The Ben­e­fits of Breast­feed­ing for the Baby

Dur­ing the first few weeks of life, an baby’s immune sys­tem is almost entirely depen­dent on the mother’s breast-milk for immune pro­tec­tion from its environment. Breast-feeding dur­ing the first weeks and months of life is now rec­og­nized as an impor­tant strat­egy to ensure a healthy bal­ance of good bac­te­ria in an infant’s gut.

You may not be aware that your gut is actu­ally the cen­ter of 60–70% of your immune sys­tem and may play a cru­cial role in the devel­op­ment of chronic dis­ease. The gut plays such an impor­tant role because it is a pri­mary defense between the “out­side” and “inside” worlds. When good bac­te­ria line the gut, they pre­vent poten­tially harm­ful bac­te­ria from lin­ing it instead.

Because of increased aware­ness of these find­ings, orga­ni­za­tions are start­ing to turn their heads to the nutri­tive power of breast­feed­ing for your child…

Breast­feed­ing Recommendations

The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion now rec­om­mends exclu­sive breast­feed­ing for at least 6 months to pro­mote health. Addi­tion­ally, the nutri­tional com­mit­tees from the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Pedi­atrics, Euo­pean Soci­ety for Pedi­atric Aller­gol­ogy and Clin­i­cal Immunol­ogy, & the Euro­pean Soci­ety for Pedi­atric Gas­troen­terol­ogy, Hepa­tol­ogy, and Nutri­tion ALL rec­om­mend exclu­sive breast­feed­ing for food allergy pre­ven­tion (Zeiger RS. Food aller­gen avoid­ance in the pre­ven­tion of food allergy in infants and chil­dren.Pedi­atrics 2003; 111:1662–1671; Muraro A, Dreborg S, Halken S, et al. Dietary pre­ven­tion of aller­gic dis­eases in infants and small chil­dren. Part III: Crit­i­cal review of pub­lished peer-reviewed obser­va­tional and inter­ven­tional stud­ies and final rec­om­men­da­tions.  Pediat Allergy Immunol  2004; 15:291–307).

Many nutri­tion­ists rec­om­mend feed­ing babies breast­milk for 18–24 months as hypoal­ler­genic foods are intro­duced one at a time start­ing at 6 months. More aller­genic foods such as  corn, wheat, dairy, soy, peanuts, eggs, & shell­fish should only be intro­duced when the child is older and their immune sys­tem is more developed.

In fact, some prac­ti­tion­ers rec­om­mend that moth­ers avoid these aller­genic foods as well to pre­vent pass­ing sen­si­tiv­ity on to their children.

Infant symp­toms such as a atopic eczema can actu­ally dis­ap­pear upon a lac­tat­ing mother’s removal of aller­genic foods from her diet. If a mother is look­ing for a sup­ple­ment to her own breast­milk, she can take pro­bi­otics dur­ing preg­nancy and breast­feed­ing which has been shown to pro­mote infant immune health (Rautava S, Kalliomäki M, Isolauri E. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2002 Jan;109(1):119–21.).

The Infant Immune Sys­tem & Gut Health

Immu­nity is passed from the mother through her breast-milk which con­tains anti­bod­ies against spe­cific anti­gens present in the imme­di­ate envi­ron­ment. Demon­strat­ing the unique bond a lac­tat­ing mother has with her baby, a baby’s saliva actu­ally com­mu­ni­cates with the mother and lit­er­ally affects the com­po­si­tion of the milk based on the baby’s unique needs!

Mother’s breast­feed­ing can help pre­vent and sup­port gut prob­lems (Dai D, Walker WA. Pro­tec­tive nutri­ents and bac­te­r­ial col­o­niza­tion in the imma­ture human gut. Adv Pedi­atr 1999; 46:353–382.) and research sug­gests that breast­milk can help re-establish a healthy bal­ance of bac­te­ria and anti­bod­ies even after use of antibi­otics (Zetter­strom R., et al. Early infant feed­ing and micro-ecology of the gut. Acta Pae­di­atr Jpn  1994; 36:562–571.).

