80 | Social Media and Dr. Google Aren't Helping

Annie - Well, hey there Leah.

Leah - Hey Annie. How are you?

Annie - I'm good. How are you?

Leah - Oh, getting hot here in Texas, we are getting hot.

Annie - But are you getting as hot as a breast that has a commercial massaging breast warmer put on it? Are you that hot?

Leah - I am definitely not that hot.

Annie - Has your fever gone above 101 degrees and lasts for more than 24 hours?

Leah - I don't think so, no.

Annie - Well good then you don't have mastitis.

Leah - Isn't that so helpful? Thank you Dr. Google for diagnosing and clearing up any confusion that I had.

Annie - Okay, so real quick, we're gonna turn this into a reel. We're gonna blast it out on all of our social media platforms and capture a large market share because we are experts on mastitis clearly.

Leah - And then everybody will buy the products that I'm trying to push through my Instagram influencer page. It's gonna be awesome.

Annie - This business model is one that we highly recommend all of you pursue because making a fast dollar off of parents who are freaked out about engorgement is way easier than running a private practice.

Leah - Definitely. I'm so on board with this.

Annie - We've got the dollar-dollar bills coming.

Leah - We're totally jesting here because it is so frustrating. I don't know if you all are encountering, I am certain that you all are encountering all the misinformation in social media influencer information that is constantly circulating out there now and it's really, really confusing all of our clients between what Dr. Google has to say and what the social media influencers trying to sell you. A vibrating heating massager has to say. It's like these parents are coming to us so confused but also ready to throw down some cash if it's necessary. These influencers are definitely getting their paychecks.

Annie - They are ready to throw down cash. They're also terrified that they're gonna get mastitis and they are like really surprised when I tell them things like, you know, this product didn't exist two years ago. It literally didn't exist. And they're like, wait, what? What?

Leah - What do everybody is doing this?

Annie - Yeah. And like sure, many of the things that we used to do, it's always good to have progress and to learn and to grow and to new tool, make room for new research and new tools. But what we're seeing happen is like, not that, it's not that. No.

Leah - And I feel like so much of the information is presented in a way that like, here's the one thing or the three things that are gonna like change everything for you. It's that like what influencers do best, they give you these lists and they make it sound like this is gonna change everything for you. This is the answer to all your problems. And parents feel so desperate that they just start like grasping at every single one of them. And it's scary because so much of the things that are new we just don't have enough information about yet. I mean, and things we might find in the future are helpful or another piece of our tools in our toolbox, but before we have that information, I feel like so much of what's going around out there is just a sales pitch. It's just absolutely the cash, it's just one of the other examples, just another one of how just follow the money and you will find where all these, this information quote unquote is coming from. It's, it's really a hard time I feel like to be a lactation consultant because half the time I am just trying to educate with like true resources and dispel all these myths that the parents like their brains are too full of it, that they can't even hear like all the helpful things that I can suggest them do because they just wanna know if this thing that the influencer said is the thing that they should be doing and I have to spend 30 minutes trying to talk about all of it where I'm like, we could have gotten so much more done if they had all these myths floating around in their head.

Annie - When I was researching a talk I gave at USLCA last year, which is my fed is best take down, I read a book called Thinking Fast and Slow. And one of the things that talked about was that we really only have to hear something, hear a person's name three times before we think we know them. And so similarly hearing something three different times in social media makes you feel like this must be a thing, this must be real. I mean it's kind of like how, how people become online influencers is they just start talking about themselves as online influencers and then you've seen them on social media so you think, oh they're famous. Yeah, I should believe them person. And it's all like puffed up and then in order to capture attention you have to be so confident about what you're making, what you're saying and then you also have to have a way to monetize it. And that's how you get something like, I don't know if you were said the same thing, like back when you got started or before when you were a l h A league leader, we would just say empty breast, lots of rest. And all we meant was like just go lay down, just take a nap and don't take your baby off before they're done. Like your pediatrician said, like let your baby finish and just go, just chill out, don't run around. It's fine. And that turned into empty breasts. You have to get your pump on after every feeding. And get every last dropout. Let's put the milk savers on there. Let's get the, let's get the haka out at every feeding. That's the one. It's the, it's the haka, the silicon breast pump where I'm like, do you like literally didn't have this, it didn't exist five years ago.

Leah - All of the people in millennials survive.

Annie - We were not catching milk.

Leah - It wasn't like lost and all for not like all these babies withered away because this milk was lost somewhere I feel.

Annie - No we were like it's a washcloth.

Leah - Yeah. Like or just keep it covered, put some pressure.

