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| Natural Nutrition Source |
Why breastmilk will always be better than formula.
Formula feeding is the longest lasting uncontrolled experiment lacking informed consent in the history of medicine."
— Frank Oski, MD retired editor, Journal of Pediatrics
Protection against infection
Children who are formula fed are at significant risk for infection. We have just come to accept that infants get RSV, rotavirus and ear infections. They are not supposed to be diseases of infants, but in the USA, the largest consumer of formulas world wide, we hospitalize many, many, many infants each winter with those diseases. The great majority of those infants are formula fed.
In fact, the number one risk factor for kids getting ear infections is bottle feeding: not day care, not smoke exposure, but formulas. Think about the loss of work, the exposure to antibiotics, the midnight purchases of medicine for fever and rehydration solutions, and visits to me that could be avoided if more families chose to breastfeed their infants.
You see, infection fighting cells of the body are present in abundance in breastmilk and are not found at all in breastmilk substitutes. So children who are formula fed are not just at risk for ear infections but diarrhea (from rotavirus, E .Coli, cholera,Giardia, and respiratory infections (like RSV, influenza, H. flu, pneumococcus). Plus, non breastfed kids get more meningitis (From H.flu, pneumococcus, herpes, and group B strep).
Protection against inflammation
Normal infant guts are "leaky" in the first 10 days or so of life. Ingredients in colostrum stop pathogens from attaching to the gut, and creating inflammation. Inflammation is bad, and those children not breastfed are susceptible to complication of inflammation.
For example, these factors in breastmilk protect premature infants from a potentially fatal gut complication called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). Children born at 30 weeks of gestation have a 6-10 fold increase in their risk for NEC if they are formula fed.
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| Chemical Nutrition Source |
Protection against Cancer
A study done inn 2002 showed that for every 12 months a mom breastfeeds, her risk of breast cancer decreases 4.3% as compared to women who never nursed. Another showed a 54% reduction for women who breastfed for greater than 24 months.
A study in 1999 looked at the risk of leukemia for kids who had never been breastfed versus those who were. Children who were breastfed had a 21% reduction in risk of childhood leukemia. Said another way, children who are never breastfed are at greater risk for leukemia than their breastfed counterparts.
Protection against lifetime illnesses
Breastfed kids have less obesity as they enter kindergarten. They are 26 times less likely to develop insulin dependent diabetes. Formula fed kids are at higher risk of developing eczema.
A consistent recipe
Breastmilk has had the same recipe for many, many, many years. It hasn't needed a fan fare of advertising for every new ingredient change, because the ingredients haven't needed to change. The celebrating that formula companies do about the improvements in their product are really what happens when a deficit is fixed. Formula companies realized that their product needed to be fortified with vitamin D when kids started having seizures from low calcium levels. They tried to help combat adult high blood pressure problems with a type of formula low in sodium until kids started having seizures from low sodium levels. When there wasn't enough iron in their product, they found out after many kids became anemic, and that iron-deficiency anemia, as we have learned, has had developmental consequences. Plus, formulas in powder form have the potential to be contaminated with bacteria. The ready-to-feed and concentrate are sterilized, but powders aren't. The great majority of formula recalls have been because powdered forms were contaminated with potentially harmful bacteria.
Other ingredients, found in breastmilk, are still missing...we are seeing other additions to formula, like infection- fighting oligosaccharides, insulin, and prebiotics. That means that they are not in the recipe now.
So what if all the ingredients in breastmilk got in formula some day...
So let's say they get all the ingredients in breastmilk (all the white blood cells, antibodies, anti-inflammatory cells, and biologically active compounds that are so important to our children's' health) were put in formula... would breastmilk still be better? Yes. Of course. The milk a mom makes for her baby is perfect for her child. Nobody else can ever make a more perfect food. The antibodies in a mom's milk are specific to the viruses and bacteria that mom and baby came into during that day. The composition of the milk varies from the beginning of the day to the end of the day, the beginning of the feeding to its end, changes to meet a growing baby's needs and is flavored with foods that mom ate, making every mouthful of food different, and perfect for that baby. No formula company can ever make a more perfect food for your baby than you can as that baby's mother.
I need a disclaimer. Many "breastfeeding failures" fall directly at the hands of healthcare providers, hospitals and other people who should know better. You can read "Temple of Doom" on this page to get my take on that. And some women just can't breastfeed. If donor milk isn't available, we need to have substitutes that support the growth of our children.
Dr. Thomas
READ MORE ON BREASTFEEDING HERE
