Some Children With Healthy Weight Helped By Breast-Feeding 

A Healthy Start Brings Results

A new study, reported in the medical journal Pediatrics, provides the most conclusive evidence to date that prolonged breast-feeding can help reduce the risk of obesity.

"There are continued benefits to continuing breast-feeding," says study author Dr. Laurence Grummer-Strawn, chief of the Maternal and Child Nutrition Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC researchers based their conclusions on an analysis of 177,304 children up to five years old, and a subset of 12,587 mother-child pairs, making it the largest breast-feeding study to date. Previous studies have yielded contradictory results.

By highlighting a key benefit of prolonged breast-feeding, the study also bolsters recommendations that mothers breast-feed their babies for at least a full year.

The longer women breast-feed their babies, the less likely the children are to become overweight, the authors say.

That is true, at least, for non-Hispanic Caucasian children. Breast-feeding did not protect against excessive weight gain in some African-American and Hispanic children, the researchers add.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, for one, encourages breast-feeding for at least 12 months to provide the fullest benefits for baby.

"If you breast-feed your babies, your children are more likely to have a reduction in illness, and one of those is obesity," says Dr. Lawrence Gartner, chairman of the panel on breast-feeding of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Overweight Has Health Consequences

An estimated 15 percent of children and teens aged six to 19 are overweight, according to a 1999 to 2000 federal survey. The growing girth of youth in the US poses serious health consequences, placing kids at higher risk of diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and certain types of cancer.

To examine the possible connection between prolonged breast-feeding and reduced risk of overweight, the CDC researchers looked at information from the Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System. This survey captures data from children seen at public health clinics across the US.

The team examined how long children nursed and their body mass index (BMI) - a measure of weight in relation to height - at four years of age. Children with a BMI that topped the 95th percentile for their age were considered overweight.

More than two thirds of children in the study, 71 percent, were never breast-fed, and only 6 percent were breast-fed for six months or more.

Children who were never breast-fed or who were breast-fed for less than one month were most likely to be overweight at age four, the study found. With increased breast-feeding duration, the rate of overweight kids declined.

For example, nearly 14 percent of those who were never breast-fed and 14 percent of those who were breast-fed less than a month were overweight at age four. By contrast, among those who were breast-fed for more than 12 months, 11 percent were overweight.

Breast-fed children were also less likely to be underweight, the study found.

Mothers-to-be might be asking themselves why the big fuss over a couple percentage-points difference between prevalence of overweight among bottle-fed children and those who were breast-fed more than a year.

"It is a small difference," Dr. Grummer-Strawn admits, but it is significant. "What we're talking about is 'What are the things we can do to prevent overweight?'" he says. Breast-feeding is clearly one of those things.

More Left To Learn, Researchers Point Out

How long-term breast-feeding protects against obesity is not clear, although studies suggest several possible explanations. One is that a breast-fed child can self-regulate his or her caloric intake better than a bottle-fed child, whose parents may insist the baby finish off a pre-measured amount of formula.

Breast-feeding, of course, is only one factor influencing a child's risk of obesity.

The study authors note that Hispanic children are nearly twice as likely to become overweight as non-Hispanic children "probably because of different dietary and physical activity patterns."

Parents' introduction of solid foods or exclusive reliance on breast-feeding may also differ along racial and ethic lines.

For example, many Hispanic mothers combine breast-feeding with bottle feeding, and that may explain the weaker effect of breast-feeding in that group, Dr. Gartner says.

Always consult your child's physician for more information.

Online Resources

American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

La Leche League International

National Institute of Child Health & Human Development

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

National Women's Health Information Center

US Food and Drug Administration

March 2004

Some Children With Healthy Weight Helped By Breast-Feeding

Overweight Has Health Consequences

More Left To Learn, Researchers Point Out

Benefits of Breast Milk

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Benefits of Breast Milk

There are many reasons why breast milk is the best milk, including the following:

nutrients
Human survival depends more on brain power than on strong muscles, rapid growth (rapid maturity), or body size, so a mother's milk is rich in the nutrients that best promote brain growth and nervous system development.

Research has found that breastfed babies perform better on different kinds of intelligence tests as they grow older. They also develop better eye function. This is due mostly to certain types of fat (fatty acid chains) in human milk, which are not available in artificial formulas.

The sugar (carbohydrate) and protein in breast milk are also designed to be used easily and more completely by the human baby. A mother's milk is the perfect first food to help your baby achieve every aspect of ideal growth and development.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies who are exclusively breastfed receive additional vitamin D. A physician can recommend the proper type and amount of vitamin D supplement for your baby.

anti-infective properties
Only human milk is alive with many different kinds of disease-fighting factors that help prevent mild to severe infections.

Babies who are fully or almost-fully breastfed, or breast milk-fed babies, have significantly fewer gastrointestinal, respiratory, ear, and urinary infections. Antibodies in human milk directly protect against infection.

Other anti-infective factors create an environment that is friendly to "good" bacteria, referred to as "normal flora," and unfriendly to "bad" bacteria, viruses, or parasites.

Human milk also appears to have properties that help a baby's own immune system work best. If your baby does become ill when breastfeeding and receiving your milk, the infection is likely to be less severe.

easily digested
Since nature designed human milk for human babies, a mother's milk is the most easily digested food your baby can receive. A nutritious, yet easily digested first food is important for a baby's immature digestive tract.

A baby uses less energy, yet breaks a mother's milk down more completely into its basic ingredients, so the nutrients, anti-infective factors, and all the other ingredients in the milk are more available to fuel a baby's body functions and to promote a baby's growth and development.

bio-availability
Bio-availability is a fancy way of referring to how well the body can use the nutrients in a food.

The high bio-availability of nutrients in human milk means your baby gets more benefits from the nutrients it contains - even for nutrients that appear in lower levels in breast milk when compared to artificial formulas (because your baby's body can absorb and use them most effectively).

It also means your baby saves the energy that would be needed to eliminate any nutrients he/she had difficulty digesting or using.

suitability
A mother's milk is best suited to, and so it is more gentle on, a baby's body systems. The suitability of milk plays a role in digestibility, and it allows a baby's body to function most efficiently while spending a lot less energy on body functions.

Suitability is also thought to be one reason that breastfed babies are less likely to develop allergic-related skin conditions and asthma.

The digestibility, bio-availability, and suitability of your milk means that your baby's body is able to work less yet receive more nourishment.

Always consult your child's physician for more information.