Food for thought

"The brain is over 60% fat and very rich in both omega-3 and omega-6 EFA derivatives so the baby needs essential fatty acids (EFAs) for brain development and brain function. These are drawn from the mother's body during pregnancy and breastfeeding.

So during pregnancy and breastfeeding the mother gets depleted of essential fatty acids, especially the omega-3 fatty acids. Each child gets less EFAs than the previous child, depleting the mother even further, UNLESS the mother augments her diet with EFAs, like flax oil and oily fish."

The Basics of The Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs)

Yikes! In lack of something wise to say...
I'm reading up on good food for nursing mothers and children, while writing my grocery list.

"This depletion of the mother's EFA stores for baby's brain building can explain why younger children have more developmental and behavioral problems than older children, especially if the chilren are born close together. It also can explain why women experience far more depression, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue, and more inflammatory, autoimmune, and collagen diseases than men."

Another good article: Breastfeeding mom's diet and baby's brain development, "Another important note for pregnant women is that women who develop postpartum depression have lowered levels of DHA."

Milk in the breasts, porridge in the head!

Found this site too, which has some "controversial" material (food-wise):

http://www.westonaprice.org/splash_2.htm

Does Vitamin A Cause Osteoporosis?

This is interesting, as we've recently read in a few posts on raw milk in the e-group muslimhsers, "A better way to build healthy bones is with weight-bearing exercise (J Bone Miner Res, 1995; 10:1068–75), getting adequate sunlight (around 15 minutes a day) and increasing your intake of leafy green vegetables, which contain calcium as well as vitamin K, an essential factor in bone metabolism (see WDDTY vol 17 no 4)."

Drinking large quantities of milk does NOT increase calcium levels, recent research has found, because "eating dairy products can increase the rate at which calcium is lost from the body and so hasten osteoporosis.

As well as being high in calcium, dairy products are also high-protein foods. Too much protein in the diet—whether from milk products or any other source, such as meat, fish or eggs—means that the body has to get rid of the excess. To do this, the kidneys work to clear the excess—and also lose calcium, in a process known as ‘protein-induced hypercalciuria’."

Another myth is what a lot of non-muslims like to point out to muslims, that dressing the way we do results in osteoporosis! It's like me telling them they'll all have skin cancer!!!
Blondes take up more D-vitamin from the sun than dark people. But one does not have to sit and get fried to get some of the blessings! Sitting in the shadow is enough, and maybe the choice of colours in our clothes has an effect...

Today's lifestyle for the majority of people lacks regular day-light. It's up early in the morning, before sun-light during winter, to sit in an office without windows and then come back home after dark.
Bad diet takes its toll too. Red meat contains D-vitamin, but a lot of people are vegetarians.