What is it with doctors and breastfeeding?

[bobthebaby]

My 9 mo ds has bad eczema and allergies to lots of stuff notably milk, egg and peanut. As I am bfing I avoid these too. Today I had to take ds to hospital because his skin got so bad he had to have antibiotics. His paed. gave me a jar of Neocate to wean him onto and the registrar said "I bet you will be glad to wean him" when I told her the things I couldn't eat. I don't want to wean him, in fact I'm not going to. Can anyone point me to studies which show I am helping not harming by continuing to bf him. The doctors seem convinced that if I weaned his eczema would go away, which I think is total rubbish. I think its the only thing that helps the pain and about the only useful thing I can do for him. But then this doubt comes in, because they are doctors and I am just a mum.

Tamum ? I found the bit you mentioned ....

Yes it does say the risk may be higher but only in a limited group and appears to be only relevant in asthmatic mothers... but then goes on to explain why this may be so ... I?ve typed out the addendum ...

?Recent reports have suggested that long term breastfeeding by an asthmatic mother may, in a limited group of children, rather increase the risk of getting asthma. Furthermore Bergmann et al showed in a large study from Germany that for each additional week of breastfeeding of children with atopic parents the risk of atopic eczema increased. On the other hand, a large study by Oddy et al from Australia could confirm a protective effect by breastfeeding not considerably altered by adjusting for atopy, infections or maternal asthma. An explanation for these regional differences may relate to the fact that maternal diets and milk contain lower rations of n6/n3 fatty acids in Australia than in USA or Germany.?

Oh Eulalia I'm really sorry to be so picky, but those are two separate studies that have separate citations. The asthmatic mothers have nothing to do with the eczema study.

I really wish I'd kept my mouth shut

It is easy to forget there are external causes of eczeme - not just diet. My eldest son has eczema on his face which can get pretty bad. His eczema started when he started on solids after being exclusively breastfed. He is now 16 but had allergy testing a couple of years ago. He certainly did not have an allergy to dairy but was allergic to dust house mite (as are a lot of people) dogs and grass.
I certainly would not deprive a baby of the benefits of breastfeeding and do not believe that weaning would solve the eczema problem. You are doing an excellent job bobthebaby.

bobthebaby ... I hope you are still in this thread ...
I have followed this thread and I will e-mail you over the next few days about this ... hope you don't mind ...
I may be clutching at straws but I may be able to help in a little way ... but I need to do a bit of research first ........
Sorry to be so cryptic ....
Thinking of you ...

Ghosty xxxxx

tamum - yep I think it needs a lot more study - I don't necessarily 'believe' it as such but just highlights my point that there are an awful lot of reasons for allergic reactions and that doctors shouldn't be having knee jerk reactions and just telling women to wean. I can't find a full text version of the Oddy article but makes sense that milk in Austrialia is different from here.

tamum - getting confused now - which two separate studies? You just mentioned the note at the end of the article I printed out.

And sorry my previous post was about the Caesarean article I posted just in case you are getting confused too!

Oh help, we're all confused now! The two studies I was referring to are
"Recent reports have suggested that long term breastfeeding by an asthmatic mother may, in a limited group of children, rather increase the risk of getting asthma."
and "Furthermore Bergmann et al showed in a large study from Germany that for each additional week of breastfeeding of children with atopic parents the risk of atopic eczema increased."
I thought when you said "Yes it does say the risk may be higher but only in a limited group and appears to be only relevant in asthmatic mothers" you meant that the eczema study and the asthmatic mothers one was the same study. Sorry if I misunderstood!

Oh help, we're all confused now! The two studies I was referring to are
"Recent reports have suggested that long term breastfeeding by an asthmatic mother may, in a limited group of children, rather increase the risk of getting asthma."
and "Furthermore Bergmann et al showed in a large study from Germany that for each additional week of breastfeeding of children with atopic parents the risk of atopic eczema increased."
I thought when you said "Yes it does say the risk may be higher but only in a limited group and appears to be only relevant in asthmatic mothers" you meant that the eczema study and the asthmatic mothers one was the same study. Sorry if I misunderstood!

Very cryptic Ghosty, look forward to your email.

OK thanks I see now... but I wonder does the Australia study mentioned just mean asthmatic mothers, I mean atopy includes eczema too doesn't it? Anyway in all this literature there just seems to be too many contrasting studies and confounding variables to state conclusivly that continuing to breastfeed will make your babies's eczema worse.

Ghosty - would be interested to hear what you have to say if you'd care to share it with us in due course ....

Better the devil you know. I'm carrying on as before. If the scientists can't make up their minds, I'll just go with what I feel like doing.

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Tamum:Van Odijk's review paper looks at 56 papers (OK, not all regarding eczema) so why would the addition of 1 more paper change the overall conclusion of the paper "quite a lot"?

JJ: you should be able to access most above mentioned papers for free (I use pub med through the BMJ website: bmj.bmjjournals.com/)

Beacuse of the 56 only about 6 of them referred to eczema, and only 3 or 4 of those were specifically about eczema. Of those 2 showed no beneficical effect or came to no conclusion. As I said in my first post, the abstract I pasted was one of a number of papers I could have chosen that have been published since that review and which come to the conclusion that extended breastfeeding is not beneficial for eczema. I am not an epidemiologist, so I shall bow out of this discussion now.

