No health benefits from breast-feeding

according to the IRS

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/business/27breast.html?_r=1

:mad2: nuts. absolutely insane.

Seconded.

I see their logic. They view breast milk as a healthy food, not medicine. They also won't let you buy a frying pan with your medical flexible spending account money so you can cook up some healthy salmon.

But breast-feeding is indicated in reducing the risk of breast cancer.......

Yeah, if it were up to me, I'd include them. It's not like it's going to bankrupt the government. And you buy them at a drug store, not a grocery store. But I agree with their point that breast milk is food, not medicine.

But you're not buying the milk. you're buying the apparatus to help you breast feed

Just as buying artificial turf because your kid is allergic to grass. Acupuncture. Swedish Penis Enlarger.

And this (from IRS website Pub 502 for 2009):

Meals
You can include in medical expenses the cost of meals at a hospital or similar institution if a principal reason for being there is to get medical care.

You cannot include in medical expenses the cost of meals that are not part of inpatient care.

Obviously the infant formula lobby can kick the living shit out of the breast pump manufacturer's lobby with one arm tied behind its back.

Did you really think this has anything to do with logic and reason, or were you being
(choose all that apply)
a)Rhetorical
b)Ironical
c)sarcastical

This could have been a perfect example of the incentives Clod was talking about in another post.

Hmmm, me thinks the formula industry whispered in their ear.

EDIT: Goddamn it Foot, if only I'd pushed enter sooner.

monster;691024 wrote:

But you're not buying the milk. you're buying the apparatus to help you breast feed

Fish is healthy for you. Should a fishing pole be covered?

I'm not arguing against pumps, because I think they are great, but a pump is there for convenience. The breasts work just fine for delivering the food directly to the baby. The pump is there so the baby can get the same healthy food even if the mom has to be somewhere else.

Other baby convenience items like diapers are not covered.

If breast feeding lowers risks for cancer, then that's a good argument, but then you also need to make sex toys for men be covered, because masturbation lowers risks for prostate cancer. Maybe an old dude just needs his Real Doll to get off.

It's interesting that programs to help you stop smoking are covered, so there is precedence for paying for things that lower your risk of cancer.

Shawnee123;691026 wrote:

Just as buying artificial turf because your kid is allergic to grass. Acupuncture. Swedish Penis Enlarger.

Well I don't know if any of those are actually covered, maybe acupuncture, but there are some interesting things that are covered, like high spf sunscreen.

glatt;691040 wrote:

Fish is healthy for you. Should a fishing pole be covered?.

Well, is the act of fishing good for you? as in, does it have documented health benefits for the entire group of people who undertake that activity vs those who don't?

Breast feeding, I do believe is the ultimate health benefit that millions of babies just aren't getting. If breast pumps were 'incenitfied', then maybe more women would be inclined to do it and then maybe more babies would grow into healthier adults.

monster;691044 wrote:

Well, is the act of fishing good for you? as in, does it have documented health benefits for the entire group of people who undertake that activity vs those who don't?

glatt;691040 wrote:

If breast feeding lowers risks for cancer, then that's a good argument, but then you also need to make sex toys for men be covered, because masturbation lowers risks for prostate cancer. Maybe an old dude just needs his Real Doll to get off.

Pico and ME;691046 wrote:

Breast feeding, I do believe is the ultimate health benefit that millions of babies just aren't getting. If breast pumps were 'incenitfied', then maybe more women would be inclined to do it and then maybe more babies would grow into healthier adults.

I agree. This gets into the same idea as Clodfobble's posts to create incentives for healthy food. Blueberries should be cheap, and ramen noodles should be expensive.

glatt;691040 wrote:

~snip~
Well I don't know if any of those are actually covered, maybe acupuncture, but there are some interesting things that are covered, like high spf sunscreen.

The astroturf thing was in the article and the acupunture was on the IRS website. The Penis Enlarger was completely a product of my vivid imagination. :p:

Good arguments for paid 3-month maternity leaves and for "Take your baby to work" programs.

Years ago, the science was that the antibodies from the Mom passed to the Baby were only in the colostrum (first milk), so unless the science has changed, I don't see the argument for preventing infections, etc. out to 6 months.

I do think there are psychological benefits of keeping the Mom and Baby together, but sometimes the emotional arguments for breast-feeding sometimes seem to go overboard. e.g., preventing cancer

Shawnee123;691051 wrote:

....The Penis Enlarger was completely a product of my vivid imagination. :p:....

Oh...give it time. And Viagra will make it on the list, too. :rolleyes:

glatt;691047 wrote:

boob cancer vs knob cancer (paraphrase mine)

but remember, we only care about the boobies.

