Silicone Breast Implants? Is Baby’s Milk O.K.?
Breast Implants, Risks Comments (1)
Many prospective breast augmentation patients like the natural feel of silicone breast implants, but worry that silicone may somehow affect baby’s milk if and when the patient gives birth.
Plastic surgeons and other scientists studied the effect of silicone on health for about 14 years, but could find no link. That’s why the implants were allowed back on the market in 2006.
(Nonetheless, scientists are still recording the health of silicone implant patients over time.)
It’s an important question. Mother’s milk transfers an incredible array of immune-boosting prosperities and even reduces common childhood diseases. You just can’t get the same protection from formulas.
In the 1990′s there was a lot of misinformation and fear about silicone. So, in 1998, the Woman’s College Hospital in Toronto studied the amounts of silicon in the breast milk of women with silicone implants.
Just to give consumers comparisons, they also measured silicone in cow’s milk and two dozen infant formulas.
Results? Hold on to your computer mouse! Cow’s milk has ten times the levels of silicone as mother’s milk. When all the data were crunched, breast milk from women with the implants was found to average 55.4 parts per billion (ppb.) Women with no implants registered 51 ppb. (Read the silicone implant study).
The cows? They must have been eating silicone grass! Their milk registered 708.9 parts per billion. The average for commercial infant formulas was even higher at 4402.5 ppb.
Still not convinced? A similar 2001 study in Sweden in 2001 studied the children of 5,874 women with silicone breast implants against the health of 13,274 children born to mothers who had breast reduction.
The researchers measured how many of the children had throat disorders, rheumatic disease, birth defects and early death. The results? We quote the scientists:
“This study provides no evidence that certain hypothesized health outcomes are more likely among the children of women with cosmetic breast implants.”
(Read an Abstract of the Swedish cosmetic breast implant study.)
Would you nurse with silicone breast implants?
admin @ March 30, 2009
Silicone is the best but you can still be happy with saline:)