SUNSHINE ASSURES BETTER MILK

Sunbaths before and after childbirth increase the mother's ability to nurse her baby and improve the quality of the milk, while they tend to prevent tiredness, backache, nausea, loss of appetite, emotionalism and hysteria during pregnancy.

Sunshine is even essential to the production of good milk. Hess showed that milk from cows fed on pastures in the sunlight maintains the health and growth of young animals, whereas, milk from cows maintained out of the sun and fed on fodder will not maintain life and growth. The American Review of Tuberculosis, Vol. XIII, No. 2, Feb. 1926, says: "Something also may be accomplished in this direction (the prevention of rickets) by improving the hygienic condition of milk cows. At present many of these furnishing the best grade of milk are kept throughout the year in sunless barns, are allowed a very limited amount of exercise, and receive little or no fresh green fodder."

It seems not to have occurred to them, as it did to Taylor, that the nursing mother would also be benefited by sunshine and that it would enable her to supply more and better milk for her child, so that she would not be forced to depend on the cow to mother her offspring.

It is notorious that the clad races and especially those who live in the cities and are in the sun but little, are unable to supply their children with milk that will sustain them. Babies that are themselves light-starved and that are fed on milk from light-starved mothers or light-starved cows are at a double disadvantage.

Drs. Binbury, Chisholm and McKillap, of England, report that in 50% of cases of mothers who lose enough blood at childbirth to be left weakened, sunshine means the saving of a failing supply of breast milk.

Mellanby says: "The antirachitic action of whole milk has been found to vary greatly according to the diet of the cow and the degree of exposure to sunlight. These facts have been worked out by Luce, who found that, when the cow was pasture-fed and exposed to sunlight, 2.6 cm. of its milk had approximately the same antirachitic action, when tested in rats, as 15 cm. of milk of the same cow when fed on a diet of white maize, gluten meal, oats and barley and mangolds, and kept in a dark stall."

Not vitamins alone, but minerals, are concerned in this problem. Milk from pasture-fed cows is not only richer in vitamins, but contains much higher percentages of phosphorus and calcium and fifty per cent more citric acid. Cows and mothers can produce perfect milk only when given green foods and exposed to the sun. Young animals fed exclusively on milk from cows fed in the shade on dry fodder lose weight and die. Similar animals fed on similar quantities of milk from cows that run in the pasture, getting both sunlight and green foods, grow and thrive.

Dr. Taylor declared: "Nursing mothers, especially need these hygienic influences (sunlight) to maintain the purity and vigor of their system that they may not lay the foundation for lasting disease in their offspring, for the child is sure to suffer, even sooner than the mother, the grievous consequences of her physiological errors."

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 743