Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Moms, if you want your children to be able to financially support you in your twilight years, make sure that you breastfeed them for at least 12 months, as a new study indicates that those youngsters wind up with higher IQs and earn nearly $300,000 more in their lifetimes.
As reported in the April 2015 edition of The Lancet Global Health, Dr. Bernardo Lessa Horta of the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil and his colleagues followed 3,500 infants over a span of 30 years and recorded their earnings, their intelligence levels, their employment history and the amount of time that they spent in education.
What they discovered, according to The Telegraph, was that those who were breast-fed for one year or more scored an average of four IQ points higher on tests than those who were breastfed for less than one month. They also remained in education for an average of nine months longer and earned approximately 20 percent more than the national average.
Helps kids for up to 30 years
The study marks the first time that breastfeeding has linked to increased intelligence, improved educational achievement and earning capacity over such an extended period of time, the website added. The difference between breast feeding and bottle feeding persisted even when accounting for factors such as family income, maternal health, birth weight and delivery type.
[STORY: Why are breastfed babies so smart?]
“The effect of breastfeeding on brain development and child intelligence is well-established, but whether these effects persist into adulthood is less clear,” Dr. Horta said. “Our study provides the first evidence that prolonged breastfeeding not only increases intelligence until at least the age of 30 years but also has an impact both at an individual and societal level by improving educational attainment and earning ability.”
“What is unique about this study is the fact that, in the population we studied, breastfeeding was not more common among highly educated, high-income women, but was evenly distributed by social class,” he added. “Previous studies from developed countries have been criticized for failing to disentangle the effect of breastfeeding from that of socioeconomic advantage, but our work addresses this issue for the first time.”
Even works for short periods of time
The study demonstrated that even breastfeeding for short periods of time was beneficial, as kids who received breast milk for three to six months were found to be nearly two IQ points higher than those bottle-fed after one month. The reason, scientists believe, is that breast milk contains long-chain saturated fatty acids believed to be essential to brain development.
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However, experts told BBC News that the findings of the study cannot confirm that, and that additional research is required to establish a link between breastfeeding and IQ. Even so, Kevin Fenton, the national director of health and wellbeing for Public Health England, noted that there is strong evidence that breastfeeding provides several different health benefits for infants.
“PHE’s advice remains that exclusive breastfeeding for around the first six months of life provides health benefits to babies,” he said. “We recognize however, that not all mothers choose, or are able, to breastfeed and infant formula is the only alternative to breast milk for babies under 12 months old.”
“There have been many studies on the link between breastfeeding and IQ over the years with many having had their validity challenged,” added Dr. Colin Michie, chairperson of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health’s nutrition committee. “This study however, looks at a number of other factors including education achievement and income at age 30 which, along with the high sample size, makes this study a very powerful one.”
One final note: While this study is good news for kids, just don’t get…carried away–like these mothers.
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