(Press-News.org) Enrique García Artero, the principal author of the study and researcher at the University of Granada pointed out that, "Our objective was to analyse the relationship between the duration of breastfeeding babies and their physical condition in adolescence". "The results suggest further beneficial effects and provide support to breast feeding as superior to any other type of feeding".
The authors asked the parents of 2,567 adolescents about the type of feeding their children received at birth and the time this lasted. The adolescents also carried out physical tests in order to evaluate several abilities such as aerobic capacities and their muscular strength.
The paper, which was published in the Journal of Nutrition, shows that the adolescents who were breastfed as babies ha stronger leg muscles than those who were not breastfed. Moreover, muscular leg strength was greater in those who had been breastfed for a longer period of time.
This type of feeding (exclusively or in combination with other types of food) is associated with a better performance in horizontal jumping by boys and girls regardless of morphological factors such as fat mass, height of the adolescent or the amount of muscle.
Adolescents who were breastfed from three to five months, or for more than six months had half the risk of low performance in the jump exercise when compared with those who had never been breastfed.
García Artero stressed that, "Until now, no studies have examined the association between breastfeeding and future muscular aptitude". "However, our results concur with the observations made as regards other neonatal factors, such as weight at birth, are positively related to better muscular condition during adolescence".
What importance does breastfeeding have?
"If all children were exclusively breastfed from birth, it would be possible to save approximately 1.5 million lives". This was stated by the UNICEF, which pointed out that breast feeding is the "perfect feed" exclusively during the first six months of life and additionally over two years.
As regards the new born, the advantages in the first years of life include immunological protection against allergies, skin diseases, obesity and diabetes, as well as a guarantee of the growth, development and intelligence of the baby.
The benefits also substantially involve the woman: reduction of post-birth haemorrhage, anaemia, maternity mortality, and the risk of breast and ovarian cancer, and it strengthens the affective link between mother and child. "Let's forget about the money saved by not buying other types of milk and baby bottles", says García Artero.
###
References:
Enrique G. Artero, Francisco B. Ortega, Vanesa España-Romero, Idoia Labayen, Inge Huybrechts, Angeliki Papadaki, Gerardo Rodríguez, Beatrice Mauro, Kurt Widhalm, Mathilde Kersting, Yannis Manios, Denes Molnar, Luis A. Moreno, Michael Sjöström, Frederic Gottrand, Manuel J. Castillo, y Stefaan De Henauw del grupo de estudio HELENA. "Longer Breastfeeding Is Associated with Increased Lower Body Explosive Strength during Adolescence". Journal of Nutrition; 140(11): 1989-95; noviembre de 2010.
END
Medical experts have issued a warning about the common practice of tablet splitting, after a study found that nearly a third of the split fragments deviated from recommended dosages by 15 per cent or more.
Their study, published in the January issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing, points out that the practice could have serious clinical consequences for tablets that have a narrow margin between therapeutic and toxic doses.
And they are calling on manufacturers to produce greater dose options and liquid alternatives to make the practice unnecessary.
Researchers ...
Treating fractures in children requires special knowledge of growth physiology. Incorrect treatment of bone fractures in child and adolescent patients is less often caused by technical deficiencies than by a misjudgment of the special conditions in this age group. Using the example of treating fractures of the upper limb, Ralf Kraus from the Marburg-Gießen University Medical Center, and Lucas Wessel, University Medical Center Mannheim, report in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International what should be borne in mind when diagnosing and treating fractures in ...
Brain scans of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have shown for the first time why people affected by the condition sometimes have such difficulty in concentrating. The study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, may explain why parents often say that their child can maintain concentration when they are doing something that interests them, but struggles with boring tasks.
Using a 'Whac-a-Mole' style game, researchers from the Motivation, Inhibition and Development in ADHD Study (MIDAS) group at the University of Nottingham found evidence that children ...
Water is a precious commodity, so finding ways to re-use waste water, especially in arid regions is essential to sustainability. Researchers in India have now carried out a study of various waste water filtration systems for kitchen waste water and found that even the most poorly performing can produce water clean enough for horticultural or agricultural use. They report details in the International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management.
Recycling domestic wastewater is becoming an important part of water management and emerging technology and a shift in ...
Two ESA observatories have combined forces to show the Andromeda Galaxy in a new light. Herschel sees rings of star formation in this, the most detailed image of the Andromeda Galaxy ever taken at infrared wavelengths, and XMM-Newton shows dying stars shining X-rays into space.
During Christmas 2010, ESA's Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories targeted the nearest large spiral galaxy M31. This is a galaxy similar to our own Milky Way – both contain several hundred billion stars. This is the most detailed far-infrared image of the Andromeda Galaxy ever taken and ...
A study by Canadian researchers examined the prevalence of maternal depression and its impact on children newly diagnosed with epilepsy. Prevalence of depression in mothers ranged from 30%-38% within the first 24 months following a child's epilepsy diagnosis. The mother's depressive symptoms negatively impacted the child's health-related quality of life, but the effects were moderated by the amount of family resources and mediated by how well the family functions and the extent of family demands. Details of this novel study appear online in Epilepsia, a journal published ...
How to look younger without plastic surgery? Psychologists of the Jena University (Germany) have a simple solution to this question: Those who want to look younger should surround themselves with older people. Because when viewing a 30-year-old we estimate his age to be much younger if we have previously been perceiving faces of older people.
"People are actually quite good at guessing the age of the person next to them," Dr. Holger Wiese says. The psychologist of the Jena University is responsible for one of six research projects in the DFG-sponsored research unit "Person ...
Scientists at Inserm and Institut Pasteur have performed biomarker discovery on patients being treated for chronic hepatitis C infection. Their work, published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, demonstrates that the plasma levels of the protein IP-10 predict, prior to treatment initiation, the efficacy of treatment with pegylated-interferon and ribavirin. Based on these results, the scientists have developed a prognostic test. Commercialization is anticipated in 2011, and will help inform physicians of the chances that patients will respond to standard treatment ...
Severely injured patients transported by helicopter from the scene of an accident are more likely to survive than patients brought to trauma centers by ground ambulance, according to a new study published in The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care. The study is the first to examine the role of helicopter transport on a national level and includes the largest number of helicopter-transport patients in a single analysis.
The finding that helicopter transport positively impacts patient survival comes amid an ongoing debate surrounding the role of helicopter ...
As every middle-school child knows, in the process of photosynthesis, plants take the sun's energy and convert it to electrical energy. Now a Tel Aviv University team has demonstrated how a member of the animal kingdom, the Oriental hornet, takes the sun's energy and converts it into electric power -- in the brown and yellow parts of its body -- as well.
"The interesting thing here is that a living biological creature does a thing like that," says physicist Prof. David Bergman of Tel Aviv University's School of Physics and Astronomy, who was part of the team that made ...
