Study: Breast-feeding raises child's IQ
NEW YORK - Breast-fed kids are smarter, according to a Harvard University study that found the longer babies are nursed, the greater their intelligence.
The research, which followed more than 1,000 women and their babies, found that each additional month a child was breast-fed resulted in better language skills at 3 years old and intelligence at age 7, compared with babies not breast-fed. The findings were published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.
The study is one of the largest to look at the role of breast-feeding on a child's intelligence, the authors said. It also underscores the need to support mothers in the workplace and in public to enable them to breast-feed their babies during the first year of life, said Dimitri Christakis, who wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal.
"With this we can close the book and decide there is a link between child breast-feeding and intelligence," said Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at Seattle Children's Research Institute, a pediatric medical research center, in a July 26 telephone interview. "The fact that breast-feeding really promotes cognition in our children is something we should all care about. It takes a village to breast-feed a child. We should take the actions necessary not to just initiate breast-feeding but to sustain it."
Still, breast-feeding is not the only contributing factor to intelligence, said Mandy Belfort, the lead study author and a neonatologist at Boston Children's Hospital and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.
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