Friday, January 29, 2010

Babies who are Breastfed as Infants Make Better Teens

After conducting an extensive study, which has managed to reveal that there is a link between breastfeeding and a child's mental health, researchers are now urging mothers to breastfeed their new-born, at least till the age of 6 months.

The large-scale study followed about 3,000 women for a long period of 14 years, across Western Australia. The researchers tracked the development of children of these women from the time they were infants to when they hit early adolescence.

Out of all women participating in the study, some had breastfed for varying lengths of time, and some had not done so at all. Analysis of the data thus collected helped researchers reach the hypothesis of the study.

"What we found was that for each additional month that a child was breastfed [the] behavior in teenagers improved. We can say clearly that breastfeeding for six months or longer is positively associated with mental health and wellbeing in children and adolescents", said Sven Silburn from the Menzies School of Health Research, one of the researchers.

Details of the study have been study published in the Journal of Paediatrics.

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