Breast feed for smarter kids

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDDec 21 2010

A news study published in the journal Pediatrics this Monday shows that babies who are breastfed for longer than six months may reap he benefits of having better brain function right into school. The benefit may be particularly so in boys.

The researcher team noted that 10-year-olds who were breastfed for longer than six months as infants scored higher on standardized math, reading, writing, and spelling tests than children who were breastfed for less than six months. They studied 2,868 children who were born in Australia in the early 1990s. On adjusting for other factors like mother’s age, family income, and how often the children were read to at home, breastfed boys continued to show an edge. It has been seen earlier though that mothers who prefer to breastfeed are usually older, have higher IQs, are wealthier, and are more educated than mothers who do not. This could be significant confounder of the results.

Study’s author, Wendy H. Oddy, who is an associate professor at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, in Perth, Australia said, “In actual fact, the benefits to boys of breastfeeding seem to be quite significant… If they were breastfed for more than six months, they did much better in math, reading, writing, spelling, and all the subjects.” Why boys a question that remained unclear. One theory suggests that breastfeeding may improve speech clarity, particularly for boys, and better speech has been associated with improved reading ability. Another theory is that breastfeeding may help boys, who normally lag in development behind girls who mature more quickly. Or it may be the hormonal difference.

Oddy added, “Maybe humans really do need all the fatty acids, nutrients, bioactive factors that they get from human milk…If you’re trying to help kids do the best that they can, in school and in life, why wouldn’t you breastfeed?” Earlier studies looking for similar benefits have found little or no association after they corrected for other factors that also contribute to a child’s intelligence like mother’s age and education and socio economic factors.

Miao Jiang a maternal and child health researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, pointed out a problem with the study. Jiang said that when the team asked parents for permission to link breastfeeding records to the child’s testing scores, many families opted out. The 980 who stayed in were generally from two-parent, higher-income families and were more likely to have older moms who breastfed longer than mothers who opted out. Jiang added, “Therefore, the higher academic achievement found in this sample may quite likely be due to the advantaged socio-economic status, not breastfeeding.”