Is it true that breastfeeding increases the child’s intellect?

It is common that nutrition of mother's milk not only strengthens the child’s immunity, but also increases his intelligence. We decided to check if this is confirmed by scientific data.

Information that mother's milk Raises child intelligence, you can find on sites many large institutions healthcare, private clinic And centersas well as specialized Media. The authors of such publications argue that "health and intelligence come with mother’s milk ”and that“ children who have been breastfeed for a long time, more Successful In adulthood, ”some ask the question:“ Children on breastfeeding = Smart children?" Popular this Topic Also on parental forums.

Maternal milk, according to data WHO, is “ideal food for babies”, which “is safe and harmless, and also contains antibodies that help protect [the child] from many common childhood diseases.” WHO experts Recommend To feed children up to six months exclusively with breast milk, and then, after the introduction of feeding, continue to feed the baby breasts for up to two years or more. However, at present, few people follow this recommendation - only every third baby receives exclusively breastfeeding during the first six months of life. At the same time, breastfeeding is beneficial influences On the health of not only the child, but also the mother. The year of lactation by 4.3% reduces the risk of all types of malignant neoplasms of the mammary gland, by 27% - ovarian cancer and by 11% - cancer of the uterine body.

One of the largest research, who studied the connection between the type of feeding and the level of intelligence of the child, was held back in 1999 at the Kentucky University of the University (USA). Scientists have selected 20 scientific works on the development of children who grew up on breast and artificial feeding, and calculated that children who received mother's milk show the results of 3-5 points higher than their peers who fed mixed. Scientists explained this difference by the absence of two substances in the milk mixtures: Dokosagexen and arachidonic acids. These substances belong to the group of unsaturated fatty acids and are important for the development of the brain. Researchers noted that there are these substances in the mixtures of European manufacturers, but American products are most often not included, and recommended that manufacturers include them in the composition. In 2002, experts of the Office for Sanitary Supervision of the Quality of Food and Drugs of the USA (FDA) Listened To scientists, and now many American mixtures contain these components. And according to Directive EU, European manufacturers without fail add both substances to their products. 

In 2015, specialists from the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil Bone The results of a 30-year observation of almost 6,000 local residents. The scientists had data on the type of feeding 3493 people from this group. In addition, the researchers took into account many additional parameters: the monthly income of the family, the age and level of mother’s formation, smoking during pregnancy, the body mass index, the type of childbirth (vaginal or cesarean section), the child’s gestation age (the number of weeks spent in the womb), the weight at birth and racial affiliation. Having analyzed the success of the successes of adults of children, the researchers reported that on average breastfeeding increased IQ by 4 points within 12 months, and salary by 340 Brazilian reais (about 6,300 rubles at the average rate for 2015), these children also studied for almost a year more than their peers. At the same time, researchers Markthat their conclusions are limited in nature-perhaps the best intellectual indicators are due to the fact that the nursing mothers as a whole took better care of the child and devoted more time to its development than those who, for some reason, preferred to use the mixture.

More conflicting results Received Scientists from the Medical Center at the University of Rochester and the University of California at San Diego (USA). They studied the intellectual development of 9116 children at the age of nine to ten years. Best (0.3 Standard deviation, for IQ it It is 15 points) Cognitive abilities were handled by children who were breastfeed for more than 12 months. A little worse than them, but better than on average (only 0.2 deviations), those who were fed from seven to 12 months managed. The deviations were more successfully coped with the tasks of 0.1 those who received breast milk from one to six months. The lowest results were shown by children who at one time did not receive milk at all. However, researchers note that “most of the children who did not receive mother’s milk were born unmarried women (52.5%) with secondary education or without it (33%) and the total household income less than $ 50,000 per year (43.9%)”. In addition to cognitive functions, researchers were also interested in the executive part of behavior and memory. Slightly worse than the rest, those who have been breastfeed for more than 12 months cope with the tests for the executive function. Scientists did not find any patterns between memory and nutrition of mother's milk. 

Scientists from the University of Dublin, having analyzed the results of intelligence tests of 7478 children aged three to five years with different types of feeding, and completely Not found No difference in mental development. Researchers were interested in the child’s skills in solving various problems, his vocabulary, behavior, hyperactivity and the ability to build relationships with others. The only thing that distinguished the children, fed by mother's milk, and not mixtures, at the age of three, they were more calm than their peers, who often had signs of hyperactivity. However, by the age of five the difference disappeared altogether. Scientists concluded that the development of the mother and family income, not the type of nutrition, are much more affected on the development of the child.

The point in the discussion about the connection between the type of feeding and the intellectual abilities of the child puts study specialists from the University of Edinburgh. They managed to find pairs of brothers and sisters with different types or duration of feeding: 332 couples were discordant by the type of feeding (one baby was fed with breast milk, another mixture) and 545 pairs - by the duration of breastfeeding. No differences in the intelligence between the children were recorded. In addition to the brothers and sisters, scientists observed other children, in total, 5475 children from 3161 mothers accepted the study in total. It turned out that the type of intellectual abilities was by no means the type of feeding, but the IQ of the mother herself. At the same time, this parameter most accurately predicted the type of power - the mother’s advantage in 1 standard deviation doubled the likelihood that her children would receive breast milk, not a mixture. This, perhaps, is explained by the results of other studies: the higher the intelligence of the mother, the, on the one hand, it pays more attention to the development of the child and, thanks to this, it provides the best development of his cognitive abilities, on the other hand, the woman’s high intelligence increases the chance of breastfeeding for her baby. Thus, children from mothers with high intelligence will most likely receive breast milk and show high test results, but the cause of their results is not nutrition, but the abilities of the mother. “Although breastfeeding has many advantages for the child and mother, the child’s increase is unlikely to be among them,” - Report Researchers.

However, there is a group of children whose intellect is breastfeeding, apparently influences - these are children with the third and fourth degree prematureness. After analyzing the data of MRI of 180 children who were born up to 30 weeks of gestation and weighing less than 1250 g, doctors from the USA, Great Britain and Australia They came To the conclusion that the use of breast milk increases the amount of gray matter in the brain of a newborn. The children were observed during the entire time before the date corresponding to their planned birth. By this time, premature babies, who received at least half the daily calorie from mother's milk, had a large volume of gray matter of deep cerebral nuclei. Seven years later, scientists met with these children again, they once again made an MRI, and also conducted tests for attention, memory, visual perception, success in language and mathematics and motor skills. Best of all, these parameters were developed precisely in children who received mother's milk in the early days of life.

And although different studies show different results regarding the influence of the type of intelligence feeding, the most reliable of them is the comparison of the pairs of brothers and sisters in which one child received mother's milk, and the second was not. In the framework of the study of pairs of such children, scientists have not found any pattern between the type of nutrition and intelligence. Only in premature babies, mother's milk reliably improves cognitive abilities. In other cases, the intellect and social status of the mother will primarily affect the mental development of the child, which, thanks to this, will be more responsible for raising offspring, including trying to feed him with breast milk. However, even those scientists who have not discovered the laws between the type of nutrition and intelligence, Markthat mother's milk is the most optimal product for feeding the child, and they urge women to resort to this method as long as possible.

Image on the cover: Image by Jonathan Hammond from Pixabay

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