Srsly, i don't have a problem with it. If a doctor will sign off on it as a health benefit, it should be included. Of course there will be crooked doctors who will help people screw the system. but this already happens. Why make nursing working mothers they people who have to pay for that?

Lamplighter;691052 wrote:

Good arguments for paid 3-month maternity leaves and for "Take your baby to work" programs.

Years ago, the science was that the antibodies from the Mom passed to the Baby were only in the colostrum (first milk), so unless the science has changed, I don't see the argument for preventing infections, etc. out to 6 months.

I do think there are psychological benefits of keeping the Mom and Baby together, but sometimes the emotional arguments for breast-feeding sometimes seem to go overboard. e.g., preventing cancer

yup, your science is a little out of date.

monster;691055 wrote:

If a doctor will sign off on it as a health benefit, it should be included.

And I think that's the bottom line. I would agree wholeheartedly with that. Whatever "it" is.

Pico and ME;691054 wrote:

Oh...give it time. And Viagra will make it on the list, too. :rolleyes:

It probably is covered under "drugs" but at least in this case, unlike most medical insurance, it does not then exclude birth control. [/end serious part]

[begin sarcastical part] Hey, a guy needs to get his rocks off. It's healthier for society, so they don't go on rampages and stuff (you don't believe that, do you guys? That you're such animals? Yeah, i don't either.) ;)

Anyhoo, it's only about the pumps. I think women could do without them, as a medical supply. Just squeeze boobehs really hard into a large bowl then, using a funnel, transfer milk to an old water bottle. If you can't afford a funnel you can use a SNANK bag. Water bottles can be found in your nearby landfill.

:lol:

glatt;691057 wrote:

And I think that's the bottom line. I would agree wholeheartedly with that. Whatever "it" is.

right. I seriously doubt many doctors would refuse to sign off on a breast pump regardless of whether the health reasons were dietary or otherwise or the benefits for mother or baby or both. Unfortunately, this is a sensible solution.

Lamplighter;691052 wrote:

Good arguments for [B]paid[/B....sometimes the emotional arguments for breast-feeding sometimes seem to go overboard. e.g., preventing cancer

Oh Please. Emotional?? Thats underhanded.

READ THIS:

It is estimated that the cumulative
incidence of breast cancer in developed countries would be reduced by more than half, from 6.3 to 2.7 per 100 women by age 70, if women had the average number of births and lifetime duration of breastfeeding that had been prevalent in developing countries until recently. Breastfeeding could account for almost two-thirds of this estimated reduction in breast cancer incidence. The longer women breast feed the more they are protected against breast cancer. The lack of or short lifetime
duration of breastfeeding typical of women in developed countries makes a major contribution to the high incidence of breast cancer in these countries. Beral V et al. “Breast cancer and breastfeeding: collaborative reanalysis of individual data from 47 epidemiological studies in 30 countries, including 50 302 women with breast cancer and 96 973 women without the disease.” Lancet, Jul 20 2002; 360 (9328): 187-195

Women who breastfed a child for more than 24 months had a 54% reduced risk of developing breast cancer compared with women who breastfed for no more than 6 months. Women who breastfed for at least 73 months over the course of their lives had a much lower risk of breast cancer. The investigators found that the protective effect of breastfeeding applied to a woman's
risk of developing breast cancer both before and after menopause.

Shawnee123;691059 wrote:

Just squeeze boobehs really hard

If only it were that simple. For most women it isn't. I got lucky, 'cause that breastpumping thing aint a whole wheelbarrow load of joy in my experience.

Maybe doctors should only sign off on things that hurt a whole shitload. 'Cause then we know they're good for you....?

Pico and ME;691063 wrote:

Oh Please. Emotional?? Thats underhanded.

No, just outdated. But he admitted that himself.

Monster, he used 'emotional' deliberately because it is associated with women, or maybe its just ingrained in him...he is from an older generation. Go ahead and give him a pass if you want, but it was a stupid word to choose.

monster;691065 wrote:

If only it were that simple. For most women it isn't. I got lucky, 'cause that breastpumping thing aint a whole wheelbarrow load of joy in my experience.

Maybe doctors should only sign off on things that hurt a whole shitload. 'Cause then we know they're good for you....?

Oh, I couldn't even imagine. I bet it really does hurt.

Ultrasounds are better detectors of breast cancer than mammograms and hurt a lot less, but you know...women can handle anything. Oh, and an ultrasound is more expensive. Soon women will go back to pushing out a baby in their family's backyard and, after a five minute rest period, get back to beating clothes against the rocks in the creek.

