Breastfeeding is as good for children's blood pressure as exercise and
dietary salt restriction, finds a study in Archives of Disease in Childhood. And the longer the period of breastfeeding, the
lower the blood pressure
reading, the research shows.
The research team assessed the impact of breastfeeding on elements of the
metabolic syndrome in over 2000 randomly chosen children from Denmark and
Estonia, aged between 9 and 15.
The metabolic syndrome comprises a constellation of conditions that
predispose to a high risk of coronary artery disease. These include high
blood pressure, diabetes, high insulin levels, high triglyceride levels,
and low "good" (HDL) cholesterol levels.
Breastfeeding did not have an impact on every element of the metabolic
syndrome. But children who had been exclusively breastfed had lower
systolic blood pressure than those who had not.
This was the same for children in both countries, despite the different
social, cultural, and dietary factors at play.
Systolic blood pressure refers to the maximum arterial pressure during the
contraction of the heart. It is the first number given in any blood
pressure reading, such as 120 over 80.
After adjusting for all the other factors likely to influence the results,
such as weight, height, and puberty, the average difference between those
exclusively breastfed for at least six months, and those who had not, was
1.7 mm Hg.
And the longer a child had been exclusively breastfed, the lower was his or
her systolic blood pressure.
The effect may increase as a child ages, because the results showed that
the greatest impact was on the older children, although the figures were
not statistically significant.
The extent of the impact and the strong effect of duration of exclusive
breastfeeding led the authors to conclude that breastfeeding is directly
related to lower systolic blood pressure.
"The magnitude of the effect we found with blood pressure is comparable to
the published effects of salt restriction and physical activity on blood
pressure in adult populations, suggesting that it is of public health
importance," they conclude.
Click here to view the paper in full:
press.psprings/adc/june/582_ac55335.pdf
ARCHIVES OF DISEASE IN CHILDHOOD
[Infant feeding and components of the metabolic syndrome: findings form the
European Youth Heart Study Arch Dis Child 2005; 90: 582-8]