Breastfeeding Boosts IQ

In medical school we learn that breastfeeding is optimal for child development. Naturopathically speaking, a child should be breast-fed EXCLUSIVELY for at least one year. This is not an easy task...it means not introducing ANY other foods into the childs diet for 1 YEAR. Not only is it important to the proper development of a child, including imunological, but also to help prevent any food allergies in the future. It has not been until now that a long term study has emerged solidifing such recommendations: Exclusive, long-term breastfeeding improves a child's verbal intelligence and other intelligence measures, says researcher Michael S. Kramer, MD, professor of pediatrics, epidemiology and biostatistics at the McGill University Faculty of Medicine in Montreal.
The study was published in the May edition of Archives of General Psychiatry.

Kramer and his colleagues looked at almost 14,000 children in Belarus who visited 31 hospitals and clinics there. The participants are part of the large-scale study known as the Promotion of Breastfeeding Intervention Trial (PROBIT). The researchers assigned half to an intervention that encouraged them to breastfeed exclusively long term or to another group that got the usual maternity care and child care. Children who were breastfed longer scored higher on average at age 6 1/2 years in verbal intelligence, nonverbal intelligence, and overall intelligence, Kramer finds. Teachers rated them higher in reading and writing than children who weren't breastfed as long or as exclusively.

Whether the boost in IQ is due to the breast milk itself — such as healthy fatty acids or other substances — or the physical and social interaction that is part and parcel of breastfeeding is unknown, Kramer and others say.
"A mother who breastfeeds is likely to spend more time with her child," he says, as well as read to them later and do other activities. "The amount of time, the closeness, the way she interacts with the kids, undoubtedly differs between breastfeeding and non-breastfeeding mothers."

BREAST is still BEST. Now if we could just get over the whole breast-feeding in public thing....

Kramer, M. Archives of General Psychiatry, May 2008; vol 65: pp 578-84. Michael S. Kramer, MD, professor of pediatrics and epidemiology and biostatistics, McGill University Faculty of Medicine.