Breastfeeding has health benefit for moms: Study
Breastfeeding has health benefit for moms: Study
By Sharon Kirkey, Canwest News Service
Breast isn’t just best for baby: mothers who don’t breastfeed their babies may increase their risk of heart attacks and strokes decades later, new research suggests.
The evidence comes from the massive Women’s Health Initiative trial and involved nearly 140,000 women.
Researchers found that women who breastfed were less likely when they were older to have developed high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death in Canadian women.
“The longer a woman breastfed her baby, the better it was for both of them,” says lead author Dr. Eleanor Bimla Schwarz, of the University of Pittsburgh.
“We know that women who don’t breastfeed their babies are at a higher risk of getting breast cancer and ovarian cancer,” Schwarz says. Recent studies show women who don’t breastfeed also have higher risks of diabetes and high blood pressure.
“Ours is the first study that shows that there really is a strong effect in terms of preventing heart attacks and stroke for women who nursed for more than six months,” says Schwarz, an assistant professor of medicine, epidemiology and obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences.
The study appears in the latest issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Health Canada recommends breast milk should be the only food or drink for the first six months of life, and that breastfeeding continue, along with the gradual introduction of solid food, for two years or more. But a national survey released last month found only 14 per cent of new moms in Canada were exclusively feeding their newborns breast milk by age six months.
Breastfeeding helps protect babies against infections and disease, benefits that are thought to last a lifetime.
“We now know that it’s important for mothers’ health as well,” Schwarz says.
Her team analyzed data from 139,681 post-menopausal women, average age 63, enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative study, known best for its research on hormone replacement therapy. Researchers looked at the women’s lifetime history of breastfeeding, meaning how many months in total they had breastfed their babies.
Women who had breastfed for one to six months had less diabetes, less high blood pressure and less high cholesterol, all known risk factors for heart disease.
Those who breastfed for seven months or more were significantly less likely to have actually developed cardiovascular disease compared to women who had never breastfed. Women who breastfed for a lifetime total of at least 12 months were 10 per cent less likely to have had a heart attack or stroke or developed heart disease when they were older.
The finding held after researchers took age, income, body mass index, diet, physical activity, family history of heart disease and other factors into account.
For Schwarz, the study was personal. “As a new mom who went back to work, I found pumping a bit challenging,” Schwarz says. “Everybody kept telling me it was good for my baby. I wondered what effect it had on my own health.”
Fat stores accumulate during pregnancy, and other studies have shown that, in populations where breastfeeding is rare, pregnancy might increase the risk of heart disease.
One theory is that breastfeeding lowers that risk by mobilizing fat stores.
“Breastfeeding has an important role in the way women’s bodies recover from pregnancy,”Schwarz says. “I think what we’re seeing is that when this process is interrupted by women feeding their babies things other than human milk, women are more likely to have a number of health problems.”
When milk isn’t expressed, she said, women don’t unload all the body fat stored up during pregnancy.
Prolactin and oxytocin, hormones involved in producing milk and releasing it from the body, may also have effects on a woman’s heart.
The study doesn’t prove cause and effect, just an association, and there may be other issues at play, cautions Dr. Beth Abramson, a Toronto cardiologist and spokeswoman for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. For example, women who choose or are able to breastfeed may have less stressful lives.
“They may be in a different economic bracket because they may not at that time have had to go back to work. You sometimes can’t correct for everything.
“If a woman is considering breastfeeding, this may be another potential benefit,” Abramson says, “but if a woman has, for various reasons, chosen not to, or can’t breastfeed, not all hope is lost. There are a lot of healthy behaviours we can engage in to reduce our risk of heart disease and stroke,” such as not smoking or quitting, keeping physically active and managing weight.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Babies of heavy mothers have more fat, less muscle
Babies of heavy mothers have more fat, less muscle
Anne Harding, Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Babies born to overweight or obese women have more fat and less muscle than infants born to normal-weight moms, according to one of the first studies to compare newborns’ body composition to their mothers’ pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI).
Obesity is on the rise among pregnant women, while more and more North American and European infants weigh 4,000 grams (8 pounds 13 ounces) or more at birth, Dr. David A. Fields of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma and colleagues Fields and his team note in their report in American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. These unusually heavy infants are more likely to grow up to be obese.
Body weight alone, however, doesn’t provide a clear picture of infant growth and health, the researchers add; both low and high birth weight have been tied to an increased risk of diabetes and other conditions in adulthood.
To better understand how prenatal growth might influence future health, Fields and his team used the PEA POD, a “body composition system” made by Concord, California-based Life Measurement Instruments, to measure the percentage of body fat, fat-free body mass, and total fat mass in 72 babies no older than 35 days.
There was no difference in average birthweight between babies born to women with normal BMIs and those whose mothers were overweight or obese.