Annie - But they get so scared. And then by the time they see us, they've been doing all these things and what was normal engorgement is now like pathological and they're injured and they're hurt and they're in pain and their supply is being compromised. Because of all these things they thought they were doing to boost their supply actually ended up hurting them.

Leah - Well exactly The misuse of some of these tools is leading to some real harm. I mean I've seen refrigerators full of milk with babies that are still not gaining well because other things are being fed than them. With the best of intentions, parents think that they're doing the right thing because they saw this on social media and this whole idea of seeing it multiple time really ingrains it. Well hey, guess what? That's what miss social media does. It looks at what you pause on and it feeds you more of that. So if you pause on the thing about get stocking your freezer, guess what? It's gonna give you 10 more posts about stocking your freezer. Well before you are convinced that this is how you have to do it or you're gonna fail at all of it. And so these parents, like because of the way social media works on our brains, they're being manipulated in such a way that like it's causing this whole derailment of the very biological and natural system and it's, it's so frustrating. I don't know about you guys but I just like gets so frustrated and the sad thing is I think there's actually some good content out there too, right? Like there are people who out there I know who are trying to put good stuff out into the social media land but it's getting washed out by all of these influencers that maybe are more about the influencing piece of it versus like, Hey, maybe I should like really dig in, ask the experts, make sure this is good information. Not just like, hey, something that worked for me so now I'm gonna spew it out because I have a platform. Because like one person can do something and it doesn't harm anything at all and the other person does it and it makes the whole system crumble. And I don't think these influencers are maliciously doing it. I just don't think they get that. Like what works for one person isn't gonna work for everyone.

Annie - They might not have the training or the credentials. Exactly. They might be or just going off of like, well I nurse my babies, how hard can it be? You know that kind of whole thing. And then that's where we get like yeah it can feel nice to take a warm shower and maybe like get your circulation going turned into like how hot can I make this massager and like burn your yourself or like totally doing like light massage again for like circulation or to move things around. Like it can feel really good to like move your breasts around or like do a stretch turned into, I mean I had a client who came in and thankfully she didn't do this to herself but she got massaged so hard in the hospital that she had visible finger mark bruises a week later. Oh my

Leah - Gosh. That's insane. And the scary thing is I think because so many people are so entrenched on social media in their, like they spend so much time that I feel like even professionals are getting influenced and that's kind of scary too because you might not even intend to be being influenced but you again see it enough times you start to think hey this kind of goes against my training but all these people are talking about it. I think it's almost like a subconscious thing that like I saw 20 posts about X, well maybe X is a legitimate thing and I feel like that is somewhere where we can go a astray too and why it's just so important for us to like put on our filters as we go into the depths of TikTok or reels that you can get swallowed up in and like make sure that you're really keeping up to date on like true good researched evidence-based information so that as you see those over and over, you can kind of like, okay, I'm gonna take that with a grain of salt, saw that post fine whatever.I know that that's probably not good information. I think even as professionals we can get influenced, maybe not as much as the parents, but I certainly think it's possible.

Annie - Yeah, we're susceptible and I think that's kind of the starting point of making sure that you are gonna be somebody who will be able to find the right information for your clients is just that recognition of how susceptible we are and that to the way that social media manipulates us. And I'm gonna give a plug here for friend of the pod,Dr. Michelle Mazur and her podcast that she does with online educator marketing educator Maggie Patterson called Duped: The Dark Side of Online Business. They did have been doing for, I mean it's like fun to kind of hear like the dark side of anything, but they talk so much about how to understand if the person who is you're learning from is an expert or not and one of the things they keep saying over and over again are like, what are the sources for what they're saying? Like can you find the sources and they'll show like there's no sources so it's nothing like they made this up. And even just that like just go relying going back to our training to say show me the evidence. Show me where if you're gonna tell me something that is completely out of left field, like I wanna see the resor research citations, like I wanna see where this is coming from and what I don't wanna hear is this is what's been working in my practice, therefore it must be the thing we should all be doing.

