Breastfeeding favors your baby’s intelligence
Breastfeeding benefits babies’ brain development. Recent research found differences between breastfed babies and those who did not drink breast milk.
BREASTFEEDING FAVORS YOUR BABY’S INTELLIGENCE
Breastfeeding is the best for your baby. A study by researchers at Brown University (USA) showed new evidence on the benefits of breastfeeding for brain development in children younger than 4 years.
Babies who exclusively breastfeed for the first three months of life had greater development in key areas of the brain from the age of two than infants fed formula and superior cognitive development, especially in language, according to the researchers. , motor ability and visual perception.
HOW WERE THESE CONCLUSIONS REACHED?
This is not the first study to point in this direction, but it is the first study to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to analyze the differences associated with breastfeeding in the brain development of healthy children.
What the researchers at the Brown University Advanced Baby Scan Laboratory did is scan the brain of 133 children between the ages of 10 months and 4 years with MRI while they slept. Children were grouped into three categories: those fed breast milk only, formula only, or a combination of the two.
And they examined the presence of myelin, a substance that protects axons from neurons and allows transmission of electrical impulses that travel through the brain.
The differences between the three groups were substantial after two years of age: they saw that the amount of myelin in the exclusively breastfed children exceeded by 20% to 30% that of the mixed lactation and formula groups. The imaging results were supported with basic cognitive tests.
Children who had received mixed lactation also had higher myelin growth than those fed formula milk alone, but the difference was not as marked.
IN FAVOR OF PROLONGED LACTATION
In addition, children in the study who breastfed for more than a year showed greater brain growth than those who took less time, with more marked differences in areas of the brain related to motor skills.
The result of this research is just one more reason to breastfeed your child.