How #THRiVELab is re-inventing #breastfeeding science education:
🧑🏻🏫 Teaching breastfeeding to kindergarteners
🎥 Producing a documentary about #LactSci
🩺 Teaching clinicians how to "talk about breastfeeding"
👽 Hosting an annual Reddit AMA
www.thrivediscovery.ca/kt.html
🧪 🛟 🩺 #MedSky #ChildHealth
Just looked at your org. What a rockstar team! An anthropologist and an IBCLC too! 🙌 We deal with science denialism in our field ( #LactSci) as well. I should reach out…
Why yes, I do have a #LactSci starter pack!
🔗 go.bsky.app/LC9nPQG
Screenshot. A silhouette image of a mother and infant. DOHAD List Multidisciplinary researchers in pregnancy, birth, human milk, lactation, breastfeeding, and #DOHaD. From a range of disciplines— microbiology, epidemiology, anthropology, nutrition, OB/GYN, peds, medicine, global health, and more. LMK if I've missed anyone. Unkindness will get you removed.
Did you know there is a #DOHaD list?
You can follow people, or pin it to your feed!
🔗 → bsky.app/profile/did...
🧪🛟🩺 #ChildHealth #MCH #MaternalChildHealth #Pediatrician #Breastfeeding #Lactation #LactSci #IBCLC #NABBLM #ACEs #Pregnancy #OBGYN #pedsky #obskyb #familymed #NICU
Registration is open!
There’s a QR code in the flyer but here’s a link:
🔗 hmi.ucsd.edu/symposium/re...
🧪🛟🩺 #BlueSci #MCH #LactationMedicine #Breastfeeding #PedSky #pediatrician #ChildHealth #NICU #MedSky #HumanMilk #IBCLC #Lactation #DOHaD #LactSci #TaylorSwiftPuns
GREAT discussion on the unique challenges we face in visualizing our breastfeeding and lactation research. This is an ongoing discussion, so I’ll come back and update later!
#LactSciComm #LactSci #DataViz #SciComm #BlackInSTEM #SciArt #MedSky #PedSky 🧪🩺
A screen shot from a document from 1992: Milking a bovine cow is a delicate operation and not as easy as some might think. It takes a special touch for the cow to cooperate with the procedure. The hands must be warm and gentle or the cow can become agitated which will prevent the let-down of milk. Since we could not find any experts in the field of milking dolphins, we were on our own.
This, my friends, is how you open a scientific paper. 🍿
#LactFacts #LactSci 🐬🤱🏻🧪
Scicommers, #PublicHealth, clinical professionals—please share with the wider public! And come say hi yourselves. :)
#LactSci #Breastfeeding #MedSky #BlueSci #WorldBreastfeedingWeek2025 #WBW2025 #SciComm #OneHealth #PedSky #OBSky #EpiSky #Immunology #MCH #NICU #DOHaD 🧪 🛟 🩺
Hey, #BlueSci fam! Question.
Next month is World Breastfeeding Week, and my #LactSci colleagues and I are trying to think of #SciComm stuff to do. With twitter being...you know...we feel a little adrift this year.
What does scicomm look like for you, lately?
🧪
🧪 #lactsci
A bunch of words in colorful letters. Flexible, Supportive, and Collaborative are in the biggest font, toward the center of the cloud. The full list: International Productive New Ideas Flexible caring Thoughtful Respect Pushing the Envelope Motivating Dynamic Supportive Inspiring Open Self Directed Autonomous Goal Driven Positive Collaborative Diverse Research Oriented High Achieving Professional Innovation
Every year, our lab director @meghanazad.bsky.social asks us “What 3 words would you use to describe our lab?”
Here’s this year’s #THRiVELab word cloud!
#DOHaD #TeamScience #breastfeeding #LactSci 🧪
Hey #ISRHML2024! Did you know we have a lactation starter pack AND a #DOHaD list to help you get started finding your colleagues on BlueSky? Say #HiSky! 👋
Here is the starter pack: go.bsky.app/LC9nPQG
…and I will post more resources in this thread! 🪡 👇
#LactSci #HumanMilk #breastfeeding
A turquoise and purple graphic featuring a boob, a platypus, and a diagram of an atom with a boob instead of a nucleus. The text reads: PLATYPUSES (PLATYPI?) DONT HAVE NIPPLES. Their milk oozes out of pores on their skin like sweat, and their babies lap it up. #LactFacts
🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺
#LactSci #LactFacts #BlueSci #Mammals #platypus #evolution
A turquoise and purple graphic featuring a boob, a dolphin, and an atom whose nucleus is a boob. Text reads: DOLPHINS DON'T HAVE NIPPLES. They just kinda squirt the milk into their baby's mouth like a Super Soaker. #LactFacts
Kathy Dettwyler is most famous for talking about this. It’s a bit dated now, but it’s a good overview of how anthropologists think of the question of a “natural” weaning age for humans.
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
🧪 #LactFacts #LactSci
If you want my longer thoughts on this:
raisingwonder.wordpress.com/2019/08/08/i...
#LactSci #breastfeeding #ChildHealth #ObSky #PedSky #MedSky #ScienceDenialism #Misinformation #lactation 🧪
A series of 3 slides. Slide 1: A photo of a newborn gorilla next to a photo of a newborn human. Both are being checked with a stethoscope and having a similar facial reaction to the touch of cold metal. Two quotes: “Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution." Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) "One of the basic steps in saving a threatened species is to learn more about it: its diet, its mating and reproductive processes, its range patterns, its social behavior." Dian Fossey Slide 2: Milk: Older than dinosaurs! Some scientific illustrations of synapsids, showing various degrees of similarity between reptiles and the mammals we know today. (250-300 mya) Purpose: - water balance - protection from pathogens - oliogosaccharides (possibly) - lipids (possibly) Advantages: - Reproduction no longer seasonal - Born at an earlier stage of development - Less dependent on direct paternal care A two tiny newborn platypuses on their mother’s ventral surface. A diagram of a platypus mammary gland From Oftedal, Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia, 2002 Slide 3: Cache (a photo of a nursing baby deer) vs. Carry (a baby monkey stretching out its mother’s nipple. Mom doesn’t seem to care), Follow (a mare and it’s nursing foal) and…Kangaroos are complicated (a kangaroo with a joey peaking out of her pouch). Tilden and Oftedal, Americans Journal of Primatology, 1997 A table showing differences in macronutrient content between different species Citations: Oftedal et al, Canadian Journal of zoology 2011 Oftedal & Iverson, in Handbook of Milk Composition
WHAT IS #LACTATION?
It’s MORE than milk and lactation consultants. It encompasses an entire SYSTEM:
- How the mammary gland works
- How it evolved
- …and shaped maternal/nursling behavior
- Variation in milk composition between + within species
- How it builds babies
#LactSci #PedSky #ObSky 🧪
“Wow Bridget you’re such a gifted communicator!”
No. I’m just suuuuper nerdy for #LactSci. I am but a vessel through which the natural world makes itself known. I light my Carl Sagan votive candle, and then boobscience enters my body and drives me around like Crang.
🧪 #SciComm
#LactSci 📌 🧪