Experts in Pediatrics, Nutrition and Psychology advise continuing breastfeeding after one year and even beyond two, since provides the baby with up to 40% of the necessary nutrients and enhances their intelligence, although they clarify that it should not be exclusively so as not to generate a nutritional deficit.
The “Truths and lies about children who breastfeed for more than a year” have been addressed in Torrent (Valencia) by specialists in nutrition and psychology in a talk organized by the Mammalia Association on the occasion of the celebration, in October, of the World Week of breastfeeding.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends exclusive breastfeeding up to 6 months, although after that stage it is recommended to maintain it until two years or more but introducing safe and nutritionally adequate complementary foods.
One of the participants in the talk, the dietitian and nutritionist Julio Basulto, maintains, in statements to EFE, that there are studies that conclude that children who continue to drink breast milk after one year of age are “more intelligent, confident and less dependent “.
“The breast milk is something so natural like sleeping, breathing or blinking, is a food designed specifically for babies and is a natural way to give calories and love to children,” he says.
In his opinion, a child from one year of age “does not cease to be breastfeeding” and must continue to drink breast milk, although combined with other foods, and he considers that the “obligation” of health professionals is to “list the benefits of milk maternal and the risks of artificial”.
“One of the main lies is to say that the composition of breast milk is less effective over time, since the percentage of fat and calories increases the longer the baby is nursing,” he explains.
The psychologist Alberto Soler has also intervened in the meeting, who assures EFE that, although he misses seeing children with teeth and who can now run “taking breast”, it is “overwhelming evidence” that while the immune system is developing the child continues to benefit from breast milk.
In the same way, he believes that they are false “myths” such as the one that prolonged breastfeeding makes children more dependent or leads them to have a “trauma”, and asserts that it is “quite the opposite”.
On the other hand, consulted by EFE, the president of the Valencian Association of Pediatrics, Pilar Codoñer, affirms that all pediatricians are “clear that breast milk is the best, it is a mainstay for the child in the early ages”, but, from six months on, “they have to feed themselves with other things, it is not enough exclusively”.
“Better than saying until what age to drink breast milk, that is, with what other things to combine them“, has indicated Codoñer, who has warned that he has seen cases of babies with nutritional deficits because from six months onwards breastfeeding has not been supplemented with other foods.
The expert also assures that it should not be “stigmatize or enslave” to the mother because she does not want to continue breastfeeding her child.
Likewise, the coordinator of the Lactation Unit of the Doctor Peset Hospital in Valencia and of the Initiative for the humanization of assistance at birth and breastfeeding (Ihan) of the WHO, Maite Hernández, assures that it has been demonstrated with the evidence that ” there is no harm in giving breast milk until the age of two or more”.
“There is no age to stop doing it”affirms the pediatrician, who adds that breast milk adapts to the nutritional needs of the baby, and those who receive a daily dose of antibodies through breastfeeding from one year on are more protected and have more defenses when they interact with their environment and other children.
However, he points out that health in humans comes from the diversification of foods, because each food provides different amounts of nutrients, and for this reason, if you continue to drink breast milk, it is necessary to introduce meat, fish, eggs, pasta, rice , cereals or fruits.
Prolonging lactation is also beneficial for the mother, since the more months she breastfeeds, the risk of both breast cancer and other diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension, diabetes, obesity or heart disease decreases. metabolic syndromeamong others, according to experts.