However, infants of the 39 overweight or obese moms had significantly higher percentages of body fat (13.6 vs. 12.5 percent), higher fat mass (448.3 grams vs. 414.1 grams), and lower fat-free mass (3,162.2 grams vs. 3,310.5 grams) than the babies born to the 33 normal-weight women, Fields and his team found.
Babies born to heavy mothers may face a greater risk of diabetes because they have less muscle mass, Fields noted in an interview. “That could be reason why these kids, probably many of them, will get diabetes, because muscle is your largest consumer of sugar,” he said.
“It’s been very, very difficult to measure the body fat in the baby,” Fields noted. Previously, doing so required using several different machines and took hours. The PEA POD can gauge body composition in five minutes, according to Life Measurement Instruments’ Web site.
The machine is expensive, Fields noted, estimating that just 15 are in use worldwide. Nevertheless, he predicted that more and more hospitals will begin using them.
Gauging babies’ body composition at birth could provide a clearer picture of their health than weight alone, Fields added, but then the question remains as to what should be done if babies are found to have a high percentage of body fat. One possibility, Fields said, would be to encourage their mothers to breastfeed. His own research has demonstrated that formula-fed babies tend to be fatter.
SOURCE: American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, April 2008.
© Reuters 2008
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Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Study: Diabetes Pre-Pregnancy Rises
Study: Diabetes Pre-Pregnancy Rises
AP/Alicia Chang
Monday, Apr. 28, 2008
(LOS ANGELES) — The number of pregnant women with pre-existing diabetes has more than doubled in seven years, a California study found, a troubling trend that means health risks for both mothers and newborns.
And the number of diabetic teenagers giving birth grew fivefold during the same period, according to the study, the largest of its kind.
Expectant mothers who don’t control their diabetes face an increased risk of miscarriage and stillbirth. Their babies have a higher chance of being born with birth defects.
“These are high-risk pregnancies,” said Dr. Florence Brown, an expert on pregnancy and diabetes. “All women with pre-existing diabetes need to plan their pregnancies.”
Brown is co-director of the Joslin-Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center diabetes and pregnancy program in Boston. She had no role in the study, which was done by researchers at Kaiser Permanente, a California-based health care provider.
The researchers focused on health records from more than 175,000 ethnically diverse women who gave birth in a dozen Kaiser hospitals in Southern California from 1999 to 2005. Experts believe the findings likely reflect the overall U.S. population.
The actual number of pregnant women with pre-existing diabetes was small. In 1999, there were 245 such women; by 2005, there were 537. That translates to a rate that rose from 8 per 1,000 pregnancies to 18 per 1,000.
The rate increased the greatest among 13- to 19-year-olds giving birth. It ballooned from about 1 per 1,000 pregnancies to 5.5 per 1,000 during the seven-year period.
Blacks, Asians and Hispanics were more likely to have diabetes before pregnancy than whites.
The rise of diabetes among women of childbearing age mirrors the prevalence of the disease in the general population. The most common form of diabetes is Type 2, which is linked to obesity.
About 15 million people in the United States are diagnosed with diabetes, and 1.5 million new cases were diagnosed in people age 20 and older in 2005, according to the American Diabetes Association.
Pre-pregnancy diabetes is different from gestational diabetes, which is developed during pregnancy and disappears later. Gestational diabetes affects 3 percent to 8 percent of pregnant women in the U.S.
In the study, Kaiser researchers did not look at whether any of the women had prenatal diabetes care or how the babies fared after birth. They also could not determine the type of diabetes the women had.
Type 2, which is linked to obesity, occurs when the body makes too little insulin or cannot use what it does produce. Type 1 occurs when the body doesn’t produce insulin.
Results of the study were published online Monday in the journal Diabetes Care, a publication of American Diabetes Association, which funded the research.
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Taking baby the earth-friendly route
Taking baby the earth-friendly route
A growing number of Canadians are harnessing green philosophies and consumption patterns in their new roles as moms
Miranda Post, Special to the Sun
Published: Saturday, April 26, 2008
Lynn Stapleford and daughter Simone, 2, at the work table where Stapleford makes her Green Bean Baby items. Using organic cotton, Stapleford creates very simple, natural-toned flannel blankets, terry-cloth hooded towels and hats.
Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
Corinne Willems is a first-time mom and a self-confessed greenie. While pregnant with her son Nikko, now three-and-a-half months old, Willems learned some disturbing facts about the key ingredient in a popular “no tears” baby shampoo that motivated her to go the earth-friendly route and start making her own baby care products.
The “no tears shampoo was basically a normal shampoo,” said Willems, 31. “The reason there’s no tears is because a certain chemical numbs the tear-ducts so they don’t react. I thought, ‘That’s it, I’m never going to buy it.’ ”
Willems took a do-it-yourself baby care course. Local educator Cheryl Thielade showed her how to avoid hard-to-pronounce, questionable chemicals that can be found in a large number of baby products.
