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Help! Baby formula recipe?
"The FAO/WHO recommendations also state that, based on observations by Belvady and Gopalan in India [2], infants fed by vitamin A–deficient mothers whose breastmilk provides as little as 120 ± 15 μg RE/day grow normally and have no clinical signs of vitamin A deficiency. These infants meet their “basal requirement” for vitamin A, which is defined as the minimum daily intake that prevents the appearance of clinical signs of vitamin A deficiency (night-blindness and epithelial lesions of the conjunctiva and cornea of the eye) and permits growth. Thus, the basal require-ment for infants is based on this value of 120 μg RE/day, increased to 180 μg RE/day to account for “variability in growth rates” [1]. The recommended “adequate intake” (AI) for infants in the United States and Canada is 400 μg/day during the first six postpartum months"
Personally I would aim to hit the 400 (although I see 350 also as a rec). It would be fun to do the math on these other formulas and see what they are coming out to be.
I also found that the upper suggested VA level is 600. I would wonder if wapf formulas end up higher than this. @tim-2 would you ever take on the challenge of plugging that into a calculator?
I hope that we can get others here to chime in.
If you don't start with a known recipe, you may then want to start with "what are the building blocks of formula" or "what are the building blocks of breast milk"
I wonder what @ggenereux2014would tell a daughter with the same problem? It's a toughie.
I got one reply that made some sense from a wapfer. She said that you might want to see a nutritionist who can PERSONALIZE a formula recipe for you.
My experience using the WAPF formula was that my baby got worse. She was also intolerant of my own milk, and did better when I cut out dairy, but mostly I think that's because my gut was in such bad shape, likely at that point due to vitamin A toxicity. The WAPF formula is very high in A, which they think is good but I now completely disagree. Regular formula is terrible overall, but there isn't much research about the home made stuff on the other hand. My lactation consultant was supportive when I chose to use the liver based formula, but she pointed out that at least the commercial stuff does have a large control group!
In three months, I am crossing my fingers and toes that my baby-to-arrive-in-October will be able to nurse and thrive on my own milk. I will have been on a low-A diet for a year and a half then (but I am SURE I am not depleted that much, because I'm still eating some, an occasional egg, some lowfat yogurt, some lower-A fruit and veggies). I am not so sure that the WAPF formula-sans-liver/CLO will be nutritionally complete in all the other important ways, but it could be worthwhile to experiment, and hopefully the baby's gut can tolerate solids at a young age. I don't think there are any practitioners who could offer anything besides that: experimentation.
For these little, compromised humans, I don't believe there are any quick fixes. Cats of course wouldn't be the cause of the problem, but I personally wouldn't focus on "getting rid of allergies." It can be a multi-year endeavor to balance a person or a baby's gut and health, and the triggers only make things worse in the meanwhile. Getting rid of upholstered items and carpet, and sending cats to live in an RV permanently might be the best shot at calming down an allergic person's symptoms until their system can handle it. (And sometimes....well, despite 20 years of working on diet etc., my husband remains so allergic to animals that he can't be in a house with a cat for longer than 20 mins before he starts wheezing etc.)...
@ggenereux2014 and @tim-2 etc, formula thoughts might make a wonderful vlog or blog post, because it might take a bunch of research.
Perhaps a formula could be lamb or goat/ coconut based.
With a base of the goat or sheep milk, raw of course for the enzymes and probacteria. And then compare that to breast milk. Make accommodations to the lamb or goat milk to be closer to breast milk... with lamb or goat fat, meat, coconut products such as the young coconut juice or coconut sugar or coconut cream... just some thoughts...
I think of lamb as very gentle, and coconut too, but what do I know?
Of course, as I said to start, the best option to me would be re-lactating, even if it was partial. Relactating seems hard until you realize how challenging it is to come up with formula! 🙂 There are systems of delivering formula that still allow baby to suck, giving stimulus for more milk.
I was thinking about how my first child had bad colic and I wonder if I was dumping VA to him. I wonder if colic is all about high VA breast milk!
Hi @lil-chick,
I mentioned baby formulas in ETFOH and how they correlate to higher rates of infant diseases, including cancer.
My opinion is that an ideal infant formula should not contain any vitamin A, or carotenoids. But, I think including coconut oil or lecithin are potentially harmful too, as these appear to pull the encased retinol out of the RBPs.
Obviously, getting a safe source of fat and protein is going to be important. Sorry, I don’t have a good recommendation.
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Thank you @ggenereux2014
I guess I'm going to have to cut back on coconut oil, I use more than I probably should. I used to put it directly on my face, until I got the intuition it wasn't doing much for me and probably making my rosacea worse. It's kind of lucky to have my issue right there in the mirror, sometimes.
What an interesting chart... wow
There is no decent alternative to breast milk for babies, nothing comes close to replicating it. I'd be more inclined to use formula than some WAPF concoction though.
Quote from tim on July 30, 2020, 8:08 amThere is no decent alternative to breast milk for babies, nothing comes close to replicating it. I'd be more inclined to use formula than some WAPF concoction though.
It's true. It could be that these parents are just going to have to choose a formula (and there might be some differences between the various ones out there), perhaps concurrent with re-lactattion strategies, and as the child grows and the diet expands, they will have more leeway to help it avoid VA overload.
Many, many breast feeding problems can be worked through, with knowledge and with help.
