TORONTO – Breastfeeding has raised some hotly debated topics over the past year: how old is too old to do it, what are the hidden costs and of course Time Magazine’s breastfeeding cover photo that garnered reaction around the world.
Now, a new study says breastfeeding can help reduce a child’s risk of obesity.
Researchers at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, along with collaborators in Australia, suggest that the length of time a baby is breastfed positively impacts the effects of something called the FTO in young adults.
FTO stands for the fat mass and obesity gene, and the researchers cite Statistics Canada data that almost a third of Canadian children aged five to 17 are overweight or obese.
“Childhood obesity is a serious problem, and it will likely impact chronic diseases in the long-term, as well as increased health care costs,” said Dr. Laurent Briollais, senior investigator and assistant professor with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, in a release.
“The benefits of breast milk are well known. However, what is new is to find that breastfeeding can have a significant impact on children who have a genetic predisposition to obesity.”
About 70 per cent of Canadian children have at least one copy of the FTO gene responsible for increased body mass index (BMI) and obesity, and the BMI increase due to the gene can be seen as early as six years, according to the Mount Sinai release.
Dr. Stephen Lye, associate director of Mount Sinai’s Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, says if you have this adverse variant of the FTO gene as an adult, you have about 3 kilograms more fat mass than people who have the normal variant.
If a child is exclusively breastfed for at least three months, this study suggests breastfeeding can aid in reversing the FTO gene’s effects.
“This study is one of the first examples of early intervention in the fight against obesity,” says Dr. Stephen Lye, associate director of Mount Sinai’s Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute. “Rather than trying to treat the symptoms later, we’re better off trying to prevent them in the first place.”
Lye noted the effect of the adverse FTO gene was stronger in boys than girls, though the effect of breastfeeding was essentially the same in both sexes, bringing the BMI down to normal levels.
He added that exclusive breastfeeding was found to be “much more important than just breastfeeding intermittently.”
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