Breastfeeding is a stress-free solution to the worries about melamine in infant formula.

Recent findings of melamine in infant formula have probably sent countless worried parents off to consult physicians or search the Web to find out what they can about melamine and its effects.

But young parents have enough to worry about without the anxiety of thinking about chemicals such as melamine added to their child's formula. And new Food and Drug Administration safety limits may not appease parents who wonder why melamine needs to be added to milk in the first place.

However, mothers who breastfeed know exactly what is in the milk their infants are consuming. Additionally, studies have shown significant health benefits from breastfeeding such as lower rates of sudden infant death syndrome, acute respiratory tract infections, asthma, obesity, diabetes and childhood leukemia.

The U.S promotes "exclusive breastfeeding" for six months in its assistance programs to developing countries.

We would benefit from taking our own government's advice.

A coalition of health advocates, looking to seize the momentum of a new administration, will meet with members of President-elect Barack Obama's transition team next week in Washington, D.C., to push for a ban on bisphenol A.

The fact that Obama's team is willing to meet now - with all the other pressures facing the incoming administration - sends a strong signal that the president-elect is open to making environmental health issues a higher priority than the Bush administration.

A meeting has been set, but participants are sketchy on details of who will be there because they say they do not want to call it to the attention of chemical manufacturers.

Chemical-makers have lobbied fiercely for years against any ban on the controversial chemical used to make baby bottles and thousands of other household products. The government has sent mixed signals on the safety of bisphenol A or BPA. Different agencies under the Bush administration have reached different conclusions about the risks. As a result, there has been no uniform policy on the chemical.

With influential members of Congress calling for a ban on BPA, health advocates say they are optimistic.

"I believe this will be banned," said Janet Nudelman, director of program and policy for the Breast Cancer Fund, an advocacy group aimed at preventing the disease, who plans to be at the meeting.

Mother of infant who almost died from water intoxication: 'Now I know'

Tough financial times often call for inventive, improvised measures for families to make ends meet, but it nearly cost Jeri Moss the life of her 5-month-old son La'Damian.

Moss, a 23-year-old Tampa, Fla., student, stretched the supply of baby formula for her infant by adding extra water, but it triggered a near-fatal effect in La'Damian while she was out shopping with him at a local grocery store.

"He curled up in like a ball, and so I grabbed him and noticed he wasn't breathing," Moss told NBC News for a report that aired Wednesday on TODAY.

Moss performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on La'Damian, but the boy still wasn't breathing when he was rushed to University Community Hospital last week. He was diagnosed with water intoxication and put on a ventilator.

Hospital physician James Orlowski told NBC, "Another hour, he could have been dead."

Happily for Moss, La'Damian is on the mend, and was brought home on Tuesday. But her near-miss shines a light on the serious health dangers for infants from parents cutting corners to cope with a limited budget.

"When parents don't have two pennies to rub together, good intentions are 'Why don't we dilute the formula, it will last longer,' " NBC chief medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman told Meredith Vieira on TODAY on Wednesday.

"The problem with infants is there's this margin of safety that's so narrow."

The Food and Drug Administration issued a conclusion on Nov. 28 concerning the safety and relative toxicity of melamine in baby formula, claiming that 1 part per million can cause no real harm. This study is a response to the September outcry over China's use of the substance in dairy products, which caused thousands of infants to fall sick and at least four to die, in addition to the cats and dogs poisoned in the United States in 2007 by imported food. On Oct. 3, the FDA's risk assessment of melamine and its related compounds concluded that "levels of melamine and its analogues below 2.5 parts per million in foods other than infant formula do not raise public-health concerns." Now, we have a 1 part per million safety cushion for formula, which really isn't a comfort considering that, at any level, melamine still is not food. At all.

Melamine is an organic base that can bond quite easily with similar substances, and it is used in a range of such useful items as concrete, Formica, and flame retardant. When combined with formaldehyde, it produces a strong resin used to make flatware and kitchen utensils. When combined with cyanuric acid, an element in bleaches and herbicides, it becomes melamine cyanurate, and in the athanor of the digestive tract, this substance crystallizes into a particularly nettlesome kind of kidney stone, hard to dissolve, and occasionally toxic and/or fatal. Why does this substance exist at all in some foods? Because it raises the apparent protein content so dairy plants will accept subpar milk.

"Farmers have no idea what melamine is. They only know if they add it, their milk will not be refused," said a Hebei Province feedmill owner. Other than that, it does nothing, except kill people in certain quantities.

The birth of a child brings awe and wonder. We marvel how a perfect human being can develop from just a tiny cell. We marvel how the mother's body has the capacity of producing such a miracle yet we give little thought to how the body is also capable of producing nurture for that same child in the months following its birth.