Unfor­tu­nately, the process of re-establishing healthy lev­els of infant bac­tera through breast­feed­ing may take as long as 2–4 weeks (Brown EW, Bosworth AW. Stud­ies of infant feed­ing VI. A bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal study of the feces and the food of nor­mal babies receiv­ing breast milk. Am J Dis Child; 23:243; Ger­st­ley JR, How­ell KM, Nagel BR. Some fac­tors influ­enc­ing the fecal flora of infants. Am J Dis Child 1932;43:555.)!

How Can Infant Gut Health Become Altered?

Because of high c-section rates and feed­ing with cow or soy milk formulas, “natural” infant gut devel­op­ment can be altered. Moth­ers who breast­feed may help reduce poten­tial com­pli­ca­tions. For instance, research has shown that breast­fed infants have a more acidic envi­ron­ment in their gut dur­ing the first six weeks of life. Their tiny guts become nat­u­rally full of healthy bifi­dobac­te­ria and nat­u­rally low in poten­tially harm­ful bac­te­ria such as E. coli, Bac­teroides, Clostridia, and Strep­to­cocci. Not a bad trade-off at all.

In addi­tion to healthy bac­te­ria, infants depend on some­thing called sIgA from their mother’s breast­milk as a pas­sive form of anti­body pro­tec­tion that lines an infant’s GI tract and pro­tects them from poten­tially harm­ful anti­gens in their imme­di­ate environment.

sIgA con­tin­ues to be the pri­mary gut immune defense as we age…decreasing with phys­i­cal, emo­tional, and chem­i­cal forms of stress. When sIgA lev­els are dis­rupted, we may become more sus­cep­ti­ble to IgE and IgG reac­tions asso­ci­ated with food aller­gies, sen­si­tiv­i­ties, and intol­er­ances to those with genetic susceptibilities.

Intro­duc­ing aller­genic foods too early & fail­ing to breast­feed may “turn on” genes that make us sus­cep­ti­ble to aller­gies later in life. Genetic sus­cep­ti­bil­ity of gluten allergy alone may be present in up to 81% of Amer­i­cans (Khar­raz­ian, D. (2010). Why Do I Still Have Thy­roid Symp­toms? When My Lab Tests are Nor­mal. Mor­gan James Pub­lish­ing.). These low-level food reac­tions can con­tribute to “leaky gut” — a con­di­tion where your intestines absorb pro­teins that the body sees as “for­eign”, ini­ti­at­ing delayed immune reactions.

Dis­ad­van­tages of For­mula Feeding

Within as lit­tle as four days of life, the pres­ence of bifi­dobac­terium in the guts of breast­fed infants can be over 300% higher than in formula-fed infants. Path­o­genic bac­te­ria tend to make up the dra­matic dif­fer­ence in bottle-fed babies (Rubal­telli FF, et al. Intesti­nal flora in breast and bottle-fed infants. J Peri­nat Med 1998; 26: 186–191.).

Sup­ple­ment­ing breast­milk with even just a lit­tle bit of for­mula can affect the acid­ity of the gut envi­ron­ment, pos­si­bly pro­mot­ing the pres­ence of harm­ful bac­te­ria and threat­en­ing the integrity of the gut lin­ing (Bullen CL, Tearle PV, Stew­art MG. The effect of human­ized milks and sup­ple­mented breast feed­ing on the fae­cal flora of infants.  J Med Micro­biol 1977; 10:403–413; Mackie RI, Sghir A, Gask­ins HR. Devel­op­men­tal micro­bial ecol­ogy of the neona­tal gas­troin­testi­nal tract.  Am J Clin Nutr 1999; 69(Suppl):1035S-1045S. )!