“She teaches how to make your own cleaning and baby-care products,” said Willems.
“It’s fascinating to know the history about what’s in a lot of these baby products. It’s also frightening — learning some of the chemicals that are in them.”
In the months leading up to Nikko’s birth, Willems concocted a variety of oils, soaps and shampoos using household ingredients and essential oils such as olive oil, coconut oil and camomile.
Like a growing number of Canadians, Willems is harnessing her earth-friendly philosophies and consumption patterns in her new role as a mom.
A vegetarian who enjoys walking when possible, and takes transit when it’s not, she is also a devoted “locavore.” Willems and her husband, Matt Craig, try to buy locally harvested fruit and vegetables from farmers markets.
When the time came to outfit Nikko’s nursery, Willems went online, attended baby-product swap meets and hit local garage sales to find items that could be reused or recycled.
“Honestly, we weren’t all that prepared. We didn’t have a crib or anything,” Willems explained. “We’ve got some pretty crafty dads. We converted some cupboards we got at a garage sale into a change table.”
One of Willems’ favourite shops for previously loved baby wares is Little Earth, a funky store located on East Hastings that has been offering green alternatives to parents since last July.
“The No. 1 issue for most parents is safety when buying products for their children,” said Mariska McLean, who co-owns Little Earth with Flavia Spano. “However, parents are way more aware of the environmental impact their choices are making. I think the two really go hand in hand. Choosing safe and sustainable products leads to a safe world for our children to live in.”
A tour of Nikko’s nursery is a tribute to Willems’ ecological, economical and health savings. On the recycled change table sits a refillable box of 7th Generation-brand unbleached baby wipes. Her diapers are also from 7th Generation.
The decor includes hand-me-downs from mothers, aunts and uncles, including a second-hand crib and a pile of wooden toys.
Willems has a “no plastic or petroleum-based toy” policy. From Nikko’s closet, she pulls a bag full of plastic and stuffed toys, gifts from friends and family who didn’t heed her request for “slightly used” toys.
“Both Matt and I are conscious of buying things that are used to avoid the whole packaging issue and unnecessary production of products that already exist. Walk into Toys “R” Us or any place like that and you’re hard-pressed to find anything that doesn’t come from very far away.”
Very far away was where Julie Catania had to travel just to buy reusable cloth diapers for eight and half month old son.
“We had to buy cloth diapers in Toronto,” says the 26-year-old mother of one. “When I was pregnant it was really important to live a healthier lifestyle. You hear all about toxic paints and plastics these days.”
After finding it so difficult to find reusable nappies locally, Catania and her husband decided to start Organic Family in their hometown of Cumberland, on Vancouver Island.
The store, which offers green baby and household products, is growing rapidly in its first month in business.
“We haven’t done any advertising yet, so business is coming from a lot of word-of-mouth. I belong to a lot of mom-and-tot groups, so I’m spreading the word that way,” says Catania.
Organic Family’s baby bestsellers include glass milk bottles and Sage Creek organic-cotton baby clothing.
One local business that is finding a niche catering to eco-friendly parents is Green Bean Baby, which creates products made of organic cotton.
“Like a lot of other moms who start a business, it’s about finding things you can’t find,” said Lynne Stapleford, the owner of Green Bean Baby. “When I was pregnant I read about all the chemicals they use to grow cotton.”
A former chemical analyst and an ecologist/biologist by trade, Stapleford decided to use the sewing skills her mom and grandmother taught her to start her own business.
Using organic cotton from India and Texas, Stapleford creates very simple, natural-toned flannel blankets, terry-cloth hooded towels and hats.
All of Stapleford’s cotton is grown without the use of herbicides, pesticides, defoliants or other chemicals. The cotton that comes from Texas is USDA organic certified, while the cotton from India is certified organic by the Global Organic Textile Standards (GOTS).
With the average baby going through approximately 6,000 diapers before potty training finally kicks in, according to the environmental website http://www.treehugger.com, there is a lot of debate around the pros and cons of reusable diapers and biodegradable disposables. For the consumer, there are increasingly more options.
Capers/Whole Foods sell 7th Generation diapers, which are made from chlorine-free, latex-free materials. Meanwhile, shops in Kitsilano such as Baby’s World and Hip Baby sell both cloth and disposable, toxin-free diapers.
Fourth Avenue in Kitsilano is sometimes called “Mommy Row” for its collection of maternity and baby shops. Every shop visited by The Vancouver Sun recently — including Crocodile Baby, Hip Baby, Craftworks, Brier’s Home and Gift, Baby’s World and Moule — offered a wide selection of environmentally friendly baby wares, including locally made green products from Green Bean Baby and Mother Earth.
