Breastfed
Babies Have Reduced Chance of Obesity
Breastfed Babies Have Reduced Chance of Obesity
Breastfeeding significantly lowers the odds of babies becoming overweight teenagers. The path to becoming an overweight teenager may start with the very first meal they every have. Two new studies published in the May 16th issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that breastfeeding significantly reduces the risk of becoming overweight by the teen years. 
In a study by Harvard researchers, the
longer infants were breast-fed, the less likely they were to be overweight in
adolescence. In the second study, government researchers found that breast-fed infants tended to be leaner at ages 3 to 5 than formula-fed infants. In the larger study, Dr. Matthew W. Gillman and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, looked at more than 15,300 adolescents aged 9 to 14. They found that those who had been breast-fed were less likely to be overweight compared with those who were raised mostly or exclusively on Formula. Kids fed mainly breast milk for the first 6 months of life were 22% less likely to be overweight by age 14. And the longer the children were breast-fed, the lower the odds of being overweight. For example, those who were breast-fed for at least 7 months were 20% less likely to be overweight than those given breast milk for 3 months. The link between breast-feeding and weight remained even after Gillman's team considered key factors like the children's calorie intake, exercise levels and their mothers' body weight. It is unclear exactly why breast-feeding might cut children's risk of obesity later. One possibility is that formula and breast milk have different impacts on babies' metabolism, with breast milk having more positive effects on fat storage. Lead author Dr. Matthew Gillman theorized that breast-fed babies learn to "self-regulate" food intake better than formula-fed infants because they may have better control over stopping feeding when they are full. By contrast, parents who use formula may see an unfinished bottle and try to induce their infants to drink more, unwittingly encouraging them to ignore their bodies' own hunger cues. That could raise the risk of weight problems later on.  Dr. William Dietz of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the studies suggest that breast-feeding may offer at least some protection against obesity, an epidemic that requires urgent solutions. Breast milk, "already acknowledged as the best food for infants," may provide a "low-cost, readily available strategy," Dietz said. "We have relatively few strategies for obesity prevention,'' said Dietz "Although breast-feeding will by no means prevent all cases of obesity, it's a start.'' Details can be found in: The Journal of the American Medical Association 2001;284:2453 |
|
The