JJ if there are any papers you want specifically let me know, and I may be able to get them to you. I can't see how you could get more than the abstract through Pubmed, they're nearly all in journals for which you need subscriptions, but we can access quite a lot of them. Just drop me an email if I can help.

robinw .... Breastfeeding is over-rated ... hmm depends on what you expect it it do to.. cure all ills? then certainly it can't do that ....

however what I want to know if breastfeeding (or rather extended breastfeeding) doesn't help eczema (or makes it worse? but how?) then what is the alternative? Cow's milk? What if your child is allergic to cow's milk - what then?

I maintain that there are too many variables involved here to make a clear cut statement about the role of breastfeeding. Why is breastfeeding 'good' before a certain age (eg 6 months) but then 'bad' after that age... doesn't make sense ... Skin conditions are exacerbated by many things... was society populated by many people hundreds of years ago with asthma and excezma? No these conditions have increased in modern times and yet breastfeeding rates are very low so something doesn't add up ...

yes,unfortunately you have to pay for accessing a lot of journals especially the new /recent publications, but van Odijk's and Bergmann's paper happens to be free if you are really interested.
However, I agree, I wouldn't bother reading all of it!

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Update on ds. I doubled his probiotics because he was going to be taking antibiotics, then all the antibiotics came back up but he got better anyway so we ditched the idea of antibiotics totally. Yet 48 hours after him nearly being admitted to hospital he looks the most normal I have ever seen him. Needless to say I am keeping him on the higher dose of probiotics. Thank goodness I didn't introduce the formula or I would have always thought that was what did it.

Glad to hear your ds is getting better bobthebaby.

robinw - I am in the same position as you - I am open to information/research that shows anything about breastfeeding, beneficial or otherwise. If "nothing would change my mind" I'd not bother looking at these posts! You want to know what the true benefits are ... but journals are stuffed full of this kind of information on the benefits??? What is it exactly that you want breastfeeding to do that fails to reach your standard? And what alternative do you suggest?

EFA are depleted - well if a woman has eaten well in preganancy and post birth then she should have plenty stores to feed her child through her milk till 6 months. After that a baby is taking solid food and can get EFA through its own food.

Well, in some ways, breastfeeding is overrated. Formula-Fed babies do have lower IQ scores -- but only by 7-10 points at most. F-Fed infants have more ear infections, but it only adds up to 1 or 3 more by the time they're 5.

F-Fed kids are also at higher risk for obesity and diabetes, but we know that life-style factors is what matters most with obesity, and a mix of life-style and genetics for diabetes. You're only going from exceedingly rare to very rare likelihood of a child getting leukemia if one Formula-feeds. And the evidence on heart-disease is still so mixed it's probably best to treat as inconclusive, at best.

And breastfeeding does reduce mother's risk for all the 'female' cancers as well as osteo-porosis, but we don't quite know by how much, so perhaps not very much.

It's just the consistent picture that builds up. Br'feeding lowers risks of negative outcomes much more than it raises them. And... It's still very very weird that anybody could conclude it's generally better to feed your child fake human milk rather than the real thing.

And personally, I don't believe in food supplments, but that's another debate!!

Zebra - you've missed out the fact that FF babies are more likely to have episodes of gastro-enteritis and be hospitalised for this (not life threatening in the UK, of course, but miserable for all) and to suffer from bronchiolitis - ditto.

The 7-10 points IQ difference makes a real difference at the average and below average level....could be the difference between being independent and not, for some individuals.

Bf is simply the normal way to feed, not a magic bullet. Most women want to do it, but feel undermined and unsupported.

Tiktok I am on your side, honest! It's just that one could argue (I think RobinW wants to argue) that all the advantages for any single health issue are small, therefore the overall advantage is small but the opposite is true. Cumulatively, all the small advantages add up to a lot. And that's without the stuff I didn't remember to list, like gastro-enteritus, respiratory illness or reflux or whatever else.

That's ok, Zebra

Bf has been shown to have a dose-linked response vis a vis breast cancer - the more you breastfeed, the less your risk of breast cancer. Or, put the other way, if you don't breastfeed, you increase your risk of breast cancer.

If you don't breastfeed, your periods return faster. For some women, especially those in developing countries, but not solely, this means a higher risk of anaemia.

If you are going to look at the effects of bf on EFA levels, then the impact of not bf has to be fed into the equation as well. ...more breast and ovarian cancer at all stages of life, more anaemia, more osteoporotic fractures in later life versus lower (and eaily replaceable) levels of essential fatty acids in inadequately nourished women ...hmmm, not that much of a close call.

For normal, adequately nourished women, not breastfeeding has solely negative effects on their physical health.

Yes tiktok - it is now recomended to feed your baby for longer to reduce breast cancer.

I think the ear infection stats have got to be higher than only once or at most 3 times by age 5, where did you get that figure from zebra? All I can say is that ds aged 4.4 has never had one.

Yes indeed re periods tiktok - mine just returned after 18 months - also had none for 13 months after ds - totally natural contraceptive