Herbs and breastfeeding

Breastfeeding not always comes easy and many mothers find they have to tackle bumps and sills and fight wolves and bears to get and keep breastfeeding going. There are, though, all kinds of devices and techniques they can use to aid them in their quest. Many people like to turn to herbal remedies to do so, while others say that won’t work. Fecka & Turek testd how much of the active substance gets into the fluid if you make tea of peppermint, melissa or sage. Thy actually found he amounts of it in the teas. While rsearching sage Gali-Muhtasib founds this not only to be a strong lactation inhibitor, but to have anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties as well as being a strong anticancer agent. Melli at al in their search for the use of peppermint in sore nipples found that women who applied peppermint gel rather than lanolin or a placebo gel showed less nipple damage after two weeks of preventive application. They urge to teach women proper techniques as well as prophylactic use of peppermint gel.
Fecka I,  Sebastian Turek S: Determination of Water-Soluble Polyphenolic Compounds in Commercial Herbal Teas from Lamiaceae: Peppermint, Melissa, and Sage. J. Agric. Food Chem., 2007, 55 (26), pp 10908–10917
Gali-Muhtasib H: Anticancer and medicinal properties of essential oil and extracts of East Mediterranean sage (salvia triloba). Advances in Phytomedicine 2006, 2:169-180
Melli MS, Rashidi MR, Nokhoodchi A, Tagavi S, Farzadi L, Sadaghat K, Tahmasebi Z, Sheshvan MK: A randomized trial of peppermint gel, lanolin ointment, and placebo gel to prevent nipple crack in primiparous breastfeeding women. Med Sci Monit. 2007 Sep;13(9):CR406-411.