They Say: Breastfeeding Builds Better Lungs

Insert your "lungs"-as-euphemism-for-breasts jokes here! But no, this story has nothing to do with the lungs, juggs, or rack of the nursing mother, but rather with the developing lungs of her baby. A new study by Dr. Ikechukwu U. Ogbuanu of the University of South Carolina in Columbia lends weight to the already overwhelming evidence of the health benefits of breastfeeding. Following 100 children from the Isle of Wight in the UK, researchers found that children who were breastfed for four months or longer had better lung capacity than their bottle-fed peers, and that the benefits could be seen ten years later, suggesting lifelong advantages to their respiratory health.

The benefits come not from the breastmilk alone, but rather from the act of nursing, which exercises infant lungs differently than does bottlefeeding — a distinction that prompts researchers to call for longer maternity leaves, so that working mothers can directly nurse their babies longer. From the Reuters article:

The findings suggest that babies who are bottle-fed with pumped breast milk may be missing out, Dr. Wilfried Karmaus, another researcher on the study, told Reuters Health. "We may go just in the wrong direction with the pumping and bottle feeding. That's why it's so important to really clearly consider what's going on there."

The policy recommendation is my second-favorite part of the report. My favorite is that the initial paper was published in a journal called Thorax. Simple, scientific, to the point, and a little bit gross — I want a copy for the next time I'm stuck on a plane with potentially chatty seatmates!