Breastfeeding and its Cognitive Effects Essays - Midwifery, Health

Breastfeeding and its Cognitive Effects 150876013398500 Rhianna Goolsby 11/11/16 Breast feeding may be beneficial to intellectual growth during the early stages of infancy, but has not been proven to improve intelligence. Many people stress the importance of breast feeding as if it pertains to cognitive growth in babies. The truth is it does not. Although very healthy for baby in infancy stages, breast feeding does not provide much more than the nutrients needed to keep the baby healthy; especially after the age of one. Breast feeding is a healthy thing and is encourages, but society needs to do their research on what it provides and what it does not. Even though believed by some researchers, breast feeding does not effect a child's intelligence or an adolescents IQ score. Studies show that cognitive development was improved in five-year old's in small measurements after being breast fed, but once again it does not put a big impact on cognitive/intellectual growth. Breast milk has more short term effects than long term effects. Breast milk gives infants the nutrients that are needed in the first six months of life. It also helps infants fight off and prevent diseases and illnesses during infancy. Some of these illnesses and/or diseases are stomach viruses, lower respiratory illnesses, and meningitis. Another plus of breast feeding is that it is cheaper. Breast fed infants get fuller quicker causing eating patterns to be healthier. Breast milk has less fats, and it regulates appetite Although opinions ri se about breast milk not effecting a child's intelligence, some say otherwise. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services believe that "breast feeding is associated with higher reading a math scores in very early childhood." It is said that the increase of cognitive abilities due to breastfeeding happens over time. An interesting point that supports the fact breast feeding does not increase cognitive abilities is the similarities in test scores in test scores of non-breast fed children and children that have been breast fed. On the other hand, research shows that children who were breast fed under the age of six months do not have as high of test scores of children who were breast fed over six months. Doing a variety of tests would be the key to finding out results. Other studies performed show that breastfeeding can help cognitive abilities in infant stages, but have no relation with these abilities later in childhood. With there is some overlap as far as testing goes. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary test shows that infants who have been breast fed for longer times had not high, but better test scores. Researchers believed that this happened due to the nurturing of mom during feedings in infancy. This is probable cause of adolescents being more attached to their mom. Of course, these things are harder to tell if the accuracy of information given was not one hundred percent. Another study done to test the relation between breast feeding and intelligence was the Stanford Binet Intelligence Scale. This scale is a sixty-question assessment that measures a person's IQ. During this study five hundred and fifty European children were studied. Breast feeding showed no significance in the scores. Once again, the only relation presented was those that were breast fed for longer periods of time did better on the test, but did not achieve high scores. Other factors in studies like this were not adequate such as premature birth and low gestational weight. Because of this, the study was redone excluding infants or multiple births, premature births, and low gestational and birth weights. Women of different durations of breast feeding, women who gave their infants other things to drink, and women who did not breast feed at all were separated into different categories. Results showed that there was still no relation between children's intelligence and breast feeding. Aside from cognitive abilities , children who were not breast fed or were breast fed for shorter periods of time had behavioral problems. Studies show that because of these two factors, children had more behavioral problems later in adolescents to adulthood. This only accounts for children who were breast fed up to the age of four. This happens to be one of the