The natural production of milk is perhaps the least appreciated gift that nature has bestowed upon us, although almost all great religions recognise breastfeeding as essential for nurturing the young. The ancient Jewish sages write "breast milk is the primary source of nourishment and anything else is secondary". Buddhist writings describe that a woman who gives birth becomes Mata - one who protects her child. She holds the baby to her breast, keeps the child warm and provides milk - a substance considered the blood of her breast and the milk of human kindness filled with the "honey of goodness". She feeds her child strength and intelligence. Breastfeeding is consistently followed in Buddhist tradition while, in Islam, breastfeeding is considered an obligation and a major duty for mothers who are able, and is recognised as a way of providing natural immunity and intensifying the mother's affection for her child. Nursing is referred to in the Old Testament as early as the story of the birth of Isaac, who was nursed by his mother Sarah until the age of two. Jewish legal writings strongly recommend that a mother breastfeed for a period of at least two years - even more if the child is sickly. While Christianity prescribes no specific length of time for breastfeeding, Christian theologians point out that since Jesus was born into the Jewish religion, he must have been nurtured according to its tradition. Modern Christian churches emphasise family togetherness and some theologians cite the increased closeness within the family and the bonding that breastfeeding is known to encourage as reasons for promoting its practice.

Did you know which women have the lowest risk for ever developing breast cancer? Breastfeeding mothers who as babies were also breastfed. Research shows that breastfeeding can help protect mothers and babies against breast cancer, but the length of time she continues to nurse is also important. The longer she breastfeeds (including breastfeeding any other children) the more protection she receives.

Breastfed babies also have a lowered risk for developing breast cancer. Thus, breastfeeding moms who were also breastfed infants would have the lowest risk possible for ever developing breast cancer.

The United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC) issued a press release on Aug. 28 titled: Breastfeeding Reduces Risk of Breast Cancer. It contained the following information: “Breast cancer is the second most frequently diagnosed and second most deadly cancer among women. Similarly, when discussing breast self-exams with their patients, many physicians quote the statistic that one out of every eight women will get breast cancer in her lifetime. Yet many still do not realize that, multiple studies have shown that breastfeeding reduces the risk of breast cancer—in addition to lifestyle changes such as exercising, eating a healthy diet, limiting alcohol intake and avoiding smoking.”

“USBC Chair Joan Younger Meek, MD MS RD FAAP FABM IBCLC, affirms that research has demonstrated that breastfeeding protects mothers from both breast and ovarian cancers, in addition to the more familiar benefits enjoyed by breastfed babies, including protection against illnesses such as ear infections, respiratory infections and diarrhea, and also protection against chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes and childhood leukemia. Studies have also reported a decreased risk of breast cancer in women with a life-time breastfeeding duration of more than 12 months.”

The exercise that babies get while suckling at the breast may be an essential component of the respiratory benefits associated with breastfeeding, new research shows.

Dr. Ikechukwu U. Ogbuanu of the University of South Carolina in Columbia and colleagues found that by 10 years old children who were breastfed for 4 months or longer had larger lung capacities than their counterparts who had been nursed for a shorter amount of time or not at all. The breastfed children were also able to expel air from their lungs more quickly.

While the children's speedier exhalations could have been related to the beneficial components of breast milk, "the lung capacity cannot be really explained by the immune factors in the breast milk," Ogbuanu told Reuters Health. Instead, Ogbuanu and his colleagues argue, the harder work required of babies who drink from the breast rather than a bottle is a more likely explanation.

Breastfeeding is known to help protect babies from developing respiratory infections, but studies of whether it may reduce their risk of asthma risk later in life have had mixed results, the researchers write in the journal Thorax. To investigate, they looked at lung function in 1,033 children who were 10 years old, born on the Isle of Wight, and were followed since birth.

The average lung capacity, as measured by the volume of air a child could exhale forcibly, was 54 milliliters greater in those who were breastfed for at least 4 months than in those who were not been breastfed at all. Peak expiratory flow, or the maximum speed at which the air can blown out of the lungs, was 180.8 milliliters per second faster in these children.

Based on the latest UK findings, limited alcohol consumption may be OK, but be cautious with caffeine.

As expected, the worst outcomes were seen in children whose moms drank heavily while pregnant. But children of light-drinking moms had fewer behavioral or cognitive problems than those of abstinent moms.

The study, published online in October in the International Journal of Epidemiology, defined light drinking as not more than two drinks (a 4-fluid-ounce glass of wine or 10 fluid ounces of weak beer) on a single occasion and not more than two occasions per week. No difference was seen between women who drank once or twice during their pregnancies and those who regularly enjoyed a weekend glass of wine.

Lead author Yvonne Kelly, an epidemiologist at University College London, says that the links between heavy drinking and fetal alcohol syndrome are undisputed but that little is known about light drinking's effects. That has led to conflicting medical advice from two major UK policymakers, with one urging complete abstinence and the other recommending no more than one to two drinks once or twice a week (if women choose to drink) in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, but none in the first.

In the U.S., the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advises pregnant women to avoid alcohol entirely.

Caffeine's a concern

The news for caffeine is different. In a study of 2,635 mothers-to-be published online this month in the British Medical Journal, researchers saw effects on babies' birth weights when expectant moms consumed daily doses of as low as 100 mg -- the amount in an 8-ounce cup of coffee. Babies born to women consuming more than 200 mg of caffeine a day weighed an average 2.2 ounces less than those born to moms taking in less than 100 mg. More than 300 mg per day led to a 5-ounce average reduction in birth weight.