What are the benefits of breastfeeding?
Breastfeeding Benefits: The Real, the Imagined, and the Exaggerated. Breastfeeding Benefits Supported By Sibling Studies and A Randomized Controlled Trial So, let’s start with the good news: Breastfeeding clearly reduces the risk of severe gastrointestinal infections during an infant’s first year of life.
Does breastfeeding reduce the risk of constipation?
As for a lower risk of constipation, even though no published research I can find has directly tested this effect, I am inclined to give this one to the NHS. As a formerly breastfeeding mom, I know just how–dangerously and sometimes explosively–runny breastfeeding poops can be.
Is there a case against breastfeeding?
Most studies look at children from different families, which makes it difficult to isolate the effects of breastfeeding. In her 2009 article in The Atlantic, “ The Case Against Breastfeeding ,” Hanna Rosin reviewed the literature and found that while some studies showed minor health benefits, others found none or contradicted each other.
Does breastfeeding Make you Smarter?
A recent study in Social Science & Medicine found that many benefits attributed to breastfeeding—from reduced rates of obesity and asthma to higher intelligence—have been overstated.
Are there proven benefits to breastfeeding?
Research also shows that very early skin-to-skin contact and suckling may have physical and emotional benefits. Other studies suggest that breastfeeding may reduce the risk for certain allergic diseases, asthma, obesity, and type 2 diabetes. It also may help improve an infant's cognitive development.
Is breastfeeding really that much better than formula?
Compared with formula, the nutrients in breastmilk are better absorbed and used by your baby. These include sugar (carbohydrate) and protein. Breastmilk has the nutrients that are best for your baby's brain growth and nervous system development.
Is it true the more you breastfeed the more milk you produce?
Your milk supply depends on how often you nurse or pump your breasts. The more you breastfeed or pump, the more milk your body makes. So, if you seem to be producing less milk than usual, nurse your baby more often. You also can pump after nursing to help stimulate more milk production.
What are 4 disadvantages of breastfeeding?
ConsYou may feel discomfort, particularly during the first few days or weeks.There isn't a way to measure how much your baby is eating.You'll need to watch your medication use, caffeine, and alcohol intake. Some substances that go into your body are passed to the baby through your milk.Newborns eat frequently.
What are 5 disadvantages of breastfeeding?
Cons of breastfeedingAdjustment period and pain. The early weeks of breastfeeding are often the most difficult. ... The benefits may be exaggerated. The benefits of breastfeeding, especially the cognitive benefits, may be exaggerated. ... Loss of bodily autonomy. ... Lack of social support. ... Uneven distribution of parenting work.
Are breastfed babies smarter than formula fed?
There's no difference between breastmilk or formula when it comes to your child's IQ, says study. Fed is best.
Is it worth breastfeeding once a day?
Breastfeeding, even just once a day, is worth it. Your body is regulating your hormones and your endocrine system with stimulation. Second, the baby receives that contact, that transfer of energy from the parent, and being skin to skin continues to support heart rate, respiration, glucose levels and temperature.
Do breasts need time to refill?
Despite views to the contrary, breasts are never truly empty. Milk is actually produced nonstop—before, during, and after feedings—so there's no need to wait between feedings for your breasts to refill. In fact, a long gap between feedings actually signals your breasts to make less, not more, milk.
How much milk can a breast hold?
Breast Storage Capacity The maximum volume of milk in the breasts each day can vary greatly among mothers. Two studies found a breast storage capacity range among its mothers of 74 to 606 g (2.6 to 20.5 oz.) per breast (Daly, Owens, & Hartmann, 1993; Kent et al., 2006).
Are breastfed babies happier?
Babies that are breast-fed grow into happier children, according to research. Infants fed on their mother's milk for at least six months have 'significantly better mental health' than those given formula feeds. Breast-fed babies were also less likely to exhibit problems such as anti-social behaviour and delinquency.
Does breastfeeding ruin your breast?
1. Breastfeeding Ruins The Shape Of Your Breasts. This myth is false — breastfeeding will not ruin the shape of your breasts. Yes, they will grow as you gain weight and swell as milk is produced, but that's nothing to be concerned about.
Are breastfed babies smarter?
