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You know how they say you are what you eat? Well, as far as breastfeeding goes, it might also be appropriate to say "you are when you eat." Researchers just looked into how breastfeeding may play a big role in how infants develop their day/night cycles. Does breast milk impact our circadian rhythm? 

A recent report looked into how breastfeeing might play a vital role in developing an infant’s circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythm is our and other organisms' tendency to operate physiological processes over a day/night sleep/wake cycle. This process is not only used for notifying you when it's time to get up and get active, but it also plays a role determining biological functions. For example, our digestive process has its own circadian rhythm and eating during the wrong hours causes a lot more work and inefficient use of the food that one is eating. 

From birth through about the first year of a newborn’s life, medical experts recommend that mothers feed their infants breast milk for their nutritional intake. In addition to being the ideal nutrition for a newborn, several studies have shown that breast milk is filled with "chrononutrition," specific compounds and proteins that may help growing infants develop biological cues for their own circadian rhythm.

While getting their nourishment from breast milk, newborns also ingest chemical compounds that give time-of-day information to a newborn’s developing body. Morning milk is rich in cortisol, a "get up and go" compound, and nighttime breast milk delivers high levels of melatonin and tryptophan to usher in rest and sleepy time. 

Cool information, but what do we do with this? Well, upwards of 85% of moms who breastfeed use a pump to store milk for later feedings. These findings suggest that mistimed breast milk feedings could yield some untimely issues for the developing baby. For example, a nighttime feeding using pumped morning milk could very well act like turning on the lights right at bedtime, jolting the new and developing circadian system. 

Researchers have mentioned several ways to help ensure right time, right milk meals, ranging from giving mothers’ more paid leave, making it easier for them to feed their newborn the right milk at the right time, to simpler methods, such as labeling pumped milk with timestamps to make sure the breast milk is given at the right time of day. 

This article was published in the journal Nature for those curious to read their findings. For those who don’t have time to read the whole story on breast milk, it’s still worth a skim.