HHS HealthBeat (January 27, 2009)

The bond of breastfeeding

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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Breastfeeding is good for mom and baby in lots of ways, and bonding seems to be one of them. Researchers found that when they looked over 15 years of data on Australian children and their mothers.

The study found that children who were not breastfed were about four times more likely to have been neglected by their mothers than were children who were breastfed at least four months.

At the Baylor College of Medicine, Lane Strathearn:

[Lane Strathearn speaks] ``The longer a mother breastfed her infant, the lower was her risk of abusing or neglecting her child.’’

Strathearn believes breastfeeding may help to program a mother’s brain toward caring by releasing the hormone oxytocin, which seems to have a calm-and-connect function.

The study in the journal Pediatrics was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: January, 27 2009