Just one bot­tle of dairy for­mula may sen­si­tize a sus­cep­ti­ble infant to milk allergy (Host  A, Husby S, Oster­balle O. A prospec­tive study of cow’s milk allergy in exclu­sively breast­fed infants.  Acta Pae­di­atr Scand  1988; 77:663–670; Host A. Impor­tance of the first meal on the devel­op­ment of cow’s milk allergy and intol­er­ance. Allergy Proc 1991; 10:227–232.).

C-Sections and Infant Gut Health

Proper devel­op­ment of the immune sys­tem depends on a healthy array of bac­te­ria in your gut.

Did you know that a c-section deliv­ery can actu­ally affect the types of bac­te­ria found in an infant’s diges­tive tract?

It’s true. Gut bac­te­ria in infants born by c-section deliv­ery may be dis­turbed for up to 6 months (Gonlund MM, et al. Fecal microflora in healthy infants born by dif­fer­ent meth­ods of deliv­ery: per­ma­nent changes in intesti­nal flora after cesarean deliv­ery. J Pedi­atr Gas­troen­terol Nutr. 1999; 28:19–25.). This increase of path­o­genic bac­te­ria com­pared to healthy bac­te­ria is referred to clin­i­cally as small bowel intesti­nal over­growth and over time, may con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of chronic disease.

Think of your immune sys­tem as a triage unit with some fac­tors serv­ing as gen­eral, pri­mary defense, and other immune com­po­nents as spe­cial forces. When these also fail, the immune sys­tem will make more dra­matic shifts, which may pos­si­bly account for the autoim­mune dis­eases seen 10–20+ years later.

Feed­ing with infant for­mula has actu­ally been sug­gested to play an impor­tant role in the devel­op­ment of type 1 dia­betes, an autoim­mune reac­tion to the pan­creas (Mayer EJ, Ham­man RF, Gay EC, et al. Reduced risk of IDDM among breast­fed chil­dren. The Col­orado IDDM Reg­istry. Dia­betes 1988; 37:1625–1632; Kar­jalainen J, Mar­tin JM, Knip M, et al. A bovine albu­min pep­tide as a pos­si­ble trig­ger of insulin-dependent dia­betes mel­li­tus. N Engl J Med 1992; 327:302–307; Vaar­ala O, et al. Cow milk feed­ing induces anti­bod­ies to insulin in chil­dren — a link between cow milk and insulin-dependent mel­li­tus? Scand J Immunol 1998; 47:131–135.)! It is inter­est­ing that autoim­mune dis­eases such as Celiac dis­ease, Crohn’s, or Hashimoto’s Thy­roidi­tis, tend to show up around 25–35 years of age. Research sug­gests that autoim­mune con­di­tions may be related to dis­rup­tions in gut integrity and the bal­ance of immune system.

These dis­rup­tions and alter­ations may actu­ally be related to feed­ing prac­tices dur­ing infancy!

Mother-Baby Bond­ing

It is impor­tant not to for­get the incred­i­ble bond that is formed between mother and baby dur­ing the months that she is nursing.

Many women remark that breast-feeding is a part of their preg­nancy that they tend to miss the most! They fear that the incred­i­ble bond devel­oped over the first few months will wisp away over time, but they soon learn that it is only the begin­ning of a deep bond they will share over a lifetime.

Spe­cial thanks to Mar­sha Walker, RN, IBCLC for com­pil­ing much of this breast­feed­ing research and edu­cat­ing women and the pub­lic on these issues for over 25 years!

This infor­ma­tion is made avail­able by the author for edu­ca­tional pur­poses only and is not intended to pro­vide med­ical advice. By access­ing the site, you under­stand and acknowl­edge that there is no physician-patient rela­tion­ship between you and the author. You fur­ther acknowl­edge your under­stand­ing that the site  should not be used as a sub­stitue for com­pe­tent med­ical advice from a licensed physi­cian in your state.