this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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Unless, those are microplastics, which are probably something that will always be there for us.
They've detected microplastics in breast milk. You know what that means? It's time to start living up to our name as mammals.
We hormonally induce lactation for everyone. All the time. Just leech out those microplastics. Nips into 3d printers.
Sadly, the energy cost of making all that milk would require us to eat more, taking in more plastics.
I walked into my break room at work a couple of years ago and overheard some of my female coworkers complaining about the formula shortage. I asked if they'd ever thought about breastfeeding and they looked at me like I'd just grown a second head. I get that some women here and there might need a supplement for this, but the idea that feeding babies canned formula should be the norm is completely insane.
Breast feeding is a huge amount of work, asking a person to do that and have a job is a big deal. Pumping breastmilk is incompatible with lots of jobs. If they have already stopped breastfeeding they may not be able to restart.
It would be great to live in a society where breastfeeding was normal and easy. Society is crazy and women shouldn't be criticised for trying to exist within it.
We're bus drivers lol. We work four hours a day.
Hey son, just don't eat for 4 hours...
It's not that simple, like at all. There are loads of other things to take into account too.
It actually is that simple. The baby will either adjust or you'll have pumped in preparation for those four hours.
Found the man who have never taken care of one of his baby kids.
"The baby will adapt" man that's so out of touch.
Literally all I do when I get home from work so you and everyone downvoting me can honestly go fuck themselves forvall I care. Shit pisses me off you'd say that
Dude good for you if it works, but seriously it is not that simple for many parents. Some kids eat more than you can "just pump", pumping itself has issues (excruciating pain through over simulation for example), some don't have enough etc etc etc.
You're adding in a lot that the comment I replied to did not mention. You can go drive a bus for four hours and your baby is not going to starve to death is literally all I was saying. Ya'll want some one size fits all bullshit answer for everything smh
Well that is why I said, good for you, because your kid is handling it.
That's as dumb as them suggesting you take on a second job to cover the heightened cost of the formula, but the second job has to be donating blood, plasma, and bone marrow. The physical toll to make up that much extra nutrition, the (sometimes permanent) leaching of elements of your own body, the quantity of time to pump and properly clean and store and the cost of products, the emotional toll of sacrificing what used to be a fun part of your body to what for many is quite painful..
Sure boobs are made to make milk, but eyes are made to see. How many people do you know who wear glasses? It's more complicated than just why not breast milk?
If women should be expected to breastfeed for 2 years, then society should be built that they can take two years off to do so. A year of breastfeeding equates to a conservative estimate of 1,800 hours, which is not far off from a full-time job that totals about 1,960 hours annually.
The hucow revolution awaits!
Potential downside: For a while the world is gonna smell like curdled milk.
When life hands you curdled milk it's time to make cheese
Microplaatic cheese
I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?
Plan B is blood letting. I don’t have the source but they have measured a decrease in PFAS blood levels for people who donate blood.
That is not what I wanted those used for.
Don't forget the heavy metals!
Those are also worth taking into account. Mercury in seafood, for example. Some can be excreted by the human body, others can't.
You contradicted yourself. The latter quote is true.
https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-heavy-metal-toxicity-to-clear-up/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen
You're right, I did contradict myself. I meant to say one thing and ended up making a silly statement that doesn't make sense given the values I espouse myself. Thanks for pointing it out.
Heavy metal is good for you. Gets you moving and can be cathartic. I prefer stoner, doom, or deathcore myself though. Load my body up with those types of metal.
Eh, the Moebius stuff was great but a lot of the material just pandered to adolescent boys.
Moebius and Giger and Jodorowsky!
Yeah, what do people mean "toxins are pseudoscience"?
What are microplastics, heavy metals, and PTFAs, then???
You should to regularly ~~let~~ donate blood to expell the ~~bad humors~~ microplastics.
That's right, pass those microplastics along to the cancer babies! (Seriously though, DONATE BLOOD.)
In serious, most ways to loose blood and need blood infusions will loose the plastics too, so the donated blood just maintains the concentrations, the samw way it does for the other components.
Everyone has plastics in their blood.
But then if you donate frequently your blood will have lower concentrations due to all the previous donations, so don't just donate, donate often.
Yeah, valerian root ain't getting rid of your microplastics buildup.
Yeah the dude is really wrong.
Your body is good at filtering out hydrophilic toxins. But for just about every other toxin... Not so much. Most hydrophobic toxins and other toxins, like heavy metals, VOCs, pesticides, micro plastics, etc., are man made and your body hasn't had millions of years to evolve natural filters.
But what "cleanse" does anything for those? The MAHA Moms and podcast bros aren't talking up chelation therapy.
I think the point still stands that anyone selling you a way to rid your body of "toxins" is a charlatan.
I'm an environmental engineer and environmental scientist and I specialize in industrial hazmat waste issues, but I recognize even I'm a bit out of my professional lane on this.
