in.

Folic Acid - Give mothers-to-be their daily bread

Folic acid is a B vitamin which cannot be produced within the human body. That is why it must either be taken in as food or by means of a folic acid supplement in tablet form.

Folic acid is reported to be beneficial for women who are planning on becoming pregnant. Taking extra folic acid before becoming pregnant and during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy can help reduce the risk of development of a neural tube defect (NTD) in the baby.
NTDs are a major group of birth defects that occur when the brain, spinal cord or the covering of these organs have not developed properly. Anencephaly and spina bifida are the most common types of NTDs in Ireland.

National Governments, such as the ones in the UK, Australia and Ireland, are currently considering folic acid fortification of wheat or bread in order to reduce the risk of NTDs in babies. Fortification of wheat flour has been accepted and put into practice in a number of countries, including the USA, Canada and Chile.

However, critics claim that the average person would have to eat a vast amount of fortified bread in order to benefit from the positive health implications connected with folic acid and warn that many people - including the crucial group of women of childbearing age - do not eat bread at all. In order to obtain more accurate data on this issue, more research needs to be done.

Committees tasked with implementing these policies have to address the technical problems connected with bread fortification, consider the benefits and risks associated with fortification and to understand the long-term implications of fortified bread intake. Recent studies have suggested that an over-average intake of folic acid can lead to masking the deficiency syndromes of another B vitamin - vitamin B12. Therefore, an intake of folic acid should not be too high to prevent consumers from discovering vitamin B12 deficiency too late, that is only after the lack of the vitamin has already damaged the nerve system. Cognitive defects in the elderly are also suspected to be related with an increased intake of folic acid.

In Ireland, the Committee recommended the mandatory fortification with folic acid of most white, brown and whole-meal breads on sale.

But, how do you know how much folic acid each demographic group of the population will be exposed to from their diverse eating habits when the new fortification recommendation comes into force?
And are those levels effective and safe?

CREMe specialises in these questions and in solving these problems for our clients. We perform detailed exposure analysis including the breakdown of results into key demographic groups for nutrients in foods using CREMe 2.0 Food.

In order to achieve a detailed report, an analysis is performed using an up to date, full food consumption data set on the population's eating habits. The food consumption data set is then analysed and the relevant food codes are found using the CREMe 2.0 searching tool in order to group foods of similar characteristics into food groups. For example, the bread food group is created and the concentration of folic acid assigned is set to be equal to the recommended level of 120 micro g of folic acid per 100g of bread.

Market share and brand loyalty information is then applied for foods on the market which are already currently fortified such as breakfast cereals and spreads. The concentration of the folic acid in each food, brand of group of foods can then be assigned to each using the CREMe Concentrations Table. If there is any uncertainty or variability in any of the input data, these can be inputted as probability expressions to represent the possible values.

Once all of the data has been inputted into the system, the system will then easily and efficiently calculate the exposure levels of your chosen demographic groups of the population. The results are then available for the mean female consumer between the ages of 18 and 35, for example, or the highest 95th percentile male consumer between the ages of 40 and 70. The results are generated as intake of folic acid in micro g per day (and per kg bodyweight) with confidence intervals.

This analysis has been run for the Irish population based on the above recommendation and the report can be made available on request, please contact us for more information. We would be happy to support organisations, regulators and industry from other countries in their efforts to understand the impacts of folic acid in food. This analysis can be run for the UK, USA, Australia or any other country you require.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Cronan McNamara, is CEO and Founder of CREMe Software Ltd. CREMe's mission is to improve health and wellness by helping industry, government and researchers to easily and accurately evaluate population exposure levels to nutrients, additives, packaging migrants, pesticides and chemicals.

Cronan has a BSc in Physics from UCD and an MSc in Computing from TCD.

After working in financial risk analysis with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets Bank in Dublin, Cronan returned to Trinity College to manage the model and software development for the EU framework 7 Monte Carlo project and following on from that the EU Framework 6 NOFORISK Project and the Enterprise Ireland funded CREME Project.

