Quality of infant feeding may affect IQ

Breast milk, best for babies. A good environment is required for proper upbringing of a child. This however, starts with ensuring that babies are properly and adequately fed. This will go a long way to determine how intelligent they will be later in life, reports Sade Oguntola.

ALL parents want their baby to be healthy and very intelligent. One easy way to achieve this is to breast-feed.

Doctors agree that breast milk is the best food for a child and they emphasise that the moment a child is born, such should immediately be put to breast.

That early nutrition may have a profound impact on the growth of the child is being further supported by a new study that declared that nutrition in the first weeks of life could have a profound impact on the way the brain and the Intelligent Quotient (IQ) develop.

A study discovered that babies born early and given high protein food had higher IQ levels as adolescents. Giving the children food richer in nutrients also changed the structure of their brains later in life, the scientists found.

The study, carried out by Great Ormond Street Hospital and University College London, tested verbal IQ levels amongst two groups of adolescents born prematurely in the March edition of the journal, Paediatric Research.

They carried out brain scans on the teenagers who in the 1980s were given different diets in the first month of their lives. One group was given a high-protein diet in the four weeks after they were born; the other a standard diet. When the children reached adolescence, the scientists examined the size of a particular part of their brains, the caudate nucleus, which is linked to movement, learning and intelligence. They found those given the diet rich in nutrients had higher IQs and a bigger caudate nucleus than those on normal food.

Dr Elizabeth Isaacs, who led the research, said: “Although studies are beginning to appear that link aspects of current diet to brain function the data presented here are among the first to show that the structure of the human brain can be influenced by early nutrition.”

This in a way substantiated a previous conclusion arrived at by a study saying that even premature babies need enriched diets. The 16-year study by the Medical Research Council had demonstrated clearly that nutrition equally plays a key role in the early development of the brain, which is particularly rapid after birth. The study involving 424 premature babies by Professor Alan Lucas, of the Institute of Child Health based at Great Ormond Street Hospital provided a clear illustration that early nutrition of premature babies can have profound lifetime effects on brain development. It suggested the idea that diet during critical periods in early life may be of great importance for our health and performance as adults.

If a baby’s brain is not nurtured in its first year of life, it would have long-term implications as between 90 to 95 per cent of the adult brain cells are present after the first year of a baby’s life. In fact, the first organism to form after conception is the baby’s brain.

Professor Alan Lucas, of the Institute of Child Health based at Great Ormond Street Hospital, in a comment on the implications of the research, said the study also has implications for current clinical care of premature babies.

Often, newborn babies are given restricted amounts of food and fluid in an attempt to keep them clinically stable. The results of this study clearly demonstrate the need to ensure, where possible, that high-risk babies receive the nutritional intake they require.

Professor Lucas said: “This study provides a clear illustration that early nutrition of premature babies can have profound lifetime effects on brain development, suggesting the idea that diet during critical periods in early life may be of great importance for our health and performance as adults.

“We try very hard to feed premature babies well, and there is no doubt there has been an improvement in the nutrition of premature babies over the years. But the problem is that these babies are sick and we may have, on occasion, to withdraw food and fluid from them in order to keep them clinically stable. So we have a compromise.

“What our data does is to change the balance of risks. Now that we know that it matters in terms of these children’s long term outcome to feed them at a level that is less than they require we have to factor that into the very complex situation.”

However, Dr. Rola Adediran, a pediatrician at Adeoyo Maternity Hospital, Yemetu, Ibadan, said the breast milk is the perfect food for infants even when they are premature because of its numerous advantages over baby formula.

“It’s always available; it is free, and contains active infection-fighting white blood cells and other chemicals that give increased protection against infections in the first months, when these can be the most serious. It contains the perfect proportion of nutrients that your baby needs, including protein, carbohydrates, and calcium, thus making it easily digestible.

“Children that take breast milk are protected against allergies and asthma in the future, decreases a baby’s risk of obesity in the future and because of some fatty acids that it contains promote brain development.

“We always tell mothers to feed exclusively with breast milk without any addition of even water and that it should be on demand. We also tell them it they need not give drugs or multivitamins except the doctor recommends it.

Meanwhile, Dr. Adediran said the practice in the hospital where she takes care of newborn babies that are born premature is to give them only breast milk, stressing that this is the natural food nature made for feeding children.

She declared that in the first two years of life, the right diet for a child should be of good quality and of enough amounts so that the child can grow well. For instance, appropriate nutrition is important because it can affect the intelligent quotient of the child later on in life. The thinning of the brain in children with malnutrition, according to findings, affects their IQ.

Even when there should be complementary feeding, she said it should only be after the first six months of life and it should be rich both in carbohydrates and protein.