Capitalism is Bad for Babies

I have long suspected that the main reason that circumcision is still prevalent in the US is money. Doctors get away with charging several hundred dollars for a pointless procedure that only takes them about 15 minutes and they have an endless supply of baby boys to harvest. I have also long suspected that all of the advertising and free samples thrown at every new mom by the greedy formula companies plays a key role in why our breastfeeding rates are so low. And considering the fact that circumcision is bad for breastfeeding, a higher circumcision rate is likely to lower the breastfeeding rate. And then it dawned on me -- capitalism is bad for babies. Could there be a direct link between the type of health care system a country has, how many babies are circumcised, how many babies are breastfed, and how much money is spent each year on formula?

I set out to collect data and found it to be easier said than done. With different statistics coming from different sources and conflicting with others, I quickly got fed up and reduced the amount of data I was looking for. Formula revenue by country was impossible to find. The breastfeeding rates I found tended to be slightly inaccurate (some censuses didn't specify whether the rates given were for exclusively breastfed babies, or just babies who were breastfed at all). There were even discrepancies among circumcision rates. Some countries I wanted to include but couldn't find sufficient data, other countries I hadn't planned on including but came across usable statistics. But overall I was able to compile enough data to give a general idea.

And so I present to you my findings, however roughly estimated they are. Please note the slight change on Canada's graph: instead of babies still breastfed at 6 months, it is babies still breastfed at 9 months (the only data I could find).

USA - Private health care. Approximate $4 Billion infant formula industry.

UK - Free public health care, but ranked very poorly among its neighboring nations. Illegal to advertise infant formula.
Sweden - Free public health care, ranked highly among the rest of the world.

Canada - Free public health care.

Australia - Health care provided by both private and government institutions.


The only real conclusion that you can draw from this is what was stated in the beginning: American doctors and formula companies are greedy and will take advantage of your baby just to make a quick buck. It does seem that countries where doctors can't make a huge profit off of circumcision tend to have much lower rates. And it certainly seems that the lower the circumcision rate, the higher the breastfeeding rate. Are they directly related? No one can be sure, but I believe that there is a significant correlation. I think it is also interesting to note that most of the other countries presented have signed the World Health Organization Code of Marketing Breastmilk Substitutes, preventing the advertising of infant formula and the distribution of free samples. Some countries actually enforce it more than others.

As if you needed another reason to breastfeed... nighttime nursing causes drowsiness!

You read it right! Yet another example of how Mother Nature knows exactly what she is doing, the milk a mother creates in the evening induces drowsiness in her baby. Nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, are found in breastmilk and are assumed to be important for tissue development. But that's not all, they have also been implicated to naturally get a baby used to sleeping at night and being awake during the day.

"Cristina Sánchez at the University of Extremadura in Badajoz, Spain, and her colleagues looked at the concentrations of 5'UMP, 5'AMP and 5''GMP – the three nucleotides most strongly associated with sleep and sedation – in the breast milk of 30 healthy mothers who had been breast-feeding for at least 3 months. Samples of milk were collected before each feed over a 24-hour period, with between six and eight samples collected per mother.

They found that concentrations of 5'AMP were highest at the beginning of the night, while levels of 5'GMP and 5'UMP increased as the night wore on. These sedatives were found at much lower concentrations in milk expressed during the day.

She suggests that 5'AMP in breast milk might be fuelling the release of the sleep-promoting neurotransmitter GABA, while 5'GMP is involved in the secretion of melatonin,which helps regulate the natural body clock. 5'UMP is known to promote the amount of both REM and non-REM sleep."

So What Does This Mean for Moms?

Pumping milk during the day and letting Dad bottle feed baby at night is a bad idea. Many parents think letting dad feed the baby at night is a good way for mom to get sleep. Think again! Feeding baby daytime milk in a bottle wouldn't make him drowsy nearly as much as if mom just rolled over and fed him straight from the tap. Basically, this finding proves the point that nature intends for our babies to sleep in bed with us, nursing throughout the night. Babies who are in cribs nurse less during the night and therefore receive less of these nucleotides. Babies who are formula fed are getting the exact same substance all day long, with nothing special to make them sleepy at night.

"Since previous studies have also hinted that bottle-fed infants have more problems sleeping through the night, Sánchez's colleague, Javier Cubero, has been investigating whether sleep-inducing nucleotides could be added to formula milk.

In a separate study, Sánchez and Cubero created a "night-time" milk by adding 5'AMP and 5'UMP to standard formula milk. Infants receiving this milk between 6 pm and 6 am, and normal milk during the day, fell asleep faster and spent longer sleeping than when they drank standard formula milk all the time."

Say What?!

There's a horrible idea if I ever heard one! Sure, adding these sleep inducing nucleotides might be a good way to help formula fed babies with sleep problems... but how many parents will abuse this discovery? A breastfeeding mother can't help the fact that her milk contains more nucleotides at night and less during the day. A formula feeding mother, given the option between AM formula and PM formula, could simply choose to give her child the PM formula whenever she doesn't feel like dealing with him! Now I'm sure most mothers would use it properly, but there are some bad people out there who would jump at the opportunity to make their babies sleep all day. Let's just hope they never start marketing formula with added nucleotides, and keep enjoying the benefits nature stows upon us!