Babies who are breastfed for at least a year grow up to be significantly more intelligent as adults and earn more money, a new study shows. Babies who are breastfed for at least a year grow up to be significantly more intelligent as adults and they earn more money, too, a new study shows.
Most recent answer
You wrote the question which started this discussion. Questioning accepted beliefs is something I welcome as it enables discussion and critiques that lead to more learning. The "breast is best" message is very outdated - I myself stopped using it in the late 1990s. Now we say that breastfeeding is "normal" - nothing more, nothing less.
Popular Answers (1)
Breastfeeding has evolved to keep human genes in the gene pool. From that perspective, until extremely recently, breastfeeding failure nearly always resulted in a failure for the genes involved to remain in the pool. Thus, not surprisingly, true lactation failure is rare.
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Breastfeeding has evolved to keep human genes in the gene pool. From that perspective, until extremely recently, breastfeeding failure nearly always resulted in a failure for the genes involved to remain in the pool. Thus, not surprisingly, true lactation failure is rare.
How many siblings are in the study of breastfeeding?
The clearest illustration comes from a study of 1,773 siblings aged 4-14, led by Cynthia Colen of Ohio State University. Dr.
Can one sibling be breastfed?
In some cases, one sibling was breastfed while the other was not; in others, the siblings were breastfed for different lengths of time. This allows researchers to largely avoid the problem of breastfeeding being confounded by race, socioeconomic status, maternal education, and so on.
Is the Probit trial a randomized trial?
But please hear me out.) First, if anything, the PROBIT trial errs on the side of understating the benefits of breastfeeding. This is because it is not randomized trial of breastfeeding, it is a randomized trial of a breastfeeding intervention. Some women in the control group breastfed their babies.
Is breastfeeding a problem?
Observational studies on breast feeding merit skepticism, because they all suffer from the same major problem: breastfed infants on average differ from formula-fed infants not just in how they are fed in infancy, but in practically every other possible way–maternal education, maternal IQ, poverty, neighborhood safety, exposure to environmental toxins, race, and type and quality of childcare . In scientific terms, breastfeeding is confounded, out the wazoo.
Does breastfeeding reduce colic?
Breastfeeding does not reduce the risk of colic. In fact, I have no idea how this alleged benefit made it onto the NHS’s list in the first place. Most of their alleged benefits are found in observational studies. But not colic. Even most observational studies do not find that breastfeeding lowers the chances of colic.
Can we tell which benefits are found in an observational study?
We cannot tell which benefits found in an observational study derive from breastfeeding rather than from the myriad other advantages linked with breastfeeding. (The “good” observational studies attempt to control statistically for the other relative advantages of breastfed infants.
Do women in the intervention group breastfeed?
Some women in the control group breastfed their babies. Some women in the intervention group did not breastfeed their babies. This waters down the the differences between the control and intervention groups. If anything, the PROBIT trial is biased towards missing small benefits of breastfeeding.
How many children did Colen study?
Often breast-feeding studies only look at the effects on children in their first years of life. She looked at more than 8,000 children total, about 25 percent of whom were in “discordant sibling pairs,” which means one was bottle-fed and the other was breast-fed. The study then measured those siblings for 11 outcomes, including BMI, obesity, asthma, different measures of intelligence, hyperactivity, and parental attachment.
Is breast feeding overstated?
A new study confirms what people like our own Hanna Rosin and Texas A&M professor Joan B. Wolf have been saying for years now: The benefits of breast-feeding have been overstated. The study, published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, is unique in the literature about breast-feeding because it looks at siblings who were fed differently during infancy. That means the study controls for a lot of things that have marred previous breast-feeding studies. As the study’s lead author, Ohio State University assistant professor Cynthia Colen, said in a press release, “Many previous studies suffer from selection bias. They either do not or cannot statistically control for factors such as race, age, family income, mother’s employment—things we know that can affect both breast-feeding and health outcomes.”
Do breastfed children have better health?
When children from different families were compared, the kids who were breast-fed did better on those 11 measures than kids who were not breast-fed. But, as Colen points out, mothers who breast-feed their kids are disproportionately advantaged—they tend to be wealthier and better educated. When children fed differently within the same family were compared—those discordant sibling pairs—there was no statistically significant difference in any of the measures, except for asthma. Children who were breast-fed were at a higher risk for asthma than children who drank formula.
