Did anybody see 'This Morning' er... this morning?

[EauRouge]

Loads of people on Facebook are saying that Dr Chris (whoever he is) said that breastfeeding increases your risk of getting breast cancer (which is not true, obviously). Did anyone see, can anyone confirm what he actually said?

Yes Sillyoldelf, and there are people who smoke who don't get cancer. I don't think many people would suggest that it's wise to start though, eh?

umm that's not really how risk factors work sillyoldelf, it's not like you have to collect all 10 tokens to redeem your lower risk, each factor reduced a little bit by itself, for a big reduction reduce more risk factors. BFing alone does reduce the risk, other things do too and they are accumulative. having risk factors doesn't mean you'll get it and reducing all known risk factors doesn't mean you wont, noone says that!

but you are wrong to say reducing a risk factor only reduces risk if you reduce all other risk factors as well. not how it works. Someone with 4 risk factors still has less risk than someone with 8 risk factors, even though they're doing 4 of the risky things

Well my dd1 was mostly ff and is slim, healthy, doing really well at school and has only had about two colds in her life, whereas dd2 who was bf is big for her age, always has a cold and has had more coughs and wheezes than I have.

Bf is not all it's cracked up to be in my experience.

Sorry, does that spoil the statistics?

MrsJasonBourne - I must have missed the memo where it was claimed that if you breastfeed, your child will not get colds and will never wheeze.

No, of course you don't 'spoil the statistics' - 'cos believe it or not, a 'study' where the precise number of subjects in it is whole two (gosh - two!!) is not in the least significant.

But never mind - if I was playing ' bf comment bingo' I'd have had a full line with your post alone.

A risk is just that - a risk. It's not a guarantee!

tiktok ...just makes you give up hope that the human race is sentient doesnt it....

So there is an article which says that breast feeding may halve the risk of SIDS so with that plus the reduction in Prem deaths from NEC I reckon you get one baby saved per day by breast feeding in the UK.

Erm, its formula feeding that doubles the risk of SIDS and increases the risk of NEC

finally yes....but it so very hard to come out and say that elective formula feeding may be killing a baby every day.

Yes because deciding from your own experience that breastmilk may not always be a magic elixir means that you have no feelings as a human doesnt it

Just wondering about the formula feeding thing - is the evidence saying that it is actually formula feeding itself that increases the risk of SIDS or are there other factors involved? For example, is a formula feeding mother also more likely to smoke therefore increasing the risk of SIDS? Im guessing that the statstic comes from the fact that more babies who die from SIDS are formula fed, but there are probably other factors involved rather than just how it is fed.

If you had 2 healthy, born at term babies, one who was breastfed colostrum for the first few days and then formula fed, and one who was EBF for like 3 years, is there really a huge difference in their long term health?

Im not claiming that formula feeding is better than breastfeeding at all, and particularly feel that babies benefit hugely from being fed colostrum - I just take issue with the idea that formula feeding is 'damaging' to otherwise healthy babies. I think what is more damaging for a baby is a mother who is quickly deveolping symptoms of PND because breastfeeding is such a horrible experience, and phonecalls to breastfeeding consuellors and visits to groups are not helping at all.

Goodness, I never thought I would get into a BF v FF debate on mumsnet!

Yes confounding factors are an issue....although you could equally well say 'what is the evidence that smoking has an effect as many mothers who smoke also formula feed'.

From the paper that made the finding results were controlled with respect to: maternal smoking in pregnancy, maternal family status, maternal age at delivery, socioeconomic status of the family (socioeconomic status was calculated using school education, present work position, and income), previous live births, birth weight of the infant, bed sharing in the last night, pillow in the infant's bed, additional heating during the last sleep (a hot water bottle in the infant's bed or the bed in front of a heater), position placed to sleep, and pacifier use during the last sleep.6 As prenatal and postnatal smoking were closely related in our study, we had to exclude 1 variable because of colinearality. We chose to use smoking in pregnancy.

I think these people know what they are doing....

samstown, all those are valid questions, but good research allows for them. It's always been known that all SIDS cannot be explained by one single factor, once you discount the 'mystery virus' theory (which has not been taken seriously for decades now). SIDS appears to be a mix of environmental factors (smoking, feeding method, place of sleep etc ) and social factors (deprivation) as well as physiological factors (pre-term birth; illness)....but you can see that all of those 'overlap' in some way (so for example poorer mothers are more likely to smoke, and to give birth pre-term, and to not breastfeed).

But good research, with enough 'cases', can isolate these different factors, and assess their individual impact.

When it comes to sharing information with mothers and fathers, language is important, to avoid preaching or judging. This is why we have ended up with parents believing that 'breastfeeding is better than formula feeding but formula feeding is not harmful.' The fact is that breastfeeding is the physiological norm - it's what babies 'expect' to happen and what their own bodies are prepared for. Anything that is not breastmilk falls short of that and there are health consequences.

In a developed country like the UK, you don't really see the consequences - the baby who has gastroenteritis is cured, the baby who gets an ear infection gets better. Most babies - breast or formula - get gastro or earache at some point anyway. It's only when you look at hundreds of babies and compare them, and see the incidence of gastro and earache is significantly higher (ie consistently more episodes per baby, when you crunch the numbers) in non-breastfed babies, that you see the effect in the UK (there are other effects - I have only picked on gastro and ears because the research is especially strong). That clearly shows that formula feeding is not just 'not quite as good as' breastfeeding in some sort of abstract way, but actively harmful.

Now, that has to be set against the risk to babies whose mothers struggle with bf and become miserable and even depressed - physical health effects of not breastfeeding are not the full story by any means.

It would be daft to insist that all mothers 'ought' to breastfeed whatever the cost to their families.

Hope that explains it a bit :)

Not true, stillsparkling - true (ish) sometimes, but not always.

MrsJasonBourne DD2 probably just got more colds cos she's number 2 and gets them all off DD1. I FF from 8wks due to bf probs with DS and he's always been v healthy, no ear infection and hardly any colds. DD is ebf 5 months old and has had a permanent cold for 2 months cos DS catches them at preschool and gives them to her. Doesn't mean bf isn't great for her health.