Functional breastfeeding: From nutritive sucking to oral health

Functional breastfeeding plays a key role in the correct psychophysical and neuromotor development of a child, and it has repercussions on craniofacial complex growth and functioning. The consequences of not breastfeeding seem to have not only aesthetic complications but can cause significant functional orthodontic repercussions. Each study on breastfeeding has shown how breast milk protects against acute otitis media, pneumonia, syncytial virus, bronchitis, asthma, gastroenteritis, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), leukaemia, obesity, allergies and even constitutes a protective factor against habitual infant snoring and in reduction of the risk of obstructive apnea. By exercising his muscles, the child strengthens his zygomatic processes so that nasal airways have good drainage capacity and consequently a low predisposition to sinus and respiratory infections. Dentists have a fundamental role in the prevention of maