Solutions for dealing with out of control medical expenses are out there. Actually, there’s one very easy, natural remedy. However, as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), while three-quarters of infants born within the United States take their first meals via breastfeeding, the rate plummets after six months, which runs contrary to CDC Nutritious People standards. Doctors cited in CDC research make a direct connection between low nursing rates and higher pediatric expenses because of the heightened prospect of disease in infants who aren’t nursed.
Nutritious People are a unit of nursing
Dr. William Dietz of the CDC told Medpage Today that “Meeting the national breastfeeding initiation goal is a good accomplishment in women’s and children’s health, however we have more work ahead”. That work is made clear by CDC study findings: 57 percent of United States infants are no longer nursing at 6 months, and 78 percent are done by one year.
The United States makes it hard to breastfeed
Breastfeeding rates vary wildly by state in the 2007 CDC Healthy Individuals study – 90 percent of newborns are breastfeeding in Utah, versus about 53 percent in Mississippi, for instance. State support for breastfeeding policies are a significant part of the study. At the time of the study, 21 states still had no breastfeeding-friendly facilities, and the very same states (plus others) tended to have hospitals with lower ratings for quality of maternity care and infant feeding instruction. Two years following the 2007 CDC study, the National Conference of State Legislatures noted a marked improvement within the overall penetration of nursing legislation across the United States, however it is nevertheless not universal. In some states, nursing is nevertheless looked upon with disdain, particularly in public (no matter how discrete the mother might be). As the 2009 Facebook scandal involving a ban on breastfeeding photos proves, some segments of America simply don’t understand what it means to be human. Infant formula makers certainly don’t object, although people who care may protest as they are with the international Nestlé boycott.
The price of not nursing is sky high
Dr. Melissa Bartick of Harvard Medical School and Arnold Reinhold of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics found in a recent study that infants who weren’t fed colostrum-rich breast milk contributed mightily to soaring pediatric expenses. ”$3.6 billion could be saved if breastfeeding rates were increased to levels of the Healthy People objectives,” according to Bartick and Reinhold’s report in Pediatrics journal. And that data is from 2001; today’s numbers are even more frightening. Updated, the author’s study bears even more sobering numbers. Bartick and Reinhold found that if children six months and under were fed breast milk exclusively at the CDC Healthy Individuals level of 90 percent, American families could save “$13 billion per year and prevent an excess of 911 deaths, nearly all of which would be in infants”.
Infant formula is considered an acceptable option by some, however the inferiority of ingredients (when compared with breast milk) and overall expense makes it a truly inferior substitute. Some mothers have personal medical reasons for using infant formula, and being in the position of needing money for costly formula – via payday loan or otherwise – is a tough place to be.
Discover more details on this subject
Pediatrics
pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/peds.2009-1616v1
CDC Breast Feeding Report Card
cdc.gov/breastfeeding/pdf/BreastfeedingReportCard2010.pdf
Medpage Today
medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/GeneralPediatrics/22162
National Conference of State Legislatures
ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=14389
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_milk
