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Obstetrics  Postnatal period and breastfeeding

 
 
breast-fed children

Breast-fed children
'cope better with stress'

By FIONA MCRAE, Daily Mail
 


Children who were breastfed are better at coping with stress than their bottle-fed classmates, research shows. A study of thousands of British youngsters revealed that those who were given formula milk found it more than four times harder to deal with stressful events - such as the divorce of their parents.
 
 

02/08/06

It is thought that the close contact helps mother and child bond and encourages a feeling of security that enables the child to deal better with traumatic situations in later life.

Hormones found in a mother's milk may help reduce stress and the process may feed the growth of the parts of the brain crucial in handling stress and anxiety. The Swedish findings follow a number of other studies which have shown that breast milk protects against infection, heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Breastfeeding may also reduce the mother's risk of breast cancer.

The weight of evidence in support of breastfeeding is so strong that the Department of Health recommends that mothers should feed their babies on breast milk alone for the first six months to ensure they get the best start in life.

However, many women find breastfeeding difficult and claim they are made to feel guilty if they resort to formula milk from a bottle. In the latest study, researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, tracked the health of almost 9,000 boys and girls born in the UK in 1970.

When the children reached ten, researchers gauged their ability to cope with stress by looking at how they were affected by family problems.

The results showed that those who were bottle-fed were more than four times as stressed by such events than those who were breast-fed.

The findings, which are a good indicator of a child's overall ability to handle stress, held true irrespective of other factors, such as disability and social class.

'Clear link'

Writing in the medical journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, the researchers said there was a clear link between breastfeeding and the ability to cope with stress.

However, they said they cannot be sure that the effect is due to breastfeeding itself. It may be that women who breastfeed are more likely to have the sort of nurturing personality that leads to their children becoming less stressed than others.

They said: 'The benefits of breastfeeding are well recognised and this study indicates it may be associated with lower levels of anxiety among children who have the potentially stressful experience of parental divorce.'

Lead researcher Dr Scott Montgomery said it is likely that the physical contact associated with breastfeeding helps make children feel more secure and so deal better with problems in later life.

'Clearly, parental contact with infants is important,' he said. 'It doesn't mean to say you can't get physical contact without breastfeeding but breastfeeding is important.'

©2006 Associated New Media

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