Traditional Plants for Lactating Mothers

One of the problems faced by some mothers while nursing their babies is the lack of enough milk. There is no reason why a healthy mother who eats nutritional food and is not under stress of tension should have this problem. However it does happen and there are no allopathic medicines which can be administered to increase milk secretion. In alternative medicine, however, there are several plant substances which are reportedly being used to increase production of milk. In folklore as well as grandmother’s medicines many plants are being used to solve this problem. Several of this have, in fact been used in veterinary medicine.

It would be interesting to hav a look at these plants. Some enterprising researcher may, after carrying our toxicity tests in animals, conduct clinical trials to see if any of these increase milk secretion in mother with lactating problem. Many of the plants described below have been mentioned in the Atharva Veda written thousands of years ago. Asparagus racemosus or satavari is one of these plants. The roots of this plant increased milk Secretion when administered to rats. Following these studies published in the Indian Journal of Experimental Biology in 1968, another study was carried out in buffaloes. Again it was seen that feeding fresh roots of satavari significantly increased the milk yield in these animals.

Laptadenia reticulate or Dodi and Breynia ortens are tow plants administered together to increase mil secretion in women. The results of the preliminary study were published in the Indian Practitioner in 1979, The result indicated that this is preparation caused a significant increase in the weight of children whose mothers were given this preparation – particularly while the children were 6 to 9 months old.

In a review on this subject published in 1983, the author stated that the findings were interesting but needed to be confirmed in a comparatively controlled clinical trial. This has not yet been done. There are however several papers which have demonstrated the effect of Laptadenia reticulate alone on milk secretion in experimental animals. It has been suggested that the plants contain stignasterol which is responsible for this effect. Three others plants have been investigated for this activity by feeding animals with these and studying the milk secretion. These plants are abroma augusta or olat kombal, Cominum cyminum and Nigella sativa known as kaloji. All these induced, to some degree, an increase in milk output.

Finally there is a preparation in the Indian market which is a mixture of several plants and which is used by practitioners of the traditional systems of medicine to increase milk secretion. Some of these plants are Abrus precatorius, Asparagus racemosus, Laptadenia reticulate, Tinospora cordifolia and Zingiber officinale. Several studies carried out on experimental animals – rats, goats, buffeloes and cows – suggest an increase milk production. Studies have not yet been carried out in humans. It appears therefore that there is a wealth of traditional, folklore and experimental evidence which needs to be investigated further if our modern system of medicine would like to include one or more of these plants in our armamentarium.