Related Experiment Videos
Smoking and breastfeeding: an overview
Insights
Even for mothers who smoke, breastfeeding is recommended for infant health. While smoking impacts breast milk, the risks to artificially fed infants are greater. Continued breastfeeding offers benefits despite maternal smoking.
Area of Science:
- Reproductive Health
- Pediatrics
- Public Health
Background:
- Maternal smoking is a significant public health concern.
- The effects of smoking on breastfeeding and infant health require careful evaluation.
- Concerns exist regarding tobacco constituents transferred to infants via breast milk or inhalation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review current knowledge on the associations between cigarette smoking, breastfeeding, and infant health.
- To compare risks to breastfed infants of smoking mothers versus artificially fed infants.
- To provide recommendations for mitigating infant morbidity in smoking mothers who breastfeed.
Main Methods:
- Literature review of existing scientific studies.
- Analysis of risks associated with maternal smoking during lactation.
- Comparative assessment of infant health outcomes between breastfed and formula-fed infants exposed to tobacco by-products.
Main Results:
- Cigarette smoking significantly reduces lactational capacity.
- Infants exposed to tobacco constituents via breast milk or inhalation face potential health risks.
- Artificially fed infants share similar exposures and have increased risks of respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases, allergies, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
Conclusions:
- Breastfeeding should be encouraged for all mothers, including smokers.
- The risks associated with smoking and breastfeeding are less severe than the risks of smoking and not breastfeeding.
- Recommendations are provided to minimize infant morbidity in breastfeeding mothers who smoke.
Abstract:
This paper reviews what is presently known about the associations between cigarette smoking, breastfeeding and infant health. Smoking almost certainly reduces lactational capacity. Tobacco constituents and combustion by-products reaching the infant through breastmilk or by inhalation are cause for concern. But artificially-fed infants are similarly exposed to many such compounds, and they in addition are at greater risk of respiratory and gastrointestinal disease, allergic disorders, and cot death. Hence breastfeeding must continue to be encouraged, even for smoking mothers. Recommendations that may reduce infant morbidity from smoking by the breastfeeding mother are set out. The author concludes that the scientific literature indicates that it is far from ideal to smoke and breastfeed--but it is worse to smoke and not breastfeed.