There is literature to support that breastfeeding does not cause dental
carries. On LLL handout 883-17 Facts About Breastfeeding 2000 the section is
headed A few breastfed toddlers develop dental caries in spite of
breastfeeding, not because of it.

The reference cited is:  Erickson, R. & Mazhari, E. Investigation of the
role of human breast milk in caries development. Pediatr Dentistry
1999;21(2):86-90.

Your state LLL APL Department should have a bit of information on the topic
as it is one of the recurrent medical questions that LLL has handled over
the years. Perhaps you could also find it at the LLL website (haven't been
there recently to check it).

I was going to expound a little on that this belief persists among dentists
because they read their dental literature and not medical literature about
breastfeeding, but noted that this most recent study was published in
Pediatric Dentistry. There is no excuse now!

There is an article that appears in Army newspapers (I can not remember
which Dental/Medical Command it originated in) that probably in it's
original form was ok. But when I was at Fort Knox, the local Dental system
edited it before it went into the Ft. Knox paper. The result was garbage. I
wrote the paper immediately and then sent a letter chastising both the
newspaper and the Dental command for allowing such information to be
publicly published.

I believe that they went back to the original article (neither one sent me a
response) as a couple of years later the same article appeared but with
better information. I say they went back to the original article, as imagine
my surprize this year when I opened my Fort Hood newspaper and saw the exact
same article.

It is right up there as one of my greatest pet peeves,
equating/interchanging breastfeeding and human milk with bottle feeding and
formula. The processes are different and we all know that formula and human
milk are different.

Leslie Ward (who gave herself away this morning that it's LLL)
Fort Hood, TX

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