On Healthy Living

There are so many wonderful reasons to breast-feed your children. Breast milk helps build up the baby’s immune system and breast feeding can actually help a new mom lose weight? But are brest-fed babies smarter than bottle-fed babies?

New research suggests they are not. The subject has been studied since 1929 and there are still no clear answers, but a study of more than 5,000 American babies seems to indicate that breast-feeding did not have an impact on the future intelligence of the child. Breast-feeding in isolation seemed to have an impact, but when considered with other factors such as the intelligence of the mother, home environment and family income, breast-feeding made little difference.

The idea that other factors are more imprtant was reinforced by looking at siblings where one was breast-fed and one not. They had no major difference in intelligence.

An interesting part of this study is that an increase in about 15 IQ point for the mother made her more than twice as likely to breast-feed. So many it’s smarter mothers breast-feeding who then have smarter babies. Yet another reason to think about breast-feeding if you’re expecting or planning a family.

Source: NewsWise

Sarah White wrote this on October 4th, 2006 and filed it under Healthy Living, Women's Health |