(NaturalNews) According to the World Health Organization, breastfeeding babies exclusively for the first six months can save the lives of 13 percent of infants that die under five. Breast milk is what nature intended for infants to be eating, and eating in ways in accordance with nature is always to our benefit. But do you know why breast milk is so valuable?

The answer is simple: Babies are born with only partially developed immune systems, and components of mother's milk help children build their immune system. Breast milk contains both healthy bacteria and medium-chain fatty acids, both of which are disease fighting and go a long way to protect us from outside threats.

Let's look first at our healthy bacteria. According to S.K. Dash, Ph.D. and recognized authority on the role of probiotics and our healthy bacteria, these healthy bacteria in our colon make up our first line of immune defense. These tiny bacteria line our intestinal tract, and their presence makes it difficult for unhealthy bacteria, fungus and other problems to thrive in abundance. This protects the infant, because it is when unhealthy bacteria and fungus are in abundance that problems occur.

Many mothers also don't know that antibiotics kill our healthy bacteria, even Merck admits this in the Merck manual. So, while antibiotics may help with bacterial infections in the short term, they set us up for long term problems. Essentially, by wiping out our healthy bacteria with antibiotics, we are destroying the foundation of our immune systems and setting ourselves up for far more problems than most people can conceptualize.

Unfortunately, most people don't know to replace these healthy bacteria with probiotics or probiotic-rich food like quality yogurts or raw unpasteurized sauerkraut. Eating a cup or so of raw, unpasteurized sauerkraut each week can go a long way to restoring your healthy bacteria - it's beneficial because most people are low on healthy bacteria and high on unhealthy bacteria, in general.

But, back to breastfeeding, by breastfeeding, mothers are filling their baby's colon with ample amounts of these healthy bacteria, which have been found to protect against almost all disease. This gives the infant protection into childhood and beyond, if steps aren't taken (like taking antibiotics) that undermine this protection without consciously replacing the healthy bacteria.

Now, let's look at medium-chain fatty acids. Medium-chain fatty acids have been found to be antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and generally detoxifying. While the child's immune system is developing, these medium chain fatty acids effectively destroy the pathogens that can harm infants. Essentially, it is these medium-chain fatty acids that protect babies until their immune systems take over.

Medium-chain fatty acids are found in a few other places in nature, including abundantly in coconut oil. This makes coconut oil a very important food, because not only will it provide the same antiviral, antibacterial and antifungal protection in adults, but the more medium-chain fatty acids the mother has in her body, the more the infant will receive through the breast milk. Of course, the more the infant receives, the more protection s/he receives as well.

Breastfeeding adds tremendous value through delivering them these immune-building healthy bacteria and germ-destroying medium-chain fatty acids. Breastfeeding also leaves out of your baby's diet the processed sugars, preservatives, and genetically modified ingredients common in formulas these days. Of course, all of those things are detrimental to your child's health.

It's important to know that human mothers are unfortunately very toxic these days. Even more unfortunately, they pass this toxicity to their babies with breastfeeding, and even while their children are still in the womb. This is common due to a societal leaning toward processed foods with pesticides and chemicals in them, as well as the effects of a polluted environment that even with our best efforts, we cannot completely avoid.

In 2005 researchers looked at the umbilical cord blood of ten randomly chosen American newborns and found 287 different chemicals and pollutants. There was an average of 200 chemicals in each of these newborns: including pesticides, flame retardants, Teflon, oil repellents from fast food packaging, and even waste from gasoline.

While this may seem outrageous, the researchers only tested for 413 chemicals and there are around 80,000 industrial chemicals in use, with about 2,000 more being added each year. Of course, the researchers acknowledged they would have found far more, had the resources been available to test for all of them.

Even with results that are accepted to be low, the researchers put it in perspective when they said of the chemicals, "we know that 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests."

It's findings like this that help you understand why detoxification is beneficial for everyone, and especially anyone who is planning to have children.

While it's neither appropriate nor beneficial to detoxify your body while pregnant or breastfeeding, some deep detoxification before becoming pregnant is an excellent idea. In fact, it may be the most important thing you can do for your child. And since health problems have been found to be bankrupting more Americans than anything else, by getting these poisons out of your body, before you can pass them along to your child, you might just save your pocketbook in the process.

More:

The Consumer's Guide to Probiotics, S.K. Dash, Ph.D.

Coconut Cure, Bruce Fife, N.D.

The Coconut Oil Miracle, Bruce Fife, C.N., N.D.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090731...

http://breastfeeding.suite101.com/a...

http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec17/ch1...

http://www.coconutresearchcenter.or...

http://www.naturalnews.com/026624_c...

http://www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburd...

http://www.naturalnews.com/026681_h...

www.naturalnews.com/026777_health_bacteria_healthy_bacteria.html