Study shows you can cut the risk of your child developing asthma
You can cut the chances of your child developing asthma if you choose to breastfeed them.
A new Dutch study, found that children who are breastfed exclusively for a least four months are the least likely to develop asthmatic sypmtoms.
This is the first study to explicity correlate the length of breastfeeding with the number of asthmatic episodes a child has later on in their life, it's been published in the European Respiratory journal.
Researchers at Erasmus Medical Centre in Netherland, found that children who were not breastfed were 50 per cent more likely to have persisten phelgm and 40 per cent more likely to wheeze regularly.
"We suggest that longer and exclusive breastfeeding is associated with a reduced risk of asthma-related symptoms compared to children who do not receive any breastfeeding," says Liesbeth Duijts, MD, PhD, a researcher at Erasmus Medical Centre who helped author the report, tells WebMD.
She continues: "According to our data, we suggest that mothers breastfeed their children for at least six months and at least four months exclusively."
Femalefirst Taryn Davies