BFing and dental caries                      6/9/96

Brian,

In your recent posting, you wrote: "At this point I can comfortably say that
breastfeeding does not cause tooth decay."

I would like to bring to your attention a fascinating piece of work which I
came across lately: the masters thesis of an Irish dentist, Dr. Torney, on
extended breastfeeding and dental decay. He presented his results at the 1995
LLLI conference and the audio tape is available.

Briefly, he screened the literature and found that skulls of hundreds of years
old (500-1000 years) had a decay rate of less than 0.2%. His contemporary
research was to investigate whether BFing is responsible for "nursing
decay".Children in his study had to have been breastfed for a minimum of 2
years on demand and experienced extensive tooth decay.

Results: neither BFing frequency, nor night nursing, nor switch nursing, nor
lactose content of mothers' milk were responsible for tooth decay. He did find
a weakening of the enamel in the majority of the children who had extensive
decay. The key: enamel development in utero. Who will pick up the ball and do
the appropriate research? I wish I were an MD or a PhD: I would start on it so
fast!

This work is good ammunition for those who need to stand up to dentists who
order weaning BFing children with tooth decay.

Nicole Bernshaw