We have all heard the saying about how breast is best for babies.
Since we have access to healthy foods, good medical care, almost all babies will fare well regardless of how you can and choose to feed them, so no mother should feel shamed if she didn't get to breastfeed her baby.
That being said, the undisputed benefits of breast milk can't always be replicated by formula. Aside from having the basic nutrition that babies need to thrive, breast milk is also chocked full of disease-fighting substances and antibodies.
When a baby gets a virus, the mom is also exposed to it and creates antibodies that are passed on to the baby in their milk. As a result studies have shown that breastfed babies are less likely to catch a virus, and if they do, they are better able to fight it of faster thanks to the tailor-made medicine found in their mom's milk.
Further research is being done on breast milk to figure out how to replicate some of it's immunity benefits and how we can replicate it to fight off other diseases including 40 types of cancer cells.
Vicky Greene, a first year bio-sciences student at South Devon College in Paignton, England posted a photo on Facebook that shows the power of breast milk.
**Thanks for all of your messages! I am trying to get through them all, but there's hundreds! Please be patient I will...
Posted by Vicky Greene on Monday, February 6, 2017
This image shows 9 Petri dishes containing the bacteria M. Luteus. Vicky added breast milk from a mom of a 15-month-old and others with the breast milk of the mom of a 3-year-old.
The results are amazing, as you may have guessed. The Petri dish is filled with bacteria, but the center where the breast milk was placed contains no bacteria, as it was killed off by the breast milk.
As Greene explained in the post caption, "The white spots in the middle are discs soaked in two samples of breast milk. See the clear bit around the discs "” that's where the proteins in the milk have killed off the bacteria!"
One thing that struck me about Vicky's experiment is that she didn't use milk meant for newborn or infant babies. She used the milk for a toddler and preschooler. This goes to show the benefits of toddler nursing and gives further credence to the fact that breast milk still has benefits after babies are eating solid food. As a mom who exclusively pumped, because my baby didn't latch, this gives me more confidence knowing that the hours I spent were well worth it!
What do you think of this experiment?
