Boosting Breast-Feeding

The benefits of breast feeding over bottle feeding are clear. Besides providing the vitamins, minerals, proteins and sugars necessary for proper nourishment, mother's milk also provides growth factors, protective antibodies, neuropeptides, hormones, and even substances similar to a class of anti-anxiety drugs that may calm infants. Breast-fed babies have fewer allergies and infections, and possibly a lower incidence of diabetes. Mothers who have nursed suffer less risk of bone loss and breast and ovarian cancers later in life.

Due to efforts in public education, the rate of breast feeding has increased from a low of around 20% in the mid-1960s, to about 60% today. But women who breast feed often stop earlier than they should. By six weeks after the birth of their children, only 35% of nursing mothers are still breast-feeding, and by six months, only 20%. In a recent policy statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the academy recommended that babies nurse for at least their first year.

Part of the reason many mothers may cut short breast-feeding is that they have to go back to work. One corporation, CIGNA—an insurance, health care and financial services company—has set up a unique system to help mothers who want to continue breast feeding after they have returned to work. The 37,000-employee company plans to create breast-feeding centers for their employees, giving women access to lactation specialists, breast milk pumps, milk storage, and private place to pump. This makes it possible for stored breast milk to be available to their infants while the mothers are at work.

Despite the natural benefits of breast-feeding, there is a downside. A new Dutch study found that preschoolers who were breast-fed during infancy have 3.6 times as much of the neurotoxin PCB in their blood as do children who were fed only infant formula. The breast-fed children had poorer muscle tone, and there was evidence of IQ deficits—both problems presumably caused by PCBs in their mothers' milk. An earlier study revealed similar problems in breast-fed children in Detroit.

[Editor: Another argument for the use of organically grown foods, especially for mothers.]  Based on information in: Nutrition Today, Sept/Oct 1997; Ms., Jan/Feb 1998; Science News, 11-29-97; New Scientist, 12-13-97