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Surprising Finding on Newborn Acid Reflux: Be Very Scared About Prilosec

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Parents of newborns are always worried about their little one. But this can lead to misguided trust in the wrong pediatrician if the little one is sick.

Excessive spitting up, crying after eating and refusing to eat can all be symptoms of what may be diagnosed as infant reflux.  The less wary pediatrician, if symptoms are creating a problem with eating enough, may recommend a prescription of Nexium or Prilosec.  The first time I heard of this practice, I was astounded that anyone would even consider giving a drug that blocks digestion to an infant.  After all–what does an infant do?  Eat, poop and cry.  Two of the 3 are intimately involved with digestion.  Using a drug to block digestion is pretty much nixing the life of an infant.

It’s bad enough in an adult.  Shutting down digestion is a very, very bad idea except in a few scenarios.  If you have a bleeding ulcer, for example, Nexium can very well save your life.  But if you’ve got a case of heartburn and use acid-blocking drugs for years on end, you are absolutely destroying your body’s essential functions and will open up a huge Pandora’s box of problems.

In infants, this concern is multiplied tenfold.  The real kicker is that drugs are only needed in rare cases because natural approaches for infant reflux can work so well.  The most recent article I had covered had to do with the use of vitamin B12 in infants with reflux and regurgitation that can be read by clicking here.  The results were pretty impressive.

Just in case you are one of those parents whose pediatrician has recommended an acid blocking drug for newborn acid reflux, this particular study should scare the bejesus out of you.  In this study, researchers looked at just how much digestion of proteins was going on in the stomach of 3 little ones.  This is important because, if there is a lot of digestion going on and we slam this process with drugs, it’s going to have an unpredictable long term effect on your infant’s long-term health.  Here’s what they found:

  • Milk from 3 was collected and compared to a small sample from the stomach of the infants (who were 4  to 12 days old).
  • Milk from the moms contained almost 200 distinct peptides (segments of proteins), demonstrating that there was some digestion of the breast milk either during lactation or between milk collection and feeding.
  • In the newborn stomach samples, 649 milk peptides were found, showing that a large amount of  digestion was occurring in the stomach.
  • A total of 603 peptides differed significantly in quantities between breast milk and the infant stomach samples.
  • Most of the identified peptides have been shown to have immunomodulatory and antibacterial properties.

So what does all this mean?  It means that, even from day one, an infants digestive process is up and running full tilt, turning proteins from foods into protective compounds that will steer the development of the immune system for a lifetime.  I cannot begin to contemplate the long-term damage that using drugs to block acid in newborn acid reflux will cause.

 

Breast Milk Offers Twice the Antioxidant Protection of Formula – (05-07-01)

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Breast Milk Offers Twice the Antioxidant Protection of Formula

I think the evidence supporting breast feeding is overwhelmingly in favor. I think the problem today is that many mothers are told to cease breastfeeding when certain symptoms show up in the infant: colic, skin rashes, diarrhea… In cases like these we need to evaluate the mother’s diet and attempt to eliminate any foods from her diet that the infant may be sensitive to before we stop nursing.

Experimental Biology 2001 meeting Breast milk, even from mothers who deliver prematurely, contains twice the levels of antioxidants as commercial formula, according to a study presented at the Experimental Biology 2001 meeting. Dr. James Friel of Memorial University in St. John’s in Newfoundland noted that the lungs and immune systems of premature infants are not as developed as full-term infants. Dr. Friel said, “That means that these infants are under attack by oxygen free radicals but lack ability to cope with that stress.” The resulting oxidative stress is associated with respiratory distress syndrome, haemorrhage, eye disorders and various other problems. Earlier studies found that breast milk contains “antioxidant enzymes, but we thought that the levels of these enzymes may be greater in milk produced by mothers of premature infants,” he said. Dr. Friel also hypothesized that colostrum “would be particularly protective.” Dr. Friel compared milk from 28 women who had preterm deliveries to milk from 17 women who delivered at full term. The milk was collected at weeks 1, 2, and 12, he said. He tested the antioxidant protection potency by exposing all the milk samples to high levels of free radicals. The result was surprising. “There was really no difference in the antioxidant protection level from week to week. It was all good,” he said. Likewise, “there was no difference [in the breast milk] between the mothers of premature babies and the mothers of full-term babies.” Dr. Friel also attempted to enhance breast milk by fortifying it with more antioxidant enzymes. He also tried the same “fortification” with formula. He discovered that when he added antioxidants found in breast milk to commercial infant formula, “the formula offered better protection against free radicals. But when we added additional enzymes to the breast milk, it didn’t increase the antioxidant protection of breast milk.” He concludes that it is difficult to improve nature, but “commercial formulas could be improved so that they more closely resemble human breast milk.”

 

2 More Reasons Breast Feeding Beats Even the Best Baby Formula

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I hear it time and time again.  “Baby Johnny didn’t have problems until I stopped breast feeding and switched to baby formula.”  In the past, I have focused on the new food or formula being introduced.  That has just been the path that made the most sense.  After all, everything was going well until new foods were introduced into the baby’s system.

If the problem seems to be with the introduction of the baby formula, I will recommend switching to a hydrolyzed formula like Nutramigen or Alimentum.  It’s not a matter of switching from soy to cow’s milk or vice versa–it’s just that your infant’s gut is not ready to handle anything other than mom’s milk until well after 6 months.  This is why the hydrolyzed formulas are a better option–the proteins are already enzymatically pre-digested so his or her little digestive system has less to react to.

Of course, all of this was before I read this particular article.

I have addressed all the benefits of breast feeding over baby formula in a previous blog article that can be read by clicking here, so I won’t belabor the issue again.

Researchers identified two key abilities of breast milk that were not present in formula:

  1. Breast milk had a natural ability to quiet smooth muscle cells, like those of the GI tract.  This could help nursing infants from having abdominal cramping and pain.
  2. Breast milk had higher antioxidant abilities over baby formula. Greater antioxidant protection can obviously lead to all kinds of protective benefits over the formula.

I won’t belabor the point again, but I will highlight that we really have NO idea the full breadth and diversity of compounds that are present in breast milk.  As a result, even the best baby formula will be just a shadow of what breast feeding is to a developing newborn and infant.

NURSING MOTHERS BE AWARE OF WHAT YOU EAT – (12-06-05)

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Effect of a Low-Allergen Maternal Diet on Colic Among Breastfed Infants

Many would not think that the foods a nursing mother takes in would have a large impact on certain conditions her infant may be experiencing, but that’s not the case at all. Even the mercury from her fillings can show up in breast milk. This reinforces that a nursing mother needs to be fully aware of the quality and type of foods she is eating. What was interesting, however, was that, although the reduction in distress in the infant was clearly demonstrated, the moms did not note much of a difference.

Read entire article here

DO YOU KNOW THAT THE BACTERIAL FLORA HAS AN IMPACT ON OUR HEALTH? – (03-06-05)

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Bacterial counts of intestinal Lactobacillus species in infants with colic

There is no longer a question that the bacterial flora in our bodies (pharynx, stomach, SI, LI, vaginal vault..) have an impact on our health.  While many clinicians that wouldn’t recognize a medical journal if it hit them in the face remains oblivious to this fact, the research, as always, moves on.  We are now focusing on the types and levels of bacteria that positively and negatively impact our health.  Considering the number of bacteria in our gut, this job is not an easy one.

The research comes in in bits and pieces, but I’m sure that we will soon have a much clearer picture of the impacts different species have on our health.  Maybe then our focus will shift away from antibiotic resistance to the much larger problem of destroying normal, protective flora.

Read entire article here