Breastfeeding Protects Against Arthritis

As if there weren't enough health benefits of breastfeeding for both mother and child to convince women to breastfeed, here's another one. According to a Swedish study, breastfeeding reduces the risk of rheumatoid arthritis for the mother. Researchers found that women who breastfed for up to one year reduced their risk of arthritis by 25%, and that those who breastfed for more than a year reduced their risk by 50%. For more on this study, click here.

"Nutritional Supplements" for Newborns

I just visited a client who was told to give her healthy, exclusively breastfeeding newborn a supplement called ViSyveral. It occurs to me that this might be routine at hospitals around Bangalore, though it's the first time I've heard of it. Please note that babies do not need anything other than breastmilk for the first 6-9 months (not even water). This "nutritional supplement" has the following information on the box:

"May be administered by mixing in water, sweetened formula, fruit juices, desserts or water, cereals, soups, desserts or any other liquid or semi-liquid food."

"Ingredients: liquid glucose, sucrose, vitamins, gum acacla, coconut oil, sodium bicarbonate, disodium EDTA and antioxidants."

"Contains added flavours and class II preservatives."

?!?!?

These drops are problematic on many levels for a newborn. For starters, the directions might be confusing to some. We shouldn't be feeding newborns anything besides breastmilk, especially not desserts, soups and fruit juices! Secondly, look at the first two ingredients: SUGAR! Is it a mystery why there is a global epidemic of obesity? For more on sugar's effect on children's development and how to reduce your child's intake, click here. Don't forget that formula isn't really anything like breastmilk; click here for more on what's problematic about infant formula. Finally, food preservatives have been linked to childhood hyperactivity, and I don't even want to think about the chemicals in "added flavours"!

More research that breastmilk boosts IQ

Smarty Gene: Breast-fed kids show DNA-aided IQ boost

Bruce Bower

Scientists have achieved a breakthrough in deciphering the genetics of intelligence. Ironically, they did it by accounting for a key environmental factor.

Breast-feeding boosts children's IQs by 6 to 7 points over the IQs of kids who weren't breast-fed, but only if the breast-fed youngsters have inherited a gene variant associated with enhanced chemical processing of mothers' milk, reports a team led by psychologist Avshalom Caspi of King's College London.

The new finding supports the controversial hypothesis that fatty acids in breast milk enhance newborn babies' brain development. Moreover, the results demonstrate that intelligence researchers must examine how children's genetic natures interact with the ways in which they're nurtured.

"Genes work via specific environmental experiences to shape intellectual development," Caspi says.

He and his colleagues present their data in an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Two groups of children participated in the study: 1,037 boys and girls born 34 to 35 years ago in New Zealand, who are still living there; and 2,232 boys and girls born 12 to 13 years ago who are growing up in England.

In DNA isolated from blood samples, the researchers probed the gene fatty acid desaturase 2, or FADS2. This gene assists in breaking down fatty acids present in human milk. FADS2 comes in two forms, one of which enables the body to process fatty acids more efficiently than the other does.

Only breast-fed children who carried one or two copies of the more efficient gene displayed an IQ advantage.

In the two groups of children, 90 percent of youngsters possessed the critical FADS2 gene variant. Roughly half of all participants were breast-fed regularly during infancy, according to reports collected from the mothers when their children were 1 to 3 years old. The formula-fed infants typically received no fatty acids in their diets.

The New Zealand children completed standard IQ tests at ages 7, 9, 11, and 13. The British children took an IQ test at age five.

The scientists ruled out several alternative explanations of the findings. For instance, normal- and low-birth-weight babies carrying the critical FADS2 gene displayed equal IQ hikes when breast-fed. The same held for children from wealthy and poor families, and for kids with high-IQ and low-IQ mothers.

Also, no evidence indicated that mothers carrying the more efficient FADS2 gene produced better-quality milk or breast-fed more often than mothers carrying the other gene variant did.

Until now, researchers have largely failed in attempts to find genes that affect intelligence independently of environmental factors, Caspi says. However, a new genomewide analysis of more than 10,000 7-year-olds tagged six regions as weakly but significantly associated with IQ, including one on FADS3, another fatty acid gene. That study, directed by King's College psychologist Lee M. Butcher, appears online Nov. 2 in Genes, Brain and Behavior.

"Both of these new findings suggest an important role for the regulatory mechanism of dietary fatty acids and its possible interaction with environmental factors in intelligence," remarks biological psychologist Danielle Posthuma of the Free University of Amsterdam.

Adds psychologist Jeremy R. Gray of Yale University, "An IQ advantage of 6 to 7 points is unquestionably large enough to have a real-world impact on individuals."

If you have a comment on this article that you would like considered for publication in Science News, send it to editors@sciencenews.org. Please include your name and location.

CDC survey: new moms turn to formula too soon

The US centers for disease control (CDC) just came out with a survey that found that only about 30% of new moms breastfeed exclusively at three months of age, and at six months, only 11% are breastfeeding exclusively. Why are these number so low when we know that breastfeeding results in better health outcomes for both mothers and babies?! I think it points to a few problems:

1) Traumatic birth experiences for women and babies: the cesarean rate is at an all-time high in the US, at 30%. In India it's likely to be double that in many hospitals. Babies born by cesarean are often separated from their mamas for several hours, making establishing breastfeeding particularly challenging. Even women who have vaginal births are often separated from their babies due to unnecessary hospital routines and policies.

2) Lack of support for breastfeeding moms: I've seen many women have trouble getting their newborn to latch on properly. Nurses in hospitals are not trained as Lactation Consultants, and when a hospital does have an LC, often they are overworked and extremely difficult to track down. I realize this varies by hospital, but certainly in India there are no LCs in any hospital, and it is very hard for women to get support early on.

3) An emphasis on independence: well-meaning advice-givers stress the importance of not being held too much, feeding schedules, and baby sleeping alone in a crib. These parenting practices make it difficult to breastfeed.

4) Short maternity leave: going back to work--often after only six weeks--means separation between mama and baby for many, many hours. Pumping is not always easy or convenient, and many nursing mothers face discrimination at work.

5) The insidious nature of formula companies' advertisements: many women in hospitals receive free formula samples in their discharge packs instead of helpful information on breastfeeding. Formula companies distribute posters and pamphlets to doctors and hospitals to leave in their waiting rooms. Because these materials are so prolific, women get the message that bottle-feeding is the norm.

As long as women receive mixed messages and are not properly educated, encouraged or supported, we can't expect these rates to go up. If E've totally depressed you, or even if i haven't, please watch this video which celebrates 50 years of La Leche league: