Gary Stack

FRCGP, MICGP,
Med Dir SouthDoc,
HSE GP lead South Kerry.
GAA, Walking, Skiing & Photography.
M to Ella & dad to Aisling, Ciara & Michael

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

@MortimerMurphy1 Good news Murt. Best wishes.

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

@MortimerMurphy1 Leave out the % sign and you'll be close to the figure but enjoy it anyway!

[Kieran McCarthy @KieranMcC_SS]

Michael Murphy's a lucky, lucky man to still be on the pitch. How is this not a red card.

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

@BobGolen @BerginPam In the triathlon

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

@phonsiefonz Yes, from home

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

Coltsman's (Flesk) Castle this am ##LoveKillarney

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

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"

https://t.co/8Fph1mhoM0

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

Meet the voice of Croke Park – the Kerry man who helped develop the next generation of Dublin stars

https://t.co/pqv6g0w2Gq

[Gaelic Games Stats @gaelicgamestats]

Cork has a 100% record vs Kilkenny in the NFL from one game (1927).

Kilkenny has a 100% record vs Cork in the SFC from one games (1887).

[GP Q @argosaki]

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.

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

@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

https://t.co/2JmzSZj5zF

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

Drive safely @axa
@aaroadwatch

Former Kerry footballer (26) recalls how his parents found him trapped in car after road collision

https://t.co/2JmzSZj5zF

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

Cool Kenmare

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

@oflaherty_news @DingleGAA 😢

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

@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.

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

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

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

A Christmas short story, by Joseph O’Connor: All is calm, all is bright https://t.co/QjzS9i0rGw

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

@CormacLucey Excellent article. Maybe we should now get you to cast your non-vertiginous eye on General Practice in Ireland

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

@MortimerMurphy1 2026?
Then again you were always ahead of yourself Murt!

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

"Harris is light touch, lacks depth and displays scant understanding of economic affairs" @fionnansheahan @Independent_ie
Harris gets another opportunity to display his incompetence
https://t.co/mPDG6RT78c

[Gary Stack @GPKerry]

@ruairijfahy @LPerrins Hear, hear @ruairijfahy