Introduction:
For the first six months of life, nursing offers the best nutrition and health protection, and from six months until at least 12 months of age, breastfeeding plus supplemental meals is thought to provide the best nutrition for newborns. However, only 41 % of infants under six months old are exclusively breastfed globally. Breastfeeding correlated favorably with intelligence quotient (IQ) performance in children and adolescents. The best infant feeding strategy is breastfeeding, which delivers sufficient nutrition, promotes healthy growth and development, and improves the health of both mothers and infants. In addition, many chemicals in breast milk can potentially enhance children's cognitive (thinking capacity) development and their psychomotor (ability to do things physically) skills.
Does Breastfeeding Help Children Become Smarter?
According to various research, it has been found that those children who had been breastfed proved to be more intelligent, had done better at school, and earned more as adults than those who had not been. Also, the longer they were breastfed as a baby, the better they tended to be doing. Thus, breastfeeding can increase a child's intelligence quotient (IQ) performance by a small amount. This may imply that nursing has certain physiological advantages and aids in improving cognitive ability.
How Does Breastfeeding Improve Intelligence in Children?
Breastfeeding is recommended to give newborns the proper nutrients for healthy growth and development. In studies of young children, the advantages of nursing are the greatest. It has several anti-inflammatories, immune-stimulating, and antibacterial components that support children's cognitive and psychomotor development.
According to numerous other studies, breastfed children have advantages in terms of their health, including lower rates of obesity, blood pressure, and total cholesterol, as well as higher levels of academic success and intelligence. In addition, breastfeeding is favorably correlated with IQ performance in children and adolescents. Average IQ scores are higher among breastfed children and adolescents than non-breastfed children. Therefore, all facets of society must encourage women to continue to breastfeed their infants.
How Does Breastfeeding Impact the Social Intelligence of a Child?
Breastfeeding also impacts the child's psychological and social development through the mother's gaze and mutual touch. Breastfeeding children have been reported to be more cooperative and socially adept. Children who were breastfed reported higher social intelligence scores than those who were bottle-fed. A strong association exists between breastfeeding duration and subsequent psychosocial development in children.
What Are the Factors That Influence the Intelligence Quotient in Children?
There are independent effects of the level of cognitive stimulation at home, the mother's educational level and age at childbirth, the child's birth order, and financial difficulties in the household. However, there is an apparent correlation between breastfeeding and cognitive development due to maternal intelligence. Mothers who breastfed children have higher IQs, more education, are older, less likely to smoke or live in poverty, and are better able to offer a stimulating and nurturing environment for their children. Breastfeeding has a beneficial impact on a child's cognitive abilities, accounting for their mother's intelligence.
What Is the Mechanism in Which Breastmilk Aids in Brain Development in Children?
Early breast milk consumption has a connection with IQ that later develops in children and, unusually, with the whole brain volume in adolescence. Breast milk substantially impacts the brain's white matter more than its grey. One or more components of breast milk aid in the anatomical development of the brain.
Breastfeeding's positive effect on IQ may be partially mediated by encouraging the growth of white matter. It needs to be clarified what causes the impacts that have been seen. Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFAs), especially docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), have come to be recognized as a significant factor. It is essential to remember that human milk also contains a range of other substances, such as hormones and growth factors, some of which (such as thyroxin and nerve growth factor) may be able to affect cerebral development, though this is not proven.
Thus breastfeeding encourages glial cell proliferation, which fosters myelination during the window of brain development. In addition, compared to infant formula, breast milk includes a large amount of cholesterol; full-term breastfed infants have more excellent total blood cholesterol at six months. Recently, a study reported that the availability of cholesterol in oligodendrocytes is a rate-limiting factor in brain development and that cholesterol is an essential component of myelin membranes.
What Other Factors Affect Cognitive Outcome?
Getting the proper nutrients for brain development is crucial, whether from breast milk or formula. Beyond nutrition, other factors affect cognitive health, including:
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Positive Cognition - The impact of positive cognition results starts throughout pregnancy. When a mother receives quality prenatal care, refrains from smoking, and abstains from other dangerous behaviors, she gives her child the best possible start.
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Bonding With the Child - The bond between parents and their children can be vital during infancy and childhood. Parental decisions can promote or inhibit cognitive learning. A child's reading, writing, and language skills can be improved, for instance, by reading to them every night.
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Activities to Engage Children - A child's mind can be opened through playing actively, listening to music, fostering creativity, allowing them to explore, and letting them become messy. On the other side, excessive viewing of television can prevent cognitive learning. Additionally, a child's intelligence and academic achievement are influenced by their genetics, IQ, level of education, and parents' income.
What Are the Other Advantages of Breastfeeding?
It is clear that the gut microbiome is essential for a baby's growth and that how a baby is fed can change the microbial communities in the digestive tract. When breastfed infants are given modest amounts of formula milk, the structure and relative abundance of the bacterial communities typically present in their guts can change. Formula introduction disrupts the colonization and growth of the newborn gut microbiota and may lessen the advantages of exclusive human milk feeding.
Conclusion:
Breastfeeding is advised to provide neonates with the proper nutrition for healthy growth and development. Therefore, society as a whole needs to support mothers in continuing to breastfeed their children. The Innocenti Declaration, which includes exclusive breastfeeding for four to six months as a global goal, was created by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) in response to evidence demonstrating the many advantages of breastfeeding for both mother and child. However, whether it increases intellect or not, nursing is still the best way to give infants the nutrition they need for healthy growth and development.
