Nursing poses major metabolic demands on mothers, to which they respond by eating more and saving energy to sustain milk production. There are significant hormonal changes during lactation, but how they lead to metabolic adaptations in nursing mothers remained unclear. In this study, which appeared in Nature Metabolism, leading researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Pennington Biomedical Research Center uncovered a mechanism that connects prolactin, estrogen, the brain and metabolic adaptations during lactation.
We worked with animal models to investigate how hormones and the brain work together to adapt to the metabolic demands nursing mothers face to sustain milk production.”
Dr. Chunmei Wang, co-corresponding author, assistant professor of pediatrics at the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition…