Obesity and Breastfeeding: Exploring the Relationship

Abstract

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States and throughout much of the developing world. In the United States, 40.4% of women, 35% of men, and 17% of children and adolescents have obesity. With the high proportion of individuals who struggle with obesity, we seek to find strategies to mitigate the high prevalence of this disease. Yet, before we delve into the current literature that explores the relationship between obesity and breastfeeding, we must understand the complexity of obesity. Obesity is a multifactorial disease in which genetics, behavior, environment, and development play a role in a person's likelihood of developing obesity. There are a host of factors that influence energy balance. Although many factors have yet to be elucidated, we are aware that there are many potential contributors to obesity, which include biological/medical, environmental pressures on physical activity, economic, food, and beverage behavior and environment, social, psychological, and maternal/developmental. In addition, we are aware that there are a host of hormonal factors that regulate food intake. In persons with genetic susceptibility to obesity, there is a biological defense of an elevated body fat mass, which is likely secondary to interactions between brain reward and homeostatic circuits.