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Breast-Feeding
May Cut Obesity In Childhood
The
study of more than 15,000 pre-adolescents found that those who were formula-fed
as infants were 22 percent more likely than breast-fed babies to be obese or
overweight by the time they reached ages 9 to 14. The study, conducted by
Harvard University researchers, also found that the longer an infant was
breast-fed, the less likely he or she would be overweight. A
second study of 2,685 younger children ages 3 to 5 by researchers at the
National Institutes of Health also found that breast-feeding might help reduce
the risk that children would become overweight but concluded the effect was
minor. Nevertheless,
taken together, the two studies offer compelling evidence that breast-feeding
helps protect against weight problems later in life, other researchers said. "These
studies offer another good reason to breast-feed -- it reduces the risk of
overweight in the child," said William Dietz of the federal Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, who wrote an editorial accompanying the studies
in today's Journal of the American Medical Association. "The
effect may not be terribly large," he said. "But we don't have many
good strategies to combat the epidemic of obesity we're seeing, and
breast-feeding seems to offer some benefit." Medical
and public health officials have long advocated breast-feeding because of its
proven health benefits for children, and possibly mothers, too. These two
studies -- among the largest every undertaken on the subject -- are the first in
the United States to find a connection between breast-feeding and protection
against becoming overweight. The
prevalence of breast-feeding has increased in the past decade and almost 65
percent of mothers nurse their infants during the first week of life. But
federal statistics show that only 29 percent of infants are still breast-fed at
6 months -- the minimum amount recommended by the American Academy of
Pediatrics. While
Dietz of the CDC hailed the studies as indicating that "breast-feeding has
a protective effect against obesity," the lead researchers of the two
studies disagreed over the implications of their findings. Matthew
W. Gilman of the Harvard Medical School said that the results showed that
breast-feeding, even for a short time, had a positive impact on the child's
later weight. He said the fact that the children in his study were already
pre-adolescents gave him greater confidence that the connection was
scientifically sound. But
Mary Hediger of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at
the NIH said her research did not show a strong link between formula-feeding and
the heaviest children. In addition, she did not find that length of
breast-feeding had an impact on later weight. The most important factor in
determining whether a child will be overweight is the weight of the mother, she
found. "In
terms of policy implications, promoting breast-feeding as an obesity prevention
activity will probably be less effective than developing programs to teach
families how to raise a healthy child," she said. "If mothers think
they can let their kids sit in front of the TV and eat McDonald's because they
were breast-fed when they were babies, they're wrong." Excessive
weight in children has become an increasingly important public health issue
because rates of excess weight and obesity have skyrocketed. While 4 percent of
children aged 6 to 11 were overweight in the mid-1970s, the CDC recently
announced that 13 percent of that age group was overweight in 1999. Similar
increases have been found worldwide. Being
overweight in childhood has been associated with an increased risk of diabetes,
heart problems and lower self-esteem. Research has also found that once a child
becomes overweight, it is very hard lose those extra pounds. It
remains unclear exactly how breast-feeding might protect against becoming
overweight. But mothers who breast-feed may be better able to tell when their
babies are full, researchers said. The nursing relationship might then lead to
less overfeeding and better self-regulation by the growing child. In
addition, previous research has suggested that breast-fed babies have lower
levels of insulin -- a hormone that promotes fat storage -- than formula-fed
children. The
infant formula industry agrees that breast milk is the best food for babies, and
a spokeswoman said yesterday that the new studies indicate that breast-feeding
"might help to reduce the risk of having overweight children." But
Mardi Mountford, executive director of the International Formula Council, which
represents most formula makers, said the studies were somewhat contradictory and
not conclusive. "I think it's very important to keep in mind that while
breast-feeding might help, there are many other factors in the home environment
that contribute to childhood overweight," she said. Deitz
said that other research has shown that many mothers stop breast-feeding because
they are returning to a work, where nursing is not encouraged or comfortable. In
his editorial, he wrote that removing barriers to continued breast-feeding at
work "may represent one of the policy shifts necessary to help address the
obesity epidemic."
© 2001
The Washington Post Company |