Want The Best For Your Newborn?

Research Shows Breastfeeding Creates Bigger Brains – Why What Your Baby Eats For The First 1,000 Days Is So Important!

Doctors, researchers, and parents have always wanted to know how much nutrition in early life affects adults later in life.  Can adults overcome poor nutrition in the first few months or years of life or are there consequences to starting off life eating sub-optimal food? Both epidemiological and animal studies have shown the risk of metabolic syndrome is significantly increased after exposure to suboptimum nutrition during crucial periods of development.  Metabolic syndrome is the name for a group of risk factors that raises your risk for heart disease and other health problems, such as diabetes and stroke.

What about IQ?  According to an article published in Neuroimage (May 28, 2013), “The prevailing consensus from large epidemiological studies posits that early exclusive breastfeeding is associated with improved measures of IQ and cognitive functioning in later childhood and adolescence. Prior morphometric brain imaging studies support these findings, revealing increased white matter and sub-cortical gray matter volume, and parietal lobe cortical thickness, associated with IQ in adolescents who were breastfed as infants compared to those who were exclusively formula-fed.”  

In other words, a majority of researchers believe (based on studies) that breastfed babies have higher IQs than babies who were given formula.  A new study from Brown University has found more evidence to the superiority of breastfeeding over formula. The study used MRIs to look at the brain growth in a sample of children under the age of four. The research found that by age two, babies who had been breastfed exclusively for at least three months had enhanced development in key parts of the brain compared to children who were fed formula exclusively or who were fed a combination of formula and breast milk. The research showed the extra growth was most pronounced in parts of the brain associated with language, emotional function, and cognition.

“We’re finding the difference [in white matter growth] is on the order of 20 to 30 percent, comparing the breastfed and the non-breastfed kids,” said the study’s lead researcher, Sean Dioni. PhD. “I think it’s astounding that you could have that much difference so early.”  

With everything researchers and doctors now know, breastfeeding is the clear choice if you want the best for your child both now and as an adult.