From cigarettes and cabbage leaves to evidence-based breastfeeding care

"Gentle" cigarettes for new mothers?

This week, Lactamo was honoured to receive the 2026 Baby Innovation Award for Breastfeeding Accessories Product of the Year. While we're incredibly proud of the recognition, what excites us even more is what it represents. For decades, breastfeeding has been one of the most under-innovated areas of healthcare. This award signals that evidence-based innovation in breastfeeding is finally receiving the attention it deserves.

To understand why this matters, it helps to look back at the history of breastfeeding "innovation".

This 1954 Philip Morris advertisement featured a mother and baby and marketed smoking as "gentle". Today, it seems absurd. Yet it serves as a powerful reminder that healthcare evolves. Science evolves. And what is considered acceptable practice can change dramatically over time. Breastfeeding support has undergone a similar journey.

For generations, mothers experiencing common breastfeeding challenges have been advised to try everything from cabbage leaves and hot flannels to deep massage and even electric toothbrushes. This wasn’t because these approaches were necessarily evidence-based, but because innovation in breastfeeding has historically been remarkably limited.

This is extraordinary when you consider that:

• Approximately 92% of women experience common breastfeeding challenges, including engorgement, blocked ducts, mastitis, pain and supply concerns.
• Breastfeeding delivers substantial health benefits for both mother and baby.
• Improved breastfeeding outcomes provide significant societal and economic benefits through reductions in healthcare costs and improved long-term health outcomes.

Yet despite this, breastfeeding remains one of the most overlooked and under-innovated areas of healthcare.

Historical breastfeeding innovation

For most of history, women had little option but to rely on community wisdom and home remedies. There was little understanding of:

• Breast tissue physiology
• Inflammation and oedema
• Therapeutic breast massage
• Tissue mechanics
• Lymphatic drainage

Innovation, where it existed, largely focused on feeding babies rather than supporting mothers.

The era of antique breast pumps

Early breast pumps resembled laboratory equipment more than maternal healthcare products. While breast pumps have transformed feeding flexibility and enabled millions of women to continue breastfeeding, they were primarily designed around one function: milk removal. They were not designed to address the common breastfeeding challenges experienced by most women. This distinction remains important today.

Breast pumps have transformed breastfeeding by enabling millions of women to express milk. However, their primary purpose remains milk removal. While some manufacturers are expanding functionality, pumps are not designed to address the broader physiological challenges of lactation, including engorgement, inflammation, blocked ducts, tissue mechanics or lymphatic drainage.

The cabbage leaf

Few breastfeeding 'remedies' are more recognisable than cabbage leaves. For decades, chilled cabbage leaves have been recommended for engorgement and breast discomfort. The exact mechanism by which cabbage may provide relief remains unclear and the evidence base remains limited. On a basic level, we know that cooling is beneficial, and, primitively, cabbage leaves are curved like breasts. We think that women deserve more than this!

Yet cabbage leaves became one of the world's most recognised breastfeeding remedies. Why? Because mothers needed something. The popularity of cabbage leaves highlights an important truth: the unmet need in breastfeeding support has existed for generations.

Hot flannels, heat and deep massage

For many years, women experiencing blocked ducts or mastitis were encouraged to:

• Apply significant heat
• Massage deeply and aggressively
• Apply firm pressure to the breast

These approaches became deeply embedded in breastfeeding advice. Today, our understanding has evolved considerably. Increasingly, contemporary evidence recognises the importance of protecting delicate breast tissue and avoiding approaches that may exacerbate inflammation or tissue injury.

The electric toothbrush era

Perhaps nothing illustrates the innovation gap in breastfeeding better than the widespread use of household appliances. Until relatively recently, mothers were advised to use electric toothbrushes. Again, not because these devices were designed for breastfeeding, but because mothers were desperately seeking relief and appropriate solutions simply did not exist. When women are using household appliances to manage breastfeeding challenges, it suggests a category that has been significantly under-served by innovation.

Finally, the science catches up

Fortunately, the understanding of lactation physiology has accelerated dramatically in recent years.

Thanks to the work of researchers, academics, midwives, lactation consultants and clinicians around the world, we now understand far more about:

✔ Inflammation and breast oedema

✔ Tissue mechanics

✔ Gentle therapeutic breast massage

✔ Breast tissue integrity

✔ Lymphatic drainage

✔ Supporting breast comfort and milk flow through physiologically appropriate interventions

This evolving evidence has fundamentally changed the way breastfeeding challenges are understood and managed. Importantly, contemporary guidance increasingly recognises the role of gentle approaches and lymphatic drainage.

A new era of breastfeeding innovation

At Lactamo, we believe mothers deserve something designed specifically for breastfeeding physiology, rather than adapted from unrelated products or household remedies. That belief led us to ask a simple question: what if breastfeeding support could finally be evidence-based and designed around breast physiology?

That question led to the development of Lactamo. Lactamo is the world's first breastfeeding aid specifically designed to facilitate lymphatic drainage through a combination of:

• Temperature
• Movement
• Light compression

It brings together decades of global research and aligns directly with contemporary evidence, including the latest Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine Mastitis Protocol.

Over the past six years, Lactamo has also generated a growing body of independent clinical validation, including:

✔ Independent clinical trials

✔ Biomarker studies quantifying Lactamo’s results

✔ Hospital pilots reporting what they described as "unprecedented support for breastfeeding"

Breastfeeding innovation is long overdue

This week, Lactamo was honoured to receive the 2026 Baby Innovation Award – Breastfeeding Accessories Product of the Year.

For us, this recognition represents something much bigger than one product: it represents a broader shift in breastfeeding care:

• From anecdote to evidence
• From improvised remedies to purpose-designed solutions
• From symptom management to understanding physiology

And perhaps most importantly, it represents growing recognition that mothers deserve the same level of evidence-based innovation that we expect in every other area of healthcare.

We've come a long way since cigarettes were marketed to new mothers. At Lactamo we’re working with hospitals, academics, lactation consultants and partners across the world, and our ongoing clinical results speak for themselves.

Since launch, Lactamo has received multiple international innovation awards, independent clinical validation and growing adoption by healthcare professionals and hospitals around the world.

We’ve got exciting further developments in the pipeline, including an upcoming announcement (under embargo) putting Lactamo front and centre in the history books – but this time not alongside cigarettes, but in a way that we should all be proud of!

This feels deeply symbolic of how far maternal health and breastfeeding innovation have come, and of the growing recognition that supporting mothers matters. Because if 92% of women still experience common breastfeeding challenges, our work is only just beginning. Watch this space.

Please reach out to us at hello@lactamo.com if you’d like more info.