Breastfeeding And ADHD

Advocates of breastfeeding have always said that breastfeeding helps to promote better bonding between the mother and her baby. Not only does the act of breastfeeding relax the mother, it also provides the baby with a warm and secure environment. This helps to improve the baby's sense of safety and security, and therewith the baby's brain power.

Apart from this, there are many other benefits of breastfeeding the babies. Now, there is another addition in the list of these benefits. In one of the first of its kind research, it has been shown that breastfed babies are less likely to develop ADHD. Why might that be? 

The likelihood of developing ADHD in children is inversely proportional to the duration of breastfeeding

A study, published in the journal Breastfeeding Medicine, has found that children who are breastfed are less likely to develop ADHD, the symptoms of which can be identified a little later in life. What's more, the longer the duration of breastfeeding, the less likely it becomes that a child will develop attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The research was led by scientists from the Schneider’s Children Medical Center, Petach Tikva, Israel. They did a retrospective research project on 50 children who had been diagnosed as suffering from ADHD at the hospital between 2008 and 2009. All the children were around the age of 6 to 12 years.

This test group was compared to a set of control groups.

The first control group was made up of healthy and typically developing children who had siblings suffering from ADHD. This group was similar to the test group in their genetic and environmental background, making it a good control group.

The second control group included healthy and typically developing children with no family history of ADHD. The age of the children in the control group matched the children in the test group.

The parents of all the children were asked to fill out an extensive questionnaire which contained questions regarding their demographic, medical and perinatal findings. The history of breastfeeding of the children during the first year of their lives was also noted. The parents were also asked to fill out a validated adult ADHD screening questionnaire.

Researchers noticed that the likelihood of developing ADHD in children was inversely proportional to the duration of breastfeeding. In other words, the longer the child was breastfed, the lower the chance that they would be diagnosed with ADHD later in life. Among the children in the test group (those who had been diagnosed with ADHD), only 43 percent had been breastfed till they were 3 months old. Among the test groups, 69 percent of the children with a sibling who had been diagnosed with ADHD had been breastfed until they were 3 months old. In contrast, 73 percent of the children with no history of ADHD in the family had been breastfed until three months old.

It was also seen that 50 percent of children with a sibling suffering from ADHD had been breastfed until they were six months old. This percentage was as high as 57 percent in cases of children from the second control group where there was no family history of ADHD.

On the basis of these results, the researchers have concluded that breastfeeding offers partial protection against the development of ADHD.