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Mother's Gift
Studies show breast-fed infants
don't become obese, reports Biplab Das
In most developed countries, obesity is the frequent nutritional disorder in children and adolescents. Therapies resorted to combat these physiological anomalies are far from satisfactory.
But, in a recent issue of the British Medical Journal, a German research team has revealed that mother's milk is an antidote to obesity and being overweight.
According to the researchers, breast milk has no side effects, unlike synthetic drugs. Moreover, breast-feed being a natural product is a cost-effective solution. The research team led by Rudiger von
Kries, professor of paediatrics at the Ludmic Manimilians University, Munich, has written that breast feeding not only fights a child's obesity but also thwarts the onset of hypertension and coronary artery diseases later in life.
Evidence was garnered from a study which they conducted in Bavaria in Southern Germany. The research team set up a questionnaire for the patients of 13,345 children. All the children involved were aged 5 - 6. Information gathered by this questionnaire was linked with the data from the school health examination.
The parents were asked whether their children were breast-fed at all and if they were, for how long were they exclusively breast-fed (breast milk accompanied by no other foods was interpreted as exclusive breast-feed). Answers to queries regarding the number of older siblings of a child, parent's ages, child's health at birth and the age when solid food introduced were also sought. These factors were thought to shift the effect of breast feeding considerably. Parents' highest level of education was also taken into account as a marker of social class.
Of 9,357 completed questionnaires, 9206 gave assessable information on breast feeding and its duration. Among the 9,206 children, 4,022 had never been breast-fed and 5,184 had been breast-fed. Duration of breast feeding for the rest of the children was not obtained. In children, breast feeding that lasted for six months or more curtailed the risks of obesity by 30 per cent and 40 per cent respectively. The team also tried to pin down several other factors that might be associated with breast feeding.
Digging deep into the familial life of the children, it was found that maternal smoking during pregnancy and a child having his or her own bedroom also contributed to a child becoming obese. Moreover, the level of parental education might have played a role, which linked breast feeding to obesity.
They also found that overweight children did not consume full fat milk products and sweet desserts. They ate too much low fat milk products, less butter and breakfast cereals than children who were not overweight.
These aspects clearly pointed out that most of the affected children avoided full fat diet and flaws in their genes made
them vulnerable to obesity.
This study is bolstered by a Canadian research team which came up with the merits of breast feeding in obese children.
Another group that did comparative study between bottle-fed and breast-fed infants found higher concentration of insulin in bottle-fed infants' blood than that of the breast-fed ones. This, in turn, spurs fat production.
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