Is breast still best?
Breastfeeding Awareness Week (12-19 May) highlighted the benefits of breastfeeding your baby for the first few months, but some recent studies seem to contradict this message. So what's best for baby? Joanna Moorhead investigates
Until recently, there seemed to be no doubts about breastfeeding. Whether you wanted to do it or not, whether you could do it or not, the message was always that it would give your baby the best start in life.
Now, though, the picture isn't so crystal clear, due to a small but steady stream of studies which seem to undermine the message.
Breast milk is polluted, says one report. It can give your child heart disease in later life, says another. It might pass on asthma if you're a sufferer, suggests a third.
It's enough to strike fear into a breastfeeding mother's heart - but the good news is that all the authoritative expert bodies that advise on parenting are still right behind the message they've always endorsed: breast is definitely still best. That's not to say the research is worthless, or that it won't lead to further
investigations, but the bottom line is that in general the 'risks' being identified in these studies are
tiny. Set against the undisputed health benefits of breastfeeding, the
potential risks aren't worrying enough to suggest that any mother should change her plans to
breastfeed or stop breastfeeding before she wants to.
The studies
Of course, these studies are, and will continue to be, a bit worrying - but what's important to realise is that the worries are mostly about the future of whole populations, rather than about individual families.
Take, for example, a report issued by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) which said that British breastfed babies could be receiving as much as 40 times World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended levels of a wide range of potentially harmful chemicals. Scary stuff - especially when you read that the WWF found more than 350 man-made pollutants in the breast milk of UK women.
The main message behind the WWF research, though, was that pollutants are present in our bodies in greater concentrations and numbers than was previously thought - breast milk is an easy way of checking the amount, that's all. In a polluted world, breast milk is sadly as polluted as anything else - and switching to formula milk would only mean your baby picking up the same sort of range of contaminants from cow's milk.
In March this year, the British Medical Journal reported another study that sent shock-waves through the ranks of breastfeeding
mothers. Researchers at the Institute of Child Health in London,
discovered that early signs of cardiovascular disease were more likely in people who had been breastfed beyond four to six months than people who had been bottlefed beyond this period.
From the start, though, the researchers were quick to point out that, even if prolonged breastfeeding had disadvantages, they'd have to be weighed against the proven advantages.
Breast milk, says Mary Newburn of the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), is known to help protect against respiratory disease, diabetes, ear infections, allergies, diarrhoea and gastroenteritis in babies and young children (the health benefits in some cases continue beyond the time when babies are actually breastfed).
What's more, says Newburn, this research might actually be saying more about the dangers of a western-style, fat-heavy diet rather than about breastfeeding - in other words, mothers who eat healthily may not be putting their babies at any risk at all, however long they breastfeed.
Yet another study links breastfeeding to asthma, with disturbing news from Arizona that breastfed babies with asthmatic mothers are up to eight times more likely to develop the condition than those who are
bottlefed. Again, though, the reassurance is in the small print: apparently it's only children who are susceptible to allergic reactions who are affected. As it's not known whether a child will be susceptible until past babyhood, the report's authors do not recommend any change to the advice to breastfeed.
Reassurance
The best reassurance comes from the World Health Organisation, which has just issued a recommendation that most women should exclusively breastfeed their babies for at least six months to give them the best start in life - and that recommendation comes after health experts combed through 3,000 studies on breastfeeding including the reports which have raised concerns. At the end of the day, they remain convinced that the benefits of breastfeeding are huge, and that any dangers are negligible in comparison.
Where to next?
- Unable or don't want to breastfeed? Check out our section on the best way to bottlefeed
- Worried about breastfeeding or just need some advice? Ask our expert
- Want to talk to others about breastfeeding? Join the discussion
- View our experts' answers to some frequently asked questions about breastfeeding
- Go to our breastfeeding section
Useful organisations:
- The following have a network of breastfeeding counsellors:
- National Childbirth Trust, tel: 020 8992 8637
- La Leche League, tel: 020 7242 1278
- Association of Breastfeeding Mothers, tel: 020 7813 1481
- The Breastfeeding Network
- Scottish Breastfeeding site
- UNICEF Breastfeeding Initiative
