Ken,

These figures are means from Documentia Geigy.

                Human Colostrum      Mature Milk            Cow's milk

Casein          21                   3.7                    24.9
Whey            --                   7                       7
Lactose         57                   71                     47

Glucosamine and galactosamine seemed too low to report in cows milk but were
in a very small and narrow range in human milk, though much higher in colostrum.

Because babies have leaky guts, it may be biologically important for "opiate
excess" to function in the early days of babyhood.  Particularly within the
first 18 days, there is a process going on in the Purkinje cells in the
cerebellum (ref) that may well be regulated by opiates, when, by the way,
the level of casein in mommy's milk is quite high.  Human milk is considered
mature by day 15, by which time the potentially opiate-forming casein's
levels have dropped considerably if you note the chart above.  Things are
pretty well completed in that cerebellar process by nine months of age.  I
wonder if that is when the normal "gut leakiness" of babyhood goes away?
That's when most babies begin to be able to crawl and it is about the
earliest I've ever seen a child walk--an event which requires some healthy
vestibular action--definitely both requiring good cerebellar action.

Susan

Ref:  Cravioto et al. Development of the Human Cerebellum:  An
immunoperoxidase study using antiserum to motilin and glial fibrillary
acidic protein (GFAP)  (Ooops...misplaced the source, but I can dig it up if
anyone is interested.)

At 11:31 PM 1/10/98 -0500, you wrote:
>The daughter of a friend of mine had a baby about two weeks ago. The baby
>lost some weight and the doctors did some tests on the baby. One was for
>Galactosemia. The baby was negative for this.
>
>But this got me wondering about what this was and I looked it up on the
>web... apparently this is an inherited disease and can cause brain damage
>in the infant. It is the inability of the liver to process galactose, a
>sugar in milk, and one of the things they do is have the mother stop
>breastfeeding.
>
>Makes me wonder, are there sugars in mother's breast milk that are the same
>as those in cow's and other mammals' milk?
>
>This is new to me, so excuse me if this has already been discussed here.
>
>Can anyone give me other info about this that might satisfy my curiosity?
>----------------------------
>My reality check bounced!
>
>Ken Cook
>home:  [log in to unmask]
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>web page: http://www.mindspring.com/~k_cook
>----------------------------
>
>
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                            (Walter & Susan Owens)
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                            Dallas, Texas  USA