Breastmilk
Offers Babies Antioxidant Protection
Breastmilk Offers Babies Antioxidant Protection
 April 2001 - Breastmilk may help babies - particularly premature babies - protect themselves from oxidative stress, which is linked to respiratory distress syndrome, hemorrhages, eye disorders and other problems. And researchers have discovered that breastmilk has twice the levels of protective antioxidants than commercial formula, and that there is no difference between the amount of antioxidants in breastmilk of mothers who delivered prematurely and those who delivered full-term. Researchers from Memorial Hospital in St. John's in Newfoundland presented their findings at the Experimental Biology 2001 meeting in Orlando, Florida this month. They compared the breastmilk of 28 women who had delivered pre-term to 17 women who delivered full-term and tested the antioxidant protection levels of all the milk samples over the course of several weeks by exposing them to high levels of free radicals. The antioxidant protection levels did not change from week to week, and there was no difference between the milk of mothers who delivered pre-term and those who delivered full-term. Antioxidant protection is especially important in premature infants, because their lungs and immune systems are often not as developed a full-term infants, leaving them unable to cope with the stress that oxygen free radicals can cause. The researchers tried to enhance both breastmilk and formula with more antioxidant enzymes and found that when they added antioxidants found in breastmilk to formula, the formula offered better protection against free radicals. However, the additional enzymes did not successfully increase the antioxidant protection of breastmilk. |
|
The
