Prolonged breastfeeding can help babies grow up to be intelligent kids, a new study has found.
Breastfeeding longer is associated with better receptive language at 3 years of age and verbal and nonverbal intelligence at age 7 years, US researchers found.
Mandy B Belfort of Boston Children's Hospital and colleagues examined the relationships of breastfeeding duration and exclusivity with child cognition at ages 3 and 7 years.
Researchers found seven-year-olds breastfed for the first year of life were likely to score four points more in a test of verbal IQ.
Verbal intelligence scores in seven-year-olds increased by 0.35 points for every extra month of breastfeeding and 0.29 points per month on the nonverbal one.
"In summary, our results support a causal relationship of breastfeeding in infancy with receptive language at age 3 and with verbal and nonverbal IQ at school age," researchers said.
The study was published by JAMA Pediatrics, a JAMA Network publication.
