Tips for treating oral ulcers during breastfeeding

If oral ulcers occur during breastfeeding, you will be very scared and dare not use medication to treat it. Otherwise, it will have a certain impact on the quality of your milk. There is no way to go through the breastfeeding period smoothly. The baby will not be able to suck enough nutritious milk, and their growth and development will be affected to a certain extent. This requires conservative treatment methods to improve.

1. Route of administration: The time when the peak value of the drug in maternal blood appears is different. For example, after intravenous administration of antibiotics, a peak level appears immediately in the maternal blood. Oral administration varies depending on the medicine. It usually takes 60 to 120 minutes for the peak to appear. The peak value in milk generally appears 30-120 minutes later than that in plasma, and its peak value generally does not exceed that in plasma. The drug elimination rate in breast milk decreases over time, but at a slower rate than that in plasma.

2. pH of the drug: The pH of maternal blood is 7.35-7.45, and the pH of breast milk is 6.35-7.30. Practice has shown that weak alkaline drugs such as erythromycin, lincomycin, and isoniazid can easily pass through the plasma-milk barrier. After administration, the drug concentration in breast milk can be the same as that in plasma, or even higher than that in plasma. On the contrary, weakly acidic drugs such as penicillin and sulfonamides are not easy to pass through the barrier, and the drug concentration in breast milk is often lower than that in plasma.

3. Lipid solubility: Drugs with strong lipid solubility are often non-ionic, easily pass through lipid-rich cells, and dissolve in the fat of breast milk; drugs with low lipid solubility are difficult to transport into breast milk even if they are non-ionic.

4. Plasma protein binding rate: After the drug binds to plasma protein, it is difficult to pass through the biological membrane. Therefore, the concentration of free drugs affects the transport of drugs into breast milk. For example, sulfonamides with a high protein binding rate and oxacillin sodium are difficult to transport into breast milk.

5. Molecular weight: Drugs with molecular weight <200, such as alcohol, morphine, and tetracycline, can be transported from plasma to breast milk by simple diffusion, while high molecular weight compounds such as heparin and insulin are difficult to transport into breast milk.

6. Maternal factors: The high fat content in breast milk facilitates the transport of fat-soluble drugs into breast milk. However, maternal liver and kidney dysfunction reduces the drug detoxification and excretion functions, and the drug may accumulate in the blood. For example, the concentration of aminoglycoside antibiotics in maternal blood can be significantly increased due to maternal liver and kidney dysfunction, so the amount of drugs transported through breast milk also increases relatively.

As for the impact of drugs on breastfeeding infants, it mainly depends on the nature of the drugs themselves.

Some drugs are safe for babies, but some drugs may cause adverse or even very serious reactions, such as pathological jaundice, cyanosis, deafness, liver and kidney damage or vomiting. Therefore, breastfeeding mothers must use drugs with caution. The wise thing to do is to tell your doctor that you are breastfeeding when you need to take medication, try to use medications that cannot be passed through breast milk, and do not take medications at will.