Pico and ME;691070 wrote:

Monster, he used 'emotional' deliberately because it is associated with women, or maybe its just ingrained in him...he is from an older generation. Go ahead and give him a pass if you want, but it was a stupid word to choose.

oh no pass from me, being out of date is not an excuse, I was just rubbing it in :D And thanks for finding a link -I was too lazy/busy trying to find out the latest about the bank robbery.....

glatt;691048 wrote:

I agree. This gets into the same idea as Clodfobble's posts to create incentives for healthy food. Blueberries should be cheap, and ramen noodles should be expensive.

One size doesn't fit all. I can't eat blueberries. I'd end up in the hospital. But I can eat ramen, if I sift out the green flakey stuff. You're going to penalize me for having Crohn's?

The world is a complex place.

Maybe if you had been breastfed, you wouldn't have Crohn's now.

j/k

[COLOR="Wheat"](sort of)[/COLOR]

monster;691055 wrote:

Srsly, i don't have a problem with it. If a doctor will sign off on it as a health benefit, it should be included. Of course there will be crooked doctors who will help people screw the system.

Even if every doctor signed off on every pump, it wouldn't amount to jack shit for the government's coffers, whereas it could be a significant help for the pumper.
But more than that, it would be the right thing for the IRS to do.

Pico and ME;691094 wrote:

Maybe if you had been breastfed, you wouldn't have Crohn's now.

j/k

[COLOR="Wheat"](sort of)[/COLOR]

It's possible. Statistics show that industrialized nations have a much higher incidence of Crohn's. But they don't know why that is.

On the other hand, this was the 50s and my mother smoked through the pregnancy and after. I don't know what the relative merits of breast feeding would be in that case.

It would give her a chance to sit and have a cigarette. ;)

Pete Zicato;691099 wrote:

It's possible. Statistics show that industrialized nations have a much higher incidence of Crohn's. But they don't know why that is.

On the other hand, this was the 50s and my mother smoked through the pregnancy and after. I don't know what the relative merits of breast feeding would be in that case.

Yeah, my Mom smoked too. Thats probably why we are all so short...:sniff:.

Pete Zicato;691099 wrote:

It's possible. Statistics show that industrialized nations have a much higher incidence of Crohn's. But they don't know why that is.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if industrialized nations actually had higher breastfeeding rates, thanks to the immorality of the formula industry and the relative advertising naïveté of the third world.

xoxoxoBruce;691102 wrote:

It would give her a chance to sit and have a cigarette. ;)

:lol:

Even the sickest babies benefit from breast-feeding

"Human milk is important for all newborns, but especially for sick infants," said project mentor Diane L. Spatz, Ph.D., R.N.-B.C., nurse researcher, of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Breast milk protects an infant in the NICU from necrotizing enterocolitis—a devastating disease of the bowel—and from a host of infectious diseases. "It is of critical importance that all mothers make the informed decision to provide human milk for their infants, and that nurses provide evidence-based lactation care and support in order for mothers to achieve success," added Spatz.

I had so much milk I should have hired myself out as a wet nurse.

wtf @ the IRS

Pete Zicato;691099 wrote:

It's possible. Statistics show that industrialized nations have a much higher incidence of Crohn's. But they don't know why that is.

On the other hand, this was the 50s and my mother smoked through the pregnancy and after. I don't know what the relative merits of breast feeding would be in that case.

Never too late to start. You're only as young as you feel!

Shawnee123;691059 wrote:

[begin sarcastical part] Hey, a guy needs to get his rocks off. It's healthier for society, so they don't go on rampages and stuff (you don't believe that, do you guys? That you're such animals? Yeah, i don't either.) ;)

Hey! My best friend died on 911 from DSB (deadly semen backup)

Happy Monkey;691108 wrote:

I actually wouldn't be surprised if industrialized nations actually had higher breastfeeding rates, thanks to the immorality of the formula industry and the relative advertising naïveté of the third world.

I'd think that would be a very recent reversal then. The whole babyfood industry began life in the industrialised world. They had a huge impact on parenting patterns in Britain, Europe and America. I remember my mum telling me that when she was growing up, powdered babymilk was seen as a healthier option: it was 'scientifically' balanced :P

There's a massive legacy from that. Rates of breastfeeding in inner-city areas are often shockingly low. The area I represent in council, is mainly white working-class and suffers from all the problems of a deprived area with high unemployment. Breastfeeding rates there are slowly coming up, but only because the local health trust and the council have been working together to promote it and outreach new young mums.

Think about what we give out little girls to play with: baby dolls, with little milkbottles. And think about how long we have been doing that as a society. Breastfeeding has always been culturally problematic. Wealthy medieval ladies gave their babies to a paid wetnurse to suckle. It was seen as entirely inappropriate for them to feed their children themselves.

The craze for the 'natural' in the 18th century made it terribly fashionable for a while for ladies to breastfeed.

