A new study conducted in Greece concerning the benefits of breast-feeding showed that toddlers that are breast-fed for longer than six months show higher cognitive skills and score higher on development tests.
Greek doctor Dimitri Christakis, Professor of Pediatrics at the Washington University spoke to Reuters: “I think that the evidence is now of sufficient quality that we can close the book on these benefits and focus instead on how to succeed in promoting breast-feeding since all of the studies, including this one, that have looked at it have found a linear relationship, which is to say that the benefits accrue with each additional month that a child is breast-fed.”
WHO suggests that breast-feeding should last until the age of two and it should be completed with complementary foods.
Dr. Leda Chatzi from University of Crete in Greece conducted a new study incorporating data from a long-term study of 540 mothers and their children. When the toddlers were 9 months old the mothers were asked how long they had been breast-feeding and then repeated the procedure when the children were 18 months old, at which point their cognitive abilities along with their language skills and motor development were checked by psychologists.
Children who breast-fed scored higher on all tests compared to those that weren’t and those who were breast-fed for longer than six months scored even higher according to the researchers in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Dr. Chatzi told Reuters “we were surprised by the fact that breast-feeding levels in Greece remain low, even though there is an ongoing effort by the Greek State to promote breast-feeding practices.”
Meanwhile Dr. Christakis mentioned “The real challenge we have is with sustaining breast-feeding. I believe very strongly that we need a public health approach to doing so because these are public health issues.” He continued: “We need to have baby-friendly work places that help women continue to either breast-feed or pump when they return to work,” Christakis said. “There’s that African proverb, ‘it takes a village to raise a child,'” he said. “It takes a village to breast-feed a child as well, and all sectors have to contribute.”
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