Health of The Infant
Infants with classic galactosemia cannot digest lactose and therefore cannot benefit from breast milk. Breastfeeding might harm the baby also if the mother has untreated pulmonary tuberculosis, is taking certain medications that suppress the immune system. has HIV, or uses potentially harmful substances such as cocaine, heroin, and amphetamines. Other than cases of acute poisoning, no environmental contaminant has been found to cause more harm to infants than lack of breastfeeding. Although heavy metals such as mercury are dispersed throughout the environment and are of concern to the nursing infant, the neurodevelopmental benefits of human milk tend to override the potential adverse effects of neurotoxicants.
Read more about this topic: Breastfeeding Difficulties
Famous quotes containing the words health of, health and/or infant:
“In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“He had had much experience of physicians, and said, “the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.””
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)