Men Can Breastfeed!

2.03.2012 | By: T. B.

Did you know that some men can breastfeed? How come that men are able to produce milk in their breasts in the first place?

Could men help women in breastfeeding their babies? (PhotoXpress)

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Men can breastfeed! Usually owing to use of drugs or medicines, which stimulate mammary glands, as men also have mammary tissue. Appropriate hormonal stimulation makes everything possible. Of course, the amount of milk cannot be compared to the amount produced by women.

Usually, men can breastfeed due to drugs

This state is often caused by drugs that men take to treat prostate cancer. Female hormones are used to stop cancer tissue from growing.

Stress connected with a considerable physical strain and lack of food also contributes to this phenomenon. It is therefore nothing unusual that men in the Nazi concentration camps as well as veterans of other wars breastfed their babies.

Anthropologist Barry Hewlett observed Pygmies and found that some Pygmy men breastfeed their babies. A man in Sri Lanka did the same when his wife died during the birth of the second child. Now you know why men have nipples, too.

Adolescent boys also produce milk

Boys and girls can produce milk because of the high level of hormones that they receive through mother’s milk. A discharge from the nipples is not an unknown phenomenon in adolescent boys. Men can breastfeed because nature has made us prepared for crises.