14 DAY TRIAL // Currently, in many western countries, less than 1% of women breastfeed continuously for the first six months of the baby's life. In the UK, the category most prone to breastfeeding was found to be formed of well educated, professional women, older than 30 and mothers for the first time. The fear of ending up with saggy breasts (although recent researches have come to infirm this theory), commodity, lack of time and other factors have contributed to this low percentage.
With all that, studies have shown that colostrum, that yellowish milk secreted after birth, is the first package of immune factors delivered to the infant's body. Breastfed babies are five times less likely to get gastroenteritis as compared to formula-fed ones, also two times less likely to catch a respiratory disease in their first seven years of life, as well as much less vulnerable to diabetes. Breastfeeding prevents children from turning overweight later in life. Research showed that children breastfed for 3-5 months had 35% lower chances of becoming overweight by the age of 6 than those who were not breastfed. In fact, the longer the breastfeeding period, the lower the chances of the child to become overweight later in life. It seems that the ingredients from the maternal milk improve the metabolism.
A new research published in the Archives of General Psychiatry shows that long-term, exclusive breastfeeding improves children's cognitive development. The researchers from McGill University and the Montreal Children's Hospital, Montreal, Quebec, made a randomized trial of a breastfeeding promotion program with patients from 31 maternity hospitals and affiliated clinics in Belarus.
The program supporting and promoting breastfeeding was applied between June 1996 to December 1997. The trial involved 7,108 infants and mothers. 6,781 of the infants were interviewed and examined between 2002 and 2005, when the children had already reached an average age of 6.5 years.
At that age, the breastfed children had an average of 7.5 points higher on tests assessing verbal intelligence, 2.9 points higher on tests assessing non-verbal intelligence and 5.9 points higher on overall intelligence tests. These children also had much higher school marks than non-breast fed children, in both reading and writing.
"Even though the treatment difference appears causal, it remains unclear whether the observed cognitive benefits of breastfeeding are due to some constituent of breast milk or are related to the physical and social interactions inherent in breastfeeding," the authors write.
Previous studies had showed that breastfeeding leads to a higher intelligence coefficient in infants. This has been assumed to be due to two fatty acids - docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (AA) - and to an insulin-like growth factor I found in the maternal milk and which play an important role in the development of the brain cells. Breastfed children got better scores in memory tests, problem solving, learning and speech development than non-breastfed children. Nevertheless, these observational studies had only compared children whose mothers breastfed them with those whose mothers chose not to breastfeed. Subtle differences in how breastfeeding mothers interact with their infants can change the results.
On top of that, there can also be a physical or emotional component of breastfeeding that boosts brain development. Breastfeeding could also promote verbal interaction between mother and child, stimulating the child's cognitive skills. "Although breastfeeding initiation rates have increased substantially during the last 30 years, much less progress has been achieved in increasing the exclusivity and duration of breastfeeding," wrote the authors.