Gary Stack retuiteado
Gary Stack
9.5K posts

Gary Stack
@GPKerry
FRCGP, MICGP, Med Dir SouthDoc, HSE GP lead South Kerry. GAA, Walking, Skiing & Photography. M to Ella & dad to Aisling, Ciara & Michael
Killarney Se unió Mayıs 2014
894 Siguiendo1.7K Seguidores

Fionnán Sheahan: I was Catholic-shamed for going on TV with ashes on my forehead.
@fionnansheahan
?Think u have a spelling error, one "t" too many: " I was being circled by the Mad Hatters"
independent.ie/opinion/commen…
Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Ireland 🇮🇪 English

Meet the voice of Croke Park – the Kerry man who helped develop the next generation of Dublin stars
independent.ie/sport/gaelic-g…
Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Ireland 🇮🇪 English
Gary Stack retuiteado
Gary Stack retuiteado

BREASTMILK
She thought she was studying milk.
What she uncovered was a conversation.
In 2008, evolutionary anthropologist Katie Hinde was working in a primate research lab in California, analyzing breast milk from rhesus macaque mothers. She had hundreds of samples and thousands of data points. Everything looked ordinary—until one pattern refused to go away.
Mothers raising sons produced milk richer in fat and protein.
Mothers raising daughters produced a larger volume with different nutrient balances.
It was consistent. Repeatable. And deeply uncomfortable for the scientific consensus.
Colleagues suggested error. Noise. Statistical coincidence.
But Katie trusted the data.
And the data pointed to a radical idea.
Milk is not just nutrition.
It is information.
For decades, biology treated breast milk as simple fuel. Calories in. Growth out. But if milk were only calories, why would it change depending on the sex of the baby?
Katie kept digging.
Across more than 250 mothers and over 700 sampling events, the story grew more complex. Younger, first-time mothers produced milk with fewer calories but significantly higher levels of cortisol—the stress hormone.
The babies who drank it grew faster.
They were also more alert, more cautious, more anxious.
Milk wasn’t just building bodies.
It was shaping behavior.
Then came the discovery that changed everything.
When a baby nurses, microscopic amounts of saliva flow back into the breast. That saliva carries biological signals about the infant’s immune system. If the baby is getting sick, the mother’s body detects it.
Within hours, the milk changes.
White blood cells surge.
Macrophages multiply.
Targeted antibodies appear.
When the baby recovers, the milk returns to baseline.
This was not coincidence.
It was call and response.
A biological dialogue refined over millions of years. Invisible—until someone thought to listen.
As Katie reviewed existing research, she noticed something unsettling. There were twice as many scientific studies on erectile dysfunction as on breast milk composition.
The first food every human consumes.
The substance that shaped our species.
Largely ignored.
So she did something bold.
She launched a blog with a deliberately provocative name: Mammals Suck Milk.
It exploded. Over a million readers in its first year. Parents. Doctors. Scientists. People asking questions research had skipped.
The discoveries kept coming.
Milk changes by time of day.
Foremilk differs from hindmilk.
Human milk contains over 200 oligosaccharides babies can’t digest—because they exist to feed beneficial gut bacteria.
Every mother’s milk is biologically unique.
In 2017, Katie brought this work to a TED stage. In 2020, it reached a global audience through Netflix’s Babies. Today, at Arizona State University’s Comparative Lactation Lab, she continues reshaping how medicine understands infant development, neonatal care, formula design, and public health.
The implications are staggering.
Milk has been evolving for more than 200 million years—longer than dinosaurs walked the Earth. What we once dismissed as simple nourishment is one of the most sophisticated communication systems biology has ever produced.
Katie Hinde didn’t just study milk.
She revealed that nourishment is intelligence.
A living, responsive system shaping who we become before we ever speak.
All because one scientist refused to accept that half the story was “measurement error.”
Sometimes the biggest revolutions begin by listening to what everyone else ignores.

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@Independent_ie Why are you keeping this important article behind a paywall, a life's lesson for everyone?
Former Kerry footballer (26) recalls how his parents found him trapped in car after road collision
independent.ie/regionals/kerr…
Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Ireland 🇮🇪 English

Drive safely @axa
@aaroadwatch
Former Kerry footballer (26) recalls how his parents found him trapped in car after road collision
independent.ie/regionals/kerr…
Ireland 🇮🇪 English

What a wonderful gesture by @DingleGAA who were kind enough to bring the Kerry, Munster and now the Andy Merrigan Cup to my father’s grave and to the final resting place of other old comrades. A true mark of respect for past players and club members gone to their eternal reward;

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@MortimerMurphy1 @jcoshea The head and shoulders of Torc; the first step in orientating yourself in Killarney, Murt. With Mangerton, Horse's Glen & Crohane to the left, then Shehy, Purple, Strickeen and onto the Macgillicuddy's Reeks to the right. Heaven's Reflex.

Ireland 🇮🇪 English

Muckross today with nature and Ally - beautiful walk and lunch at Muckross Restaurant 👏Can’t beat Killarney @jcoshea - I think that’s Torc but I can’t remember the other seven 😂- great way to end 2025💪




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Gary Stack retuiteado

Roald Dahl on Measles: Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.
'Are you feeling all right?' I asked her.
'I feel all sleepy,' she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was...in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her. On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles.
...I dedicated two of my books to Olivia, the first was ‘James and the Giant Peach’. That was when she was still alive. The second was ‘The BFG’, dedicated to her memory after she had died from measles. You will see her name at the beginning of each of these books. And I know how happy she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of illness and death among other children.
Roald Dahl, 1986

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A Christmas short story, by Joseph O’Connor: All is calm, all is bright independent.ie/life/a-christm…
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@CormacLucey Excellent article. Maybe we should now get you to cast your non-vertiginous eye on General Practice in Ireland
Ireland 🇮🇪 English

New blog post
Having a Stroke Showed me the Flaws at the Heart of the Health System
tinyurl.com/jjwswccz
English

@MortimerMurphy1 2026?
Then again you were always ahead of yourself Murt!
Ireland 🇮🇪 English

"Harris is light touch, lacks depth and displays scant understanding of economic affairs" @fionnansheahan @Independent_ie
Harris gets another opportunity to display his incompetence
independent.ie/irish-news/pol…
Ireland 🇮🇪 English

I respectfully disagree. Their taxation policy is an abomination, but so is their hate speech legislation, their multi genders legislation, their climate legislation, their foreign policy, their permissive attitude to citizenship and failure to protect our borders, their liberal attitudes to crime and punishment and their indoctrination of national, secondary and university students with the progressive agenda. To me they are more radioactive than PBP, because of their duplicity, claiming to be centre-right but supercharging a progressive takeover of Ireland.
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We have to be very clear here. It is not social policy that is the problem for FG. It is that they have permitted the tax burden to grow along with the state that is hammering the middle - class.
x.com/higginsdavidw/…
David W. Higgins@higginsdavidw
Going viral on TikTok - This interaction between Minister @EmerHigginsTD and columnist @DavQuinn #aras25 #aras2025
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@jbconneely @Matersurgery Ah, so that's where he's been hiding for the last 30 years!
Enjoy the break Gerry, though I'm sure you have plenty things planned.
GIF
Ireland 🇮🇪 English

Final day operating in OR10 in the @Matersurgery with the legend that is Gerry McEntee today. Legacy in surgery is elusive. 34 years, 70 Registrars, 70+ SHO’s, 200+ Interns… IYKYK. Mo cheol thú. Thank you Gerry, it’s been an honour.

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