5 STEPS TO GREEN YOUR BABY
1. Diapers: Use biodegrable disposables like gDiaper hybrid (reusable shell, flushable, biodegradable liner). Wash cloth diapers at a low temperature.
2. Breastfeed: Use reusable, organic cotton breast pads and locally made nipple creams from natural ingredients.
3. Solid foods: Reuse/recycle baby food jars, puree organic/local, cooked foods and freeze using ice cube trays.
4. Clothing: Babies are constantly getting their clothes wet in one way or another. Ensure that clothes are dyed using natural dyes to prevent hurting sensitive baby skin.
5. Body care/bath time: Olive oil is the best all-round oil to use on everything from diaper rash to cradle cap; also use organic, natural, fragrance free.
Source: http://www.treehugger.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
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Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Choosy Mothers Choose Caesareans
Choosy Mothers Choose Caesareans
Alice Park
Thursday, Apr. 17, 2008
More women like Chung, with son Nathan, are requesting caesareans, and doctors believe the trend will only increase. Laura Kleinhenz for TIME
Long before she even met her husband, and well before she decided to become pregnant, Euna Chung made a firm decision about how she would deliver her children. “I knew for years that I wanted a caesarean section,” the 31-year-old Los Angeles–based child psychiatrist says.
She isn’t a diabetic, doesn’t have hypertension or, for that matter, any of the other risk factors that might indicate the need for a C-section. But a combination of having watched traumatic vaginal deliveries in medical school and hearing about her mother’s difficult emergency caesarean experience after trying to deliver vaginally helped make up her mind. “I had a fear of going through labor and ending up with an emergency C-section anyway. I know that’s rare, but I didn’t want to deal with it,” she says.
So six weeks ago, when she was ready to deliver her first child, Chung checked herself into the hospital on a day she had already scheduled, underwent local anesthesia, and several hours later had her baby by caesarean, without any complications. Pretty tidy way to conduct the often messy business of childbirth. Yet Chung sometimes feels defensive about her decision. “There is an admiration of women who are able to do a vaginal birth without pain medications, then breast-feed, and do everything else perfectly,” she says. “So I didn’t go around advertising that I had chosen to have a C-section.”
Chung has unwittingly stumbled upon the latest battleground in maternity care. Just as moms and even doctors once clashed about the importance of breast-feeding, they now debate the benefits and risks of vaginal births and caesarean sections. Rates of C-sections have been climbing each year in the past decade in the U.S., reaching a record high of 31% of all live births in 2006. That’s a 50% increase since 1996. Around the world, the procedure is becoming even more common: in certain hospitals in Brazil, fully 80% of babies are delivered by caesarean. How did a procedure originally intended as an emergency measure become so popular? And is the trend a bad thing?
Some of the rise in C-sections can certainly be attributed to women with routine pregnancies, like Chung, who make a pragmatic decision to keep their deliveries just as uneventful. Preliminary data suggest that such cases account for anywhere from 4% to 18% of the total number of caesareans. On the medical side, better anesthesia and antibiotics are making the procedure safer. Add to that the growing number of women delaying childbirth, those having twins or triplets as a result of in vitro fertilization and America’s exploding obesity epidemic–all of which increase the risks of vaginal delivery. Doctors are also becoming better at picking up the slightest signs of distress in the baby or mother and are quicker to recommend caesareans in such cases.
But even taken together, all these factors don’t explain the steep rise in caesareans over such a short time. Instead, says Eugene Declercq, a professor of maternal and child health at Boston University School of Public Health, the biggest change may simply be in the way we think about labor and delivery. In an increasingly technological and medicalized society, maybe even childbirth is losing some of its magic and becoming less about the miracle of life and more about simply getting a baby out safely and without incident. “We put a lot of emotional, psychological and spiritual value around birthing,” says Dr. William Callaghan, an obstetrician at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But perhaps we are coming up with different cultural norms.”
Shaping those norms are some powerful fiscal forces as well, such as soaring malpractice rates for obstetricians. Since doctors are sued more frequently after vaginal births than caesareans, surgery is often the prudent choice when there is even the slightest indication of a difficult vaginal birth. Combine this with the increasing willingness of moms like Chung to talk more openly about their C-sections, and we may be headed for a time when mothers make the vaginal-or-caesarean decision in the same way many now make the breast-or-bottle decision.
That does carry perils, however. A panel of experts convened by the National Institute on Child Health and Development in 2006 stresses that moms-to-be need more scientific data that directly weigh the benefits and risks of both delivery methods. Vaginal delivery can, for example, lead to future incontinence and pelvic damage, while babies born by C-section may suffer from respiratory problems because of not being exposed to certain hormones during the birthing process. It will take more studies comparing the two methods for individual women to be able to determine how likely these risks are for them.
Chung remains convinced that she made the right decision for herself and son Nathan. As our ideas about birth evolve, perhaps more women will feel less defensive about making the same choice.
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Maternity Cares 