Moms who breast-feed their babies for the nutritional benefit can rest even easier now, according to recent findings from a West Virginia University-led study on the subject.
Breast-fed babies, WVU s Dr. Hawley Montgomery-Downs says, also appear significantly less likely to develop sleep-related breathing disorders, like snoring and sleep apnea.
Montgomery-Downs, the studys lead author, is a sleep researcher and associate professor of psychology. She presented the findings June 11 in Minneapolis at SLEEP 07 , the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).
And those findings, said Montgomery-Downs, herself the mother of three young children, are important for one big reason.
Babies who sleep better, she said,growbetter, too.
A total of 197 children (all 6 years of age) underwent a sleep study for the research as their parents completed a survey charting their feeding routine as infants. Parents listed whether their youngsters had been breast-fed, bottle-fed or both.
The subjects who were breast-fed as infants slept better, Montgomery-Downs said, with lower rates and less severe bouts of snoring and sleep apnea.
Babies who dont sleep well at night are more than just cranky the next day, she said. They also run the risk of having interrupted cardiovascular and cognitive development, and behavioral problems later on.
Sleep apnea is especially worrisome, she said. Thats when infants briefly stop breathing while sleeping. Brain damage can result in extreme cases.
Montgomery-Downs said she and her colleagues are excited about the data and the national attention its receiving. This most recent study, she said, is a wake-up call for more research. The health benefits shown, she said, might come from the protection against early viral protection that breast feeding provides.
Or it could be that infants who breast-feed also have better jaw formation, she said, meaning unobstructed airways and uninterrupted sleep.
One fact, though, is undisputed.
The current findings support another benefit of breast feeding,she said.
Drowsy, by degrees
Infants who grow up to be college students might be a little more sleepy-eyed than most, depending on their majorthats according to research from WVU psychology graduate Aryn Karpinski, who worked in Montgomery-Downssleep disorders lab and joined her mentor at the conference.
Karpinski chronicled the sleep patterns of 129 WVU students and found that students with technical-minded majorsmath, medical fields, engineering, statisticsdont get the same quality of sleep as their counterparts who major in the humanities, like education and psychology. The findings also were presented at the annual APSS meeting.
The drowsier students tended to go without sleep more while also relying on sleeping pills and other sleep aids.
A chronic lack of sleep, Karpinski said, can lead to a host of serious health problems, from depression to diabetes.
For more information on sleep research at WVU , visithttp://wvutoday.wvu.edu/news/page/4968/.