Leah - Right. Right. And I think that like we want innovation, we want new things but it can't be, it works for a couple people and then we throw it out there. We really have to push for research and evidence and and really allowing that to drive our recommendations and also drive our filtering system that if we hear something, then if you have never heard that before or if it feels really from left field, take the time to do the research to make sure that you are not allowing yourself to be like overly influenced. And I think that's really so hard to do because we are like, we're all into this fast based information is what we want. We just wanna hear it really quickly and if we hear it 10 times it's gonna be stuck in our brain and it's like cool, great, I'm gonna start recommending this or I'm gonna start recommending that. And I think that's where we can really get ourselves in trouble and why Annie and I are so passionate about bringing resources and evidence-based information and having these kinds of discussions because I think both, both of us and are really like dedicated to continuing our educa education and making sure, like really checking like what we're sharing with families, really checking our resources as often as we can so we can stay on top of that. Because I think that the other hard thing about like, especially Google, just like Googling something, it's been out there a long time now. Well now we have all this old information out there, but because it's been out there so long, it hits high in searches even though it could have been written in 2005. Well we've learned a lot since 2005, but because it has a million billion searches on it might still come up and we have to have the awareness of like, hey, there's newer information out there and maybe those, that website isn't updating their information but we need to be updating our brains so that we can say like, hey, that's not credible information anymore. And really cross checking for most current research, most current information and recognizing that parents might still be landing on really old stuff.

Annie - Absolutely. Well that's is why we are having nurse Nikki come in and talk with us in a deeper dive about the new mastitis protocol that the Academy of Breastfeeding medicine put out. Last year Leah and I were at USLCA and we saw one of the authors, Dr. Katrina Mitchell present about this new protocol. And I know I was not the only one that walked away feeling like my head was spinning because I could see where like all of the things that we're talking about with social media like require this new protocol like reacting against that. But then there were other things where I'm like, are we throwing the baby out with the bath water here? Are we, are we seeing people like never use warmth? Well I work with clients that come from cultural traditions where you're not supposed to be cold postpartum and like that's where they like suffering until last summer when they said put ice on your breast because they weren't putting ice on their breasts. Like some of those things is where those nuances, that protocol, yes, it's got it's evidence-based, it's got a really good credential, but the, it also has a very particular point of view and it was written by a breast surgeon. It was not really that kind of private practice. IBCLC, like you and me we're seeing different things. And so we wanna have somebody that can help us with the populations that we are directly working with, which is these just postpartum families that are in the trenches that are navigating social media. Nurse Nikki, she's a nurse practitioner, she's in Houston.

Leah - As of recent.

Annie - Recently in Houston and she has just dedicated her career to women's healthcare of all levels and she's just so smart and warm and we have had her on the podcast before along with Nikisha killings. They do a lot of work together too on the business side of things. Anyway, she's gonna come in and put her nurse hat on and her IBCLC hat on and really help us walk through these stuck points that I think all of us have with this new protocol in how we're communicating it with families.

Leah - Yeah, I'm really excited about this conversation and I think being there live is gonna be really awesome because we can really open up this conversation that I think we all really wanna have and just trying to help understand and really flesh out all the changes, but also the nuances to each of the recommendations and kind of the level of evidence. Cause I do appreciate that they, they had that as part of the protocol is to show the level of evidence that each recommendation has. Which I think I wish that like all things that you saw out in Fthe world, like had a little tag next to it, like level A level of evidence, 10 because it's helpful to that will take it with a grain of salt if it's something that like is really low, we don't have a lot of evidence, but maybe some anecdotals working in the clinical setting. Yep. So something that's really high, like we have tons of research on this. It's just, it's so helpful to have that. And it's hard when you're a private practice clinician to be out there like constantly researching everything. Like I'm, I'm gotta finish my notes. I gotta get care plans out. Like I gotta like run my business and make sure my bookkeeping's done and payroll's done. It's like to have the extra time to like be constantly checking and vetting everything really takes time. But I love it when we have these chances for these really smart people who've already done that work can come and help us clarify things and make that whole process a little bit easier. And so that's why I'm just so excited to have this time with Nikki and so excited to have somebody from from Houston.

Annie - It’s gonna be great. We got the link in. We'll put the link in the show notes. It's learned paperless lactation.com/course/mastitis dive and you can sign up, you can just come, it's on Tuesday. It's today,the day that this podcast comes out. So it's gonna be later today or you can buy the recording. If you are hearing this after the deeper dive happened, everybody gets the recording. We have a deeper dive membership for $15 a month. You get access to every live dive plus our entire archive going back to January, 2020. And we've got so many great dives coming up this summer we're so excited about. And you can also get access to the subscription and the live dives by becoming a member of our Patreon. And so just look at our show notes, all the links are there. We'd love to have you either place, Patreon or subscription. It's all good. Just, we just want want you to show up cuz we love, we love the questions and the energy that you bring to these deeper dives. So we will see people later today for our deeper dive. If you're listening on the day that this podcast comes out, I can't wait. See you this afternoon, Leah.

Leah - See you soon. Bye.

Annie - Bye.