We know at least six months of exclusive breastfeeding is the best start to a baby’s life. What’s amazing is it seems ancient hominids knew that too. In a paper published today in Nature, we analysed the…
With so much contradictory information about whether it’s safe for mothers to share a bed with their baby, it’s easy to see why parents are confused. The release yesterday of a paper in BMJ Open added…
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation and Georgina Scambler, The Conversation
Infants should be exclusively breastfed until six months of age and solids should be introduced at “around six months”, according to official new infant feeding guidelines released today. The guidelines…
Wet nursing, where a woman other than the mother breastfeeds a baby, is a practice as old as history itself. In modern times, the availability of refrigeration and breast pumps has enabled women to also…
The host of Sunrise breakfast television show, David Koch, aka Kochie, has stirred controversy by saying mothers should breastfeed “discreetly” and that while he agreed that breastfeeding should be done…
Queensland appears intent on dismantling its public and preventive health services. Health Minister Lawrence Springborg last week outlined the rationale for getting rid of more than 150 jobs in nutrition…
A recent change to Nestlé’s NAN H.A. 1 Gold infant formula has been accused of making babies sick and irritable, with parents claiming the “new and improved” formula came with side effects such as constant…
Breast milk is one of the most important components of infant care. It provides complete nutrition and helps to prevent and fight infections. And it’s also safer – in much of the world, artificial infant…
The media storm surrounding Time magazine’s recent cover featuring a three-year-old boy breastfeeding while standing on a chair, indicates how important it is for more images of breastfeeding to be circulated…
If Time magazine editors had set out to garner a huge amount of free publicity with their latest cover, they’ve achieved their aim. This week’s US edition featuring a photograph of a young, attractive…
Breastfeeding generally falls under the jurisdiction of mothers, so I decided to ask a group of mothers I see regularly on Saturday morning what they thought of the recent Time magazine cover portraying…
Want to quit smoking, lose weight, manage your diabetes or get a good night’s sleep? No worries. There’s an app for all of that. But it’s not always clear which medical apps are based on solid evidence…
Welcome to part six of The science behind weight loss, a Conversation series in which we separate the myths about dieting from the realities of exercise and nutrition. Here, Caroline Homer, Professor of…
There’s no doubt that caesarean sections are an essential procedure that can save the lives of women and babies. But around one in three Australian women will give birth by caesarean section – and that’s…
Research officer, Department of Health Economics, Wellbeing and Society, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University