From the Wall Street Journal.
Excerpt:
Breast-feeding longer can make children smarter. That’s the conclusion of a study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, a journal of the American Medical Association.
[…]The latest study examined and rated each child’s environment based on factors such as how many books are available, and gave each mother an IQ test. They also asked detailed questions about factors that might influence IQ, such as child care, income and parental education. They then subtracted those factors using a statistical model. Dr. Belfort said she hopes that “what we have left is the true connection” with nursing and IQ.
[…]Researchers at Boston Children’s hospital followed 1,312 babies and mothers from 1999 to 2010. They found out how many of those children were still consuming their mothers’ milk at their first birthday, and then tested the children’s intelligence at ages 3 and 7.
[…]Children who were still nursing after a year had higher receptive language scores at age 3, which means they understood what was being said to them better than their formula-fed peers. At age 7, the breast-fed children scored higher on verbal and nonverbal intelligence tests.
In 3 year olds, every month of breast-feeding raised cognition scores by an average of .21 point. Each month of breast-feeding was associated with a .35 more verbal IQ point and a .29 more nonverbal point in the 7 year olds. A full year of nursing would boost a child’s IQ by about 4 points over a child who didn’t nurse, said Dr. Belfort, a significant bump considering that IQs average around 100. That is for children getting some breast milk in their diets; those consuming only breast milk before starting to eat solid foods around six months of age saw even greater advantages.
[…]The possible link between breast milk and brain development is only starting to be teased out. Some theories suggest that it isn’t the content of the milk but the bond between mother and child developed while nursing that accounts for some of the boost. Other ideas hinge on nutrients found in breast milk such as DHA and ARA, which are fatty acids linked to brain development. Some formula companies put DHA and ARA in their offerings.
[…]One difficulty in studying breast milk is that every feeding can vary based on the mother and what she has eaten. So the Boston researchers also examined a component in mothers’ diets that might be responsible for children’s brain development: fish, which contains DHA.
The authors found that more than two or more servings of fish per week seemed to confer IQ benefits, but that boost in children’s cognition wasn’t statistically significant.
Gee, we haven’t had any controversy on this blog since… yesterday! I wonder what everyone thinks of this study. Does it ring true to you?
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Surely. It does explain my high IQ. :-) However, I’m not too crazy about the recent trend to have 5-12 year olds breastfeeding.
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Oh dear.
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This doesn’t surprise me. I fully expect that breastfeeding does lead to increased intelligence. Whether it is a component of the milk itself or the closeness and interaction with the mother, I don’t know. My guess is the latter, although it may well be both.
However, we do know that the nutrition in breastmilk is superior to that of formula (assuming a healthy mother) and also allows babies to become introduced to a variety of flavors from the foods the mother eats. Thus, a breastfed baby is already becoming accustomed to various foods. Assuming the mother has a healthy and varied diet, this is a good thing and may reduce pickiness.
There are also a number of benefits to the mother from breastfeeding – including weight loss, bonding with her baby, and a reduction in breast cancer risk. It’s also cheaper and doesn’t require sterilizing bottles or warming the milk. I can’t see any good reason not to breastfeed if it is at all possible to do so. It appears to be a win-win situation all around.
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Excellent comment! Thank you!
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The only thing I would change is the title. You see, saying that “breastfeeding is better” implies that formula-feeding is the norm or the standard by which other things are measured; but breastfeeding is the biological norm (and either was specially created by God, or “evolved” over millions of years), so it should be the standard by which other forms of feeding are measured.
So, to rephrase the title, it’s not that “breastfeeding is better,” it’s that breastfeeding is the standard so “formula is worse”. By any measure, except in rare instances (an allergy to a component in human milk, for example) formula is a poor substitute for infant feeding, and yields markedly worse results for babies, no matter what is measured.
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Excellent, Kathy – thank you for that wise comment. Breastfeeding is baseline.
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I breastfed for seven years of my life. My male twins, who were born first, were weaned at fifteen months, simply because I was worn out. Their first sister, born five years after them, basically weaned herself at eighteen months, because she was no longer interested. My youngest daughter, born five years after her sister, nursed until she was 4 1/4 years of age. I only weaned her then because I had the sense that she was sucking my bones dry. I was diagnosed with Osteoporosis at age 45, although it probably developed when I was much younger. Sadly, no doctors saw the red flags waving in my medical history. Anyway, when my youngest was nine, with the bones of a 4 1/4 year old child, she was diagnosed with Hypothyroidism. Just as my bone health was neglected, so was her health compromised by the lack of care by a number of doctors. Unfortunately, we were too trusting of their capability. Since then, we have grown to realize, they truly are just “practicing medicine.” They haven’t gotten it right yet. Of course, there are doctors who are much more observant, but our family has a sad history with those who have not paid enough attention to our needs. But, I digress. My daughter’s endocrinologist informed us that it was amazing that her brain was not malformed, and that she didn’t have other serious health issues. Although no doctor has confirmed my belief that breastfeeding was what saved her from mental deficiency, in my heart I know that’s the truth. All four of our children are intelligent, but our youngest shines the brightest! Just kidding……maybe ;)
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