How about making formula free on prescription?

[crimplene]

I've been wondering whether making formula free on prescription help solve some of the problems around the formula/ breast battle.

I'm sure this has been sugested before, but I'd be really interested in whether anyone else thinks it might help, or whether I've missed the point somewhere. I know it's not very likely to actually happen.

If formula were put in its proper context; it's there for when our bodies don't work properly for whatever reason (like insulin in bottles if your pancreas doesn't work properly) there wouldn't be any more stigma attached to using it if you need to than an antibiotic - but you'd only do it if you need to. There wouldn't be anything to be gained from promoting it to consumers and the packaging should be about as unglamourous as any prescription medicine. Parents using it would have to be given proper instructions on how to make it as safe as possible by the prescriber. There would obviously still be the difficulty of companies promoting it to doctors.

In this context, it wouldn't seem like a 'lifestyle choice' and that would have to level the playing field as far as bf is concerned. It would have the added benefit of getting the (couple of) mothers I've met recently who decided that the government vouchers go further if you spend them on cow's milk from birth, to actually give their DCs formula.

Or does anyone bf solely because it's cheaper?

juule, it would be v. difficult to predict an individual's future health with perfect accuracy. But long term effects of infant feeding can be studied, and in fact have been done so in large 'cohort' studies, where you follow huge numbers of people throughout their lives and take a lot of data about their diet and environment from them.

You can then match them up, and use statistical methodology called 'control' which rules out everything except the thing you are studying.

This is the sort of thing that had to be done with the studies on smoking. The research needed to show it was people's smoking that made a difference, not the fact they lived or worked in an industrially polluted area, or didn't eat enough veg, or were poor, and so on.

I'm genuinely interested as I was ff and am thinking that maybe this should be something that I am aware of and what type of things I would have to do to mitigate any harm done purely by the fact that I was ff. What am I more at risk of now that I'm older that I wouldn't have been had I been bf.

how to feed a baby should be the mothers choice not the gps.

I thing that formula should not be routinely available on prescription.
Most babies who use formula are drinking it because of a choice the mother has made, not because of a medical reason.
I'm sure GPs are quite busy enough without being expected to dole out formula too.

juuule, difficult to get solid info on this but the studies I have seen would indicate you are more at risk of breast cancer because you were ff (it's not just mothers who risk it) and heart disease.

One study says "Despite certain limitations of the study, these findings suggest that women who were breast-fed as infants may have a lower risk of breast cancer than those who were bottle-fed." But read more about these limitations at the
discussion of the study here

Heart disease, too, is not clear cut, despite www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2004.tb00237.x this study]] which shows ff increases the risk in young adults.

One difficulty is that records of breastfed babies do not include how long, or how exclusively, they were breastfed. There is one famous UK study that links up adults (then, IIRC, in their 70s) with their baby records which were found in an old clinic. These babies were born in the 1920s and the ones who had been bf for longer were more likely to have not survived. But at that time, babies who were breastfed for a long time tended to be poorer and to go into unhealthy occupations...so no one could draw any conclusions.

It's an interesting area of study.

there are, of course, many other papers than the 2 I have cited here.

So, is there nothing conclusive that ff puts people at risk later in life? It does appear that something adverse related to formula is being looked for or suspected but that there is no definite evidence.
I couldn't read the full version of your second link, tiktok, as I couldn't access it. What I did read didn't mention ff or bf.
It is interesting, though. If I am at risk of breast cancer due to being ff, I wonder if the fact that I bf for several years evens the risk out. So many variables.
I think that as there doesn't seem to be that much absolute evidence of damage done by formula, it's understandable that a lot of parents are sceptical about being told that they are risking their child's health.
However, I did bf mine to be on the safe side.

"I think that as there doesn't seem to be that much absolute evidence of damage done by formula, it's understandable that a lot of parents are sceptical about being told that they are risking their child's health"

No - this isn't what Tiktok said.

She was talking about evidence linking infant feeding to diseases such as cancer and heart disease in adulthood.

There is plenty of good evidence that ff is linked to a range of poorer health outcomes for children and babies as I'm sure Tiktok will confirm.

Thanks, sabire...juuule, you asked me what risks you had personally as a adult, as a baby who was formula fed. The literature showing effects of ff into adulthood is not as powerful but it does not mean ff has not effect - just that it would take a lot of research to show it, and this has not been done to a high standard or extensively.

Why would people think that this means anything about the health risks to children, which are well-researched and well-documented?

In addition, some of the health risks to children have life long effects - they begin in childhood and last forever.

Sorry, I meant their child's health into adulthood. Not explaining myself very well. While I believe that bm is the optimum food for babies, I am trying to get someone to give me something concrete that would show that formula is as dire as some would have people believe. I think because people don't see any adverse effects in the babies/children around them that can be directly related to formula then it's hard to take seriously people who talk about formula as if it was poison. Maybe it's more obvious to anyone who works with children in hospital but I'm talking generally. If you try to put the benefits of bf-ing across to someone, then they mostly nod and smile as if you're a loon. As I seem to have escaped anything detrimental as a baby or child I was asking if there was anything which could affect me or anyone else in later life as a result purely of being ff.
These are questions which I've been asked which I can't answer adequately enough.

Well, I misunderstood, but not my fault!!

No one says formula is 'dire' or 'poison' - only time I hear this is when people say, outraged, 'formula isn't poison, you know!'

It has risks, ranging from very minor and fairly common (for us in the west, where babies hardly ever die from gastro-enteritis) to major, which are pretty rare, but devasating if it affects you or your baby. But breastfed babies get ill, even seriously, so all we can do is to say that your baby is more likely to become ill if he is formula fed.

You're asking the impossible - to quantify for an individual child what will happen to them as a direct result of formula feeding.

Intelligent people realise that ill health is not something you can necessarily see, and not necessarily something you can see immediately.

It's similar to the risks of having a genetic tendency to something or other - you can't look at people and say 'he has a family tendency to heart disease' but his risks might be increased as he has a father and grandfather who died of a heart attack at 45. A person like that would be sensible to take healthy measures to reduce his risks.