One of the main reasons I was drawn to allergy and asthma medicine was because of how many seemingly bizarre connections there are to asthma, allergies and skin issues alike.

Take breast feeding for example. Most articles related to the importance of breast feeding lean heavily upon the psychological and emotional development of children. But did you know there is scientific fact connecting breast-feeding and asthma? And not just breast-feeding in general but actually the term that a mother breast feeds!

A new Dutch study found that babies who are exclusively breastfed up to the age of six months have a lower risk of developing asthma-related symptoms in early childhood.

The study was conducted by researchers at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam in The Netherlands and was published online in the European Respiratory Journal. The researchers emphasize that their findings support current recommendations that infants in industrialized countries should only receive breast milk up to the age of six month.

While previous studies have linked breastfeeding and asthma risk, this study is the first to show a link between duration of breastfeeding and number of wheezing periods.

Researchers summed up their conclusion in the following statement: “Shorter duration and non-exclusivity of breastfeeding were associated with increased risks of asthma-related symptoms in preschool children.