During the 19th and 20th centuries the 'scientific' approach took over, first off giving us the scientifically sanctioned need to breastfeed; then by giving us the scientically sanctioned need to feed them a more balanced diet than women's bodies could provide, then finally to a scientific imperative to breastfeed.

Unfortunately the weight of years against breastfeeding in recent history still outweighs the that for it: even if the science is stronger.

Truth is 'breasts' have always been cultural and political signifiers. From the taxonomical studies of breastsize conducted during the 18th century voyages of Captain Cook and his ilk, in which the size and shape of women's breasts were employed as a measure of a race's evolutionary stage; to the legal ban on showing them in public; and to the moral outrage applied by society to each successive generation of women because they were or because they were not breastfeeding.

Few things in a society's development are as politicised as what makes a 'mother' and what makes a 'father'. Breastfeeding is one of those central issues of motherhood. Revolutionary ideology, conservative rhetoric, feminist perspectives, paternalistic proscriptions: all have at various historical juncures been mapped onto the woman's maternal role and in particuar the feeding of her child. From the 18th Century 'Mothers of the Nation' to depictions of nations through a female figure; with cartoonists and polemicists employing the image of the nursing mother to comment on everything from internal political strife, to international relations.

@ Dana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott

http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1987/04/formula.html

http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/formula.htm

http://www.babymilkaction.org/CEM/compseptoct01.html

http://www.babymilkaction.org/CEM/compseptoct01.html

I'm not doubting the manufacturers' campaigns nor the effect on those countries. I'm saying that the situation in the west isn't as rosy as all that.

Figures for Britain from 2005 show that:

Overall, only 35 per cent of UK babies are being exclusively breastfed at one week, 21 per cent at six weeks, 7 per cent at four months and 3 per cent at five months.

http://www.babyfriendly.org.uk/page.asp?page=21


For Congo the rates of exclusive breastfeeding in the same year were 24% for the first 4 months, and 19% up to 6 months

For Ethiopia the figures were 57% for first 4 months and 49% up to six months.


The cultural reach that artificial food has in those countries is huge: but the cultural reach it had over here up until the 70s was vast. They are dealing with a recent development: we are still affected by earlier developments, even though attitudes have changed.

One of the best little books I've read is Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village ,
about a Peace Core volunteer who went to a village way off the nearest road with only a notebook and a simple scale.

Her job was to weigh babies and assist mothers in breastfeeding because the ground water was so contaminated
that mixing the baby formula distributed by NGO's was causing illness and deaths.

It's an inspiring account of what a young woman can do all by herself.

No matter what the IRS or formula companies say, breastfeeding has been successful for millenia, or we wouldn't be here now. The incidence of heart disease and high cholestrol would be drastically reduced if all human babies were raised on human mother's milk. It is high in cholestrol, and the babies bodies develop a means of using it and controling it. Feeding kids homoginized cows milk is not good.

There is a related but different issue about human milk for adult consumption. I've seen (but couldn't be bothered to look up) studies that indicate it has considerable health benefits. However, the ethical and other issues involved are many and complicated. I couldn't start to do them justice.

I thought of starting a thread but I mostly dwell on weekends now so I won't be about to follow it up. Someone else can if they are interested.

From the taxonomical studies of breastsize conducted during the 18th century voyages of Captain Cook and his ilk, in which the size and shape of women's breasts were employed as a measure ...

Suuuuuure that's what they were doing.

There're some fascinating articles about this stuff. Some of the 'travelogue' style literature that was being produced during the 16th-18th centuries was amazing.

ZenGum wrote:

There is a related but different issue about human milk for adult consumption. I've seen (but couldn't be bothered to look up) studies that indicate it has considerable health benefits.

Absolutely, most especially for gastrointestinal diseases. We actually looked into what it would take to get my kids back on it--aside from all the moms who sell it, there are tons who give it away if you can show it's for a medical treatment. But we couldn't find a donor who adhered to a diet minus all their allergens.

Breast feeding vs bottle feeding and the amount of rest one gets. I think this woman looks pretty darn restful.

nsfw

http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/08/breast-feed-or-formula-feed-in-terms-of-sleep-its-a-wash/?iid=WBeditorspicks

nsfw

I didn't read the article, but the title indicated Breast feeding moms get as much or little rest (sleep) as bottle feeding moms. Do they discuss Co-Sleeping moms versus moms who sleep apart. I bet co sleeping moms get more sleep and rest than moms who sleep apart.

footfootfoot;695048 wrote:

I didn't read the article, but the title indicated Breast feeding moms get as much or little rest (sleep) as bottle feeding moms. Do they discuss Co-Sleeping moms versus moms who sleep apart. I bet co sleeping moms get more sleep and rest than moms who sleep apart.

You mean from the father?

HungLikeJesus;695049 wrote:

You mean from the father?

Oh yeah.