So It Turns Out Breast Milk Doesn’t Just Come Out Of Breasts, Plus More From Medical TikTok
On today's episode of BuzzFeed Daily, we broke down the top pop culture headlines AND discussed the latest trends in medical TikTok. You can listen below or scroll down to read more about the interview!
So let's dive right into it! Recently we talked to Krista Torres about what can happen if you contract COVID-19 while on Accutane, the surprising place breast milk can come out of (spoiler alert: not a breast), and more. Here's some of what we learned:
BuzzFeed Daily: Krista, you have a son. What was your reaction when you first saw this video?
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Krista Torres: Oh, my gosh. I basically said, "Holy shit." So many things I did not know, which I learned a lot about just by talking to a doctor and talking to this mom, Lindsay. You actually, like she said, you have a milk line that runs up through your armpit. It's called the Tail of Spence. Who knew? And yeah, it's really not uncommon for a woman to have milk ducts that leak throughout this milk line that goes to your armpit. Mind blown.
It's not uncommon. It happens because the milk glands actually work exactly like our sweat glands, and we sweat out of our armpits, you know? So basically, your milk glands can also secrete milk when you are breastfeeding.
BuzzFeed Daily: [You also wrote about a] truly shocking side effect one woman experienced after contracting COVID-19. Can you describe what happened to Avery Anderson?
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KT: The best way for me to describe this is painful. Her lips are crusted. They're swollen black. Just imagine the most uncomfortable thing that you can being on your lips. That's basically what it is.
It started off with her COVID diagnosis. Of course, we don't know because COVID is just this big unknown virus. Right. But what we think happened or what doctors and experts think happened was that the COVID caused Avery to develop something called oral mucositis. It's a condition that leaves you with bleeding ulcer, swollen lips, sore or bleeding gums. It's just a super-painful thing. Now, her condition, oral mucositis, got worse because she was on Accutane, and a side effect of Accutane causes you to have really dry lips. So the combination of it made it just awful and unbearable.
BuzzFeed: This last TikTok we want to talk about is really emotional and something I think that a lot of people have dealt with. It's of a woman, Johnelle Mercer, and after years of having her chronic pain dismissed as simply "a painful period," the TikTok captures the moment she received an actual diagnosis for what happened... What did she tell you about her journey to get a diagnosis, which was pelvic congestion syndrome?
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KT: Basically, since she had started her period, she'd always had painful periods. But for the past year, they kept getting progressively worse. Doctors kept dismissing it, telling her that it was just a painful period — something that she was just going to have to tolerate that-time-of-the-month kind of thing — but she was persistent. She had to go to multiple experts, and she was finally diagnosed with pelvic congestion syndrome, which is a condition that causes chronic pelvic pain during menstrual cycles.
So you can just hear the relief in her voice, of someone that finally found the reason behind her pain. And she's hopeful that now that they know what it is, she's going to be able to pursue different treatment options. I mean, it is truly wild. And this is like a soap box that I will never get off of, but I think because...we've been taught, and a lot of people have been taught, that periods are shameful, so people don't really talk about them. So you don't really talk about your pain level that you have with them, and a lot of people keep that pain to themselves because they're, like they are told, "It's just your period." I mean, this is just it's so emotional that someone finally listened to her and believed her that her pain was more than it should be.
Moving on, Luna Matatas, a queer POC sex educator, has some thoughts on model Cara Delevingne using her trademarked phrase “Peg the patriarchy” in her Met Gala costume.
She said she hasn’t received any credit for the phrase and heard nothing from Dior, who designed the look, about collaborating.
Matatas told BuzzFeed News: "It's classic appropriation. We're talking about people with a lot of privilege. It really would have been so easy for us to link arms and lift each other up."
She said she’s reached out to both Cara and Dior but hasn’t heard anything back yet.