Breast Milk odor Independent Study

unsure of the author of this post, found it online and thought it was interesting. not very many facts to back it up, but it is thought provoking.

source: website: http://babytipz.com/breast-milk/beneficial-effects-breast-milk-odor

Here are the list of its beneficial effects that I had summarized from the journal authored by Shota Nishitani, et al.:

• In the study, the measured variable are crying, grimacing and motor activities during heelsticks to assess infants’ pain responses from breast-milk odor.
• infants exposed to their mother’s milk odor showed less crying, grimacing and motor activity after the heelstick.
• mother’s breast milk odors have soothing effects on infants, because it can suppress salivary cortisol levels in infant (for your information, cortisol will be secreted when baby stress).
• It is not only breast milk odor that have soothing effect for baby, but also amniotic fluid odor and maternal odor seem have soothing effect on baby.
• There’s no soothing effect from other’s breast milk odor. The possible explanation for the restriction of the soothing effect may be major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-based odor differences. MHC genes, which are involved in the adaptive immune response, also produce odor information about individuality and influence social behavior. Babies, therefore, may discriminate MHC-based odors included in the mother milk and respond exclusively to their own mother’s milk.
• Different with breast milk odor, other’s (mother) body odor have soothing effect by decreasing spontaneous crying not only in her own baby, but also in other baby at 2 days of age.
• While formulae milk odor doesn’t have calming and pain relief effect on baby compared to breast milk odor. Newborns were attracted to mother’s breast milk odors more than formulae milk odors, and this preference was independent of postnatal feeding experience.