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benefits for mother and baby |
| An article from the May 14, 2001 issue of WebMD showed unexpected additional benefits of breast feeding to both mother and child. The unique benefits had nothing to do with the known nutritional benefits already reported for breast feeding. The basis for these claims were two separate studies done on breast feeding. One study showed that breast fed babies were more tolerant of pain. The second study showed that the bones of teenage mothers who breast fed had a higher bone mineral density than teen moms who hadn't breastfed. The first of the two studies was conducted at Montreal Children's Hospital in Quebec, where researchers recruited 74 breast feeding mothers of 2-month-olds. In this study the babies were observed to see if breast feeding had any effect on the child's ability to handle pain. The results of this study showed that no matter what type of observation analysis was used, there was a reported 50% reduction in pain response in the children that were breast fed. The theory for explaining these results is that the sucking, the transmission of the milk, and being in contact with the mother, help to activate systems in the baby's body responsible for reducing pain. The second study demonstrates a way teen mothers may benefit from breast feeding. Prior to this study it was commonly believed that women during breast feeding lose bone mineral density and teen moms tend to lose more. Adult mothers typically regain the bone loss after weaning their babies from breast feeding. However, there was a concern about whether the bones of teenage mothers -- who are still growing and developing -- could recover from the nutritional rigors of breast feeding. The results were surprising to researchers. What the researchers found was that the bones of teenage mothers who breast fed actually had higher bone mineral density than teen moms who hadn't breast fed even after they took into account factors such as weight, race, diet, and exercise. |
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| CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- Breast-feeding eases a baby's discomfort during a painful needle stick procedure and might work as a potent painkiller during potentially traumatizing experiences such as circumcision, researchers said on Monday. Infants who were held and breast-fed while undergoing a painful heel lance, a routine hospital procedure used to obtain a blood sample, cried and grimaced less and their heartbeats remained calmer than infants who were not breast-fed, a University of Chicago study said. "Breast-feeding is a potent analgesic intervention in newborns during a standard blood collection," study author Larry Gray of the University of Chicago wrote in this month's issue of the journal Pediatrics. Previous animal studies have shown that tastes and flavors in milk can block pain signals in the spinal cord, and suckling can have a calming effect. The researchers said infants' physical contact with their mothers likely also kept them calmer. There is a debate about whether babies retain memories of single, intensely painful experiences such as circumcision, but some circumcised infants do manifest exaggerated reactions to a needle stick months later. "The claim can no longer be made that newborn pain is for the moment only," Gray wrote. In another study in the same journal on the subject of breast-feeding, researchers at the University of New Hampshire in Durham examined the hypothesis that a mother who exercises might produce less appetizing breast milk. A previous study found lactic acid levels in breast milk expressed 30 minutes after a strenuous treadmill test were high enough to deter some babies from drinking it. In the latest study, researchers waited an hour after exercise before obtaining expressed breast milk, and also compared milk produced after moderate exercise. Strenuous exercise did raise the level of lactic acid in the mothers' breast milk, but their babies showed no sign of rejecting the milk, researcher Timothy Quinn wrote. Moderate exercise did not produce higher lactic acid levels. |
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