In April 2005 Cronan formed CREMe Software Ltd. to bring the benefits of the software tools and expertise developed in the above research programmes to a wider audience.

www.cremesoftware.com
info@cremesoftware.com
+353 1 896 3847

How Fight Childhood Obesity

By: Cronan McNamara

THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS
Childhood obesity has widely spread in industrialized countries. In the USA, over 15% of children are currently considered obese and the number is likely to grow in the future. In Ireland alone, about 300,000 children are overweight or obese. Obesity indirectly leads to about 2,000 deaths a year and also to indirect costs of about 4 bn EUR a year.
Obesity can be caused by hereditary factors, meaning that children are often predisposed to be obese, if their parents are obese, too. Whether this is just due to eating habits which are copied by children or due to genetic changes is still subject to research.
In addition to this, children are less likely to engage in physical outdoors activities due to recent advances in technology. Computers, television and electronic games keep them at home instead of encouraging them to play outside. The use of mobile phones from an early age inclines them to contact their friends with their phones instead of walking to their friends’ houses to see them. Thus their physical inactivity keeps them from burning fat, which then accumulates in the body.
Furthermore the parental tradition of home-cooking is disappearing due to lack of time. In that way many children are exposed to too much fast food, which again leads to weight gain.

CREME CAN HELP TARGET THE PROBLEM OF OBESITY
The current state of affairs is hazardous, because it endangers our children’s lives. Obesity can not only lead to psychosocial problems, but also to serious illnesses, such as diabetes, sleeping disorders, high blood pressure, osteoarthritis, angina or heart diseases.
CREMe can help fight child obesity by helping researchers analyse food consumption data in order to allow them to target resources in the areas that will have the greatest impact on children’s health.
The "sort by demographics" option in CREMe allows researchers to sort the data they collect by area, age group or eating habits. We also have data on BMIs, which allows researchers to compare BMI data of whole populations or to look at the obese parts of the population only.
The software also permits researchers to analyse the data they have for chemical toxins in food and thus test to see if obese children are further compounding their health problems by being exposed to more chemical toxins than the regular population.
CREMe has access to a brand new children’s food consumption database which will facilitate researchers’ work.

About CREMe Software Ltd.:
CREMe Software Ltd. promotes health and wellness by helping regulators, safety authorities, food, personal care product and chemical manufacturers to easily and accurately evaluate exposure levels of consumers to chemicals. CREMe 2.0 Food is its online tool for food safety assessments. CREMe 2.0 is an online system which allows collaboration and data sharing between organisations. CREMe 2.0 uses high performance computing technology that is used by major financial institutions to assess exposure and risk in order to accurately and efficiently calculate exposure of populations to chemicals in their foods. This technology is provided through an easy-to-use web interface. All hazard and consumption information is easily inputted or uploaded to the system. Once you have your information uploaded to CREMe, the meaning of the data becomes crystal clear on the system. CREMe will take care of the complexity to calculate the exposure levels of the population to hazards. CREMe provides output data at every level of the calculation including each level of decision made by the software based on the users’ input probabilities. These need to be made available to the users for scrutiny in order to eliminate black box scenario in the models.
About The Author:
Cronan McNamara, is CEO and Founder of CREMe Software Ltd. CREMe's mission is to improve health and wellness by helping industry, government and researchers to easily and accurately evaluate population exposure levels to nutrients, additives, packaging migrants, pesticides and chemicals.
Cronan has a BSc in Physics from UCD and an MSc in Computing from TCD.
After working in financial risk analysis with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets Bank in Dublin, Cronan returned to Trinity College to manage the model and software development for the EU framework 7 Monte Carlo project and following on from that the EU Framework 6 NOFORISK Project and the Enterprise Ireland funded CREME Project.
In April 2005 Cronan formed CREMe Software Ltd. to bring the benefits of the software tools and expertise developed in the above research programmes to a wider audience.
www.cremesoftware.com
info@cremesoftware.com
+353 1 896 3847