But if you were to identify specific "toxins" that you are interested in "cleansing" there are often methods to do that. But first, I would recommend talking to a health professional. And those cleanses are going to vary significantly based on the toxin of interest.
But your best general "cleanse" is to eat more green leafy vegetables and exercise regularly. And feel free to drink a 4oz glass of milk a couple times a week.
I think we're talking past each other here.
The original post is talking about people with "a systemized non-scientific theory of anatomy and nutrition."
The comment that we're responding to says,
The people who blog about "toxins," as a generalized word without a specific meaning that could reasonably be replaced with "evil ghosts" in a sentence, are not interested in listening to doctors or scientists. They are "health" influencers on par with the current US secretary of Health and Human Services. I specifically called them "MAHA moms" in my previous comment for this reason.
I would hope that all reasonably educated people recognize that there are actual toxic substances that our bodies absorb that are harmful to us. But anyone who is identifying a specific toxin, much less a medically appropriate treatment plan for removing it, is leagues away from the snake-oil peddlers this post is talking about.
If you have not encountered these charlatans, more power to you. They used to be relegated to specific corners of the internet, but they're becoming more mainstream with help from powerful figures in Washington.
I, unfortunately, had a loved one who followed some of these influencers with deadly effects. It turns out that juice cleanses and energy healing can't cure cancer.
There are several problems with the charlatans.
if you haven't taken a science class since high school, then their advice often right. I'm amazed at how quickly the medical pseudo-science that flipped politically in my life time. I was raised in a deep red conservative Christian community and I don't remember anti-vaccines ever being a thing for my community (we definitely had our issues, just not that one). The medical pseudo-science thing back then was firmly in the far left liberal sphere. The anti-vaxx movement was a hippy-liberal thing. (I'm not really sure when that flipped.)
The medical industry -including academia- is very much at fault in burning trust. There are many instances of the medical industry intentionally withholding treatments because a different treatment made them more money. Or doctors over prescribing in order to charge insurance companies more money.
A lot of what RFK jr says. Starts off good. He's all like "Hey, we medicate too much. We should all focus on eating healthier and exercising. That's what the government should encourage." And even I'm like, "Yeah, okay. I agree." Then he goes on to say "And that why you should shove a bowling ball up your butt." That's when he loses me.
AFAIK, still no conclusive studies that show microplastics having an overly adverse affect on the human body. I've seen one linking it to lower sperm counts, but that's not particularly bad to me. We don't need more people.
The big scare with microplastics is that they are everywhere and that certainly isn't good; and I think we're all just waiting for the shoe to drop and some study to come out that shows something majorly negative with them. But for now, there's nothing obvious sticking out that shows an immediate concern. Which makes sense. We use plastic for so much because it tends not to react to stuff.
We haven't noticed much in the way of short term effects, but there's no way to know what long term effects there will be except to wait.
In the meantime, since the effects are... unlikely to be beneficial, the best thing to do is reduce exposure as much as possible.
Because they are so ubiquitous that it is impossible to find a control group. Quite literally every single person on the planet has micro plastics in them.
The problem is that we'll never know because there's no control group. Everybody has them, even fetuses still in the womb. You would have to build bunkers with perfect air filtering, and then go through, like, four generations of humans to breed microplastics-free specimen, which you could then use a the control group for the rest... Only them never leaving the bunker would already invalidate the tests... So, yeah...
If micro plastics were a problem then we should expect to see rapid increases in cancers in younger adults.
Handed a note
Huh. No shit.
Though even that is complicated by 50 or so years of nuclear weapons testing, which likely also increased cancer rates. Not to mention all that lead everywhere. Produce gradually losing nutrients because farming mostly just focuses on the big three with fertilizer and the others are being mined out of the ground and sent to landfills, septic tanks, waste processing facilities, cemetaries, and crematoriums also doesn't help (though I'm not sure waste processing and crematoriums remove those nutrients from the cycle like the others, since the one could produce fertilizer and the other might be sending it out into the atmosphere where it could eventually end up back in the soil).
There's so much chaos that it's hard to isolate causes, which then makes all the causes kinda "hide in plain sight" because they can perpetually blame the others and shit only gets worse over time.
Let's not forget the industrial pesticides, which are also everywhere.
Yeah, microplastics, too. And "pollution" being still broader than the list either of us have given so far. A car goes by smelling like gas? They are running their motor too rich and you're literally inhaling unburnt gasoline. A car whose exhaust stinks but not like gas? Running too lean and now you're inhaling various nitrogen compounds that aren't great for inhaling. Ratio is correct? Still inhaling more CO and CO2 than normal, but everyone is doing it so there might not even be a control population to compare the effects against.
Oh also all the food additives that get tested for acute safety but not so much chronic (as in "will it kill you or make you obviously sick if you eat it once or a few times?" gets studied but "will eating it twice a week for 30 years have any long term effects?" is ignored).
Good point, those exist. I don't think we know yet what all of the consequences are, but they're obviously not good for us.