|
The
question of toxins in breastmilk is being addressed in a patient
handout because the issue comes up every few months, as regular
as clockwork, in the media and frightens many pregnant women out
of breastfeeding their babies and many women who are already
breastfeeding into stopping.
Journalists do not seem to know how to handle this
question very well. It
is likely that some have an ulterior motive (“my baby wasn’t
breastfed and he’s okay”), and are carrying some baggage of
their own, thus finding a way of getting back at breastfeeding
advocates and justifying their “choice of infant feeding”.
It is, of course, unprofessional to do this, but that
doesn’t stop them. Others
are merely trying to get out the news, but without
understanding, often, what they are doing.
They don’t understand, for example, that by talking
about toxins in breastmilk and considering formula as an almost
as good alternative, they are striking a blow against
breastfeeding.
Why
are there all these studies that look at toxins in breastmilk?
One gets the impression that there is panic about the
state of breastmilk in the modern world, that it is so polluted
that everyone is trying to study it. But the reason that breastmilk is being studied so often is
that it is easily available, and gives us an easily obtained
sample of human fluid. That’s
the reason, not because scientists are worried about breastmilk
in particular.
Is
formula almost the same as breastmilk?
No,
and not by a long shot. Just because every few years the formula manufacturers add
something to their formulas that we knew was in breastmilk for
years, but the manufacturers denied were of any importance,
doesn’t mean that the “new and improved” formula is just
like breastmilk. In
some cases, the formula is improved, but remember, they
were telling us that the formula before the “new and
improved” version was also “almost like breastmilk”.
This is true, for example, of the long chained
polyunsaturated fatty acids (DHA and AA) that are supposed to
make your baby smarter (one company even calls their formula A+,
but it deserves a C- at best).
We’ve known how important these fats are for many
years, but for many years (before they were added to formula, of
course), the manufacturers, echoed by many health professionals,
just kept saying that it didn’t matter, and that there was no
proof that these fats were of any importance at all (this is
still in the Canadian Paediatric Society’s 1995 statement on
the nutrient needs of premature babies).
This cycle of “our milk is just like breastmilk”
followed by “we have now added x to our milk so that it is
even more like breastmilk” has been going on since the 19th
century.
The
truth of the matter is this:
- Just
adding something to formula, even if it is in the same
amounts as in breastmilk, does not mean that the baby will
get the amount or the best sort he needs of this particular
something. The
example of iron helps us understand this.
Breastmilk contains enough iron (with the stores the
baby has during pregnancy), to keep the baby iron sufficient
for at least 6 months.
To maintain iron sufficiency in formula fed babies,
formula needs to contain at least 6 times more iron than
breastmilk, just because iron does not get absorbed from the
baby’s gut as well from formula as it does from
breastmilk.
- There
are still hundreds of components of breastmilk that are
still not added to formulas.
- Breastmilk
varies in what it contains, from morning to evening, from
day to day, from beginning of the feeding to the end, from
day 1 to day 4 to day 10 to day 100, so there is no way we
can know what breastmilk really contains. This means that there is no way to duplicate breastmilk
because there is no such thing as a standard
breastmilk. In
fact, since every woman produces somewhat different
breastmilk, the notion of a standard breastmilk becomes an
absurdity. Breastmilk
is a living, dynamic fluid.
Formula is a chemical soup.
So
what does this mean?
This means that we should consider formula a drug, which,
if one thinks about it, is exactly what it is.
It replaces a normal fluid (breastmilk).
It is only very superficially like that fluid it
replaces. There are
known side effects of formula, in the short term, medium term
and long term, some quite serious and irreversible. Formula may, occasionally, be necessary, but so are drugs.
In rare cases, formula can be lifesaving, but so can some
drugs.
A
drug is, as my pharmacology professor said to us in medical
school, a poison or toxin with beneficial side effects.
There is much wisdom in that statement.
So when a mother decides to feed her baby artificial milk
instead of breastfeeding, she is not avoiding the problem of
giving toxins to her baby.
In
fact, it is amazing how indulgent we are towards formulas.
In none of the articles or television programs that
bring us the news of toxins in breastmilk, do they ever, in any
I have read or heard, talk about toxins in formula. There are toxins in formula. Why would everything on earth be polluted, even the far
reaches of the Arctic, but not formula?
Formula is full of heavy metals, including lead, for
example, in quantities much higher than breastmilk.
And why would pesticides not be present in formula?
After all, the cows do grow up in the countryside where
the fields are sprayed. And
soybeans grow there too. Interesting
you never read about this in the newspapers.
But
toxins are not good are they?
No they are
not, but breastfeeding helps to diminish their bad effects.
Here are some facts:
- Toxins
increase the risk of developing some cancers.
True, but the evidence shows that breastfeeding
babies have a lower risk of some cancers than artificially
fed babies.
- Toxins
may interfere with neurological function and learning
abilities. True,
but the evidence shows that children who were breastfed do
better on neurological and intelligence tests than
artificially fed children, and the longer they are
breastfed, the better they do.
- Toxins
may interfere with immunity.
True, but the evidence shows that infants who are
breastfed have better and more mature immunity than
artificially fed infants, and that this better immunity
carries on much longer than the length of time the infant or
child is breastfed.
What
should you do?
If you
breastfeed your baby, you are doing the best for your baby, and
for the world, for that matter.
Breastfeeding is a very environmentally friendly thing to
do. Formula feeding
pollutes the environment. The
fact that there are pollutants in breastmilk can be likened to
the situation of the canary in the coal mine.
We should be worried about what we are doing to our
planet, but this should not lead us to encourage mothers to feed
their babies artificially.
Handout
#28 Toxins and Infant Feeding January 2005
Written by Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC ©2005
This
handout may be copied and distributed without further
permission,
on the condition that it
is not used in any context in which the WHO code on the
marketing of breastmilk substitutes is violated.
|
