Saint John Paul II endorsed the UNICEF recommendation that mothers breastfeed their children “up to the second year of life or beyond” because “the overwhelming body of research is in favor of natural feeding rather than its substitutes.” (May 12, 1995)
The oropharyngeal administration of mother’s milk—placing drops of milk onto the infant’s oral mucosa—may serve as a preventative strategy against necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) for extremely low-birth-weight infants. (Journal of Perinatal & Neonatal Nursing, January-March 2015)
Health Director General Dr Zahid Pervaiz said that if mothers would feed their babies for two years, the mortality rate in infants would be reduced as well as achieving natural birth spacing, and malnutrition problems would also be solved. He said that reasonable birth spacing could reduce the maternal mortality rate. (Meeting of Integrated Reproductive, Mother, Neonatal and Child Health Programme in Lahore, Punjab; March 2015)
It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that exclusive breastfeeding provides optimal nutrition and health protection for the first 6 months of life, and that breastfeeding with complementary foods from 6 months until at least 12 months of age is the ideal feeding pattern for infants. (Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, March 2015)
Within the first year of life and beyond, a greater relative risk of hospitalization was observed among formula-fed infants for a range of individual illnesses reported in childhood including gastrointestinal, respiratory, and urinary tract infections, otitis media, fever, asthma, diabetes, and dental caries.Greater risks of hospitalization in early childhood for a range of common childhood illnesses were found among Scottish infants who were not exclusively breastfed at 6-8 weeks of age. (The Journal of Pediatrics, March 2015; 620-625)
The objective of the article was to estimate the pediatric costs of inadequate breastfeeding in Mexico associated with the following acute health conditions: respiratory infections, otitis media, gastroenteritis, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The total annual costs of inadequate breastfeeding in Mexico for the studied cohort ranged from $745.6 million to $2416.5 million. A range of 1.1-3.8 million reported cases of disease and from 933 to 5796 infant deaths per year for the diseases under study are attributed to inadequate infant breastfeeding practices. (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, March 2015)
The findings of this large pooled analysis reinforce the hypothesis that prolonged breastfeeding is associated with a decreased risk of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. (American Journal of Epidemiology, March 1, 2015, 549-562)
Mothers who breastfeed for at least 90 days smoked far less than those who did not breastfeed or only breastfed for a short time. (Journal of Nicotine & Tobacco Research, March 5, 2015)
Reduced exposure to breastfeeding in males was found to be associated with increased risk of multiple sclerosis in both Italian and Norwegian adult males. (Journal of Neurology, online March 21, 2015)
Breastfeeding is associated with improved performance in intelligence tests 30 years later, and might have an important effect in real life, by increasing educational attainment and income in adulthood. In Brazil 6000 babies were studied from birth and nearly 3500 of those babies were interviewed 30 years later. Participants who were breastfed for 12 months or more had higher IQ, more years of education, and higher monthly incomes than did those who were breastfed for less than 1 month. The results suggested that IQ was responsible for 72% of the effect on income. (The Lancet Global Health, April 2015)
Neonates who were breastfed at least 8 times per day displayed a significantly lower incidence of hyperbilirubinemia. Nursery discharge instructions that encouraged mothers to frequently breastfeed their newborns frequently decrease the rates of hyperbilirubinemia in exclusively breastfed term neonates. (Pediatrics International, a Japanese journal, online April 2015)
At least half of all children remain stunted in six countries in East and South Asia. Stunting, or being too short for one’s age, reduces physical, social, and cognitive capacity throughout childhood and into adulthood. At a young age, stunted children tend to score lower on tests and are less likely to be in the appropriate grade for their age at school. As adults, they earn 20 percent less than their non-stunted peers. The conference attendees stressed the need to have mothers exclusively breastfeed their child for the first 6 months of life and continue to breastfeed until their children are 24 months of age. (“The Role of Parliamentarians in the Fulfillment of Child’s Rights to Nutrition and Development” conference in Hanoi, April 2, 2015)
Breastfeeding is the normal, species-specific nutrition for human infants. Failure to breastfeed not only leads to a greater burden of disease for both mother and child, but also to high economic costs, which have to be paid for by society. For example, if 90% of US mothers breastfed exclusively for 6 months, the USA would save $13 billion per year and prevent 911 infant deaths. If 45% of Great Britain mothers exclusively breastfed for 4 months, 17 million pounds would be saved over one year. These costs are minimal as many other factors are not considered in these figures. (International Breastfeeding Journal, April 11, 2015)
Women who breastfeed their babies and later develop breast cancer are less likely to have the cancer return or to die from it than women who do not breastfeed, new research shows. Breastfeeding’s protective effect in lowering the chances of recurrence or death from breast cancer was strongest against the most commonly diagnosed breast cancers. (Journal of the National Cancer Institute, online April 28, 2015)
Sheila Kippley
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding: The Frequency Factor