Breastfed babies cope better with stress later in life than their "bottle" peers, according to a study published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. This thesis was based on a study of almost 9,000 kids. To establish a link between infant feeding and stress resistance, scientists gathered information about newborns and re-examined them after 5 and 10 years.
Scientists collected information about newborns and examined it again after 5 and 10 years. Almost 9,000 were examined. kids. The information concerned, inter alia, whether the child was breastfed, and the parents' level of education and social status. These factors can influencechild'sresponses tostressand coping mechanisms.
Breastfeeding determines the quality of the bond between the baby and mother
When the children were 10 years old, their teachers were asked to rate how anxious or anxious the pupil was (on a scale of 0 to 50). On the other hand, the parents were asked about family problems, divorces or separations that occurred when the child was between 5 and 10 years old. As might be expected, the children of divorced or separated couples turned out to be more anxious than their peers who were not exposed to such experiences. More importantly, it turned out that breastfed children obtained about two times, and bottle-fed children obtained more than nine times worse stress test results than children without difficult family experiences. It's not thatbreastfeedingalone helps you to cope better with difficult situations in life, scientists say. However, in their opinion, the way a child is fed may signal certain behaviors of parents.
Scientists cited, for example, animal studies suggesting that the quality of physical contact between mother and child in the first days of life may affect the development of neural and hormonal pathways involved in the stress response in the offspring. Breastfeeding can also determine the quality of the bond between baby and mother. This, in turn, may permanently affect the child's anxiety level in training, life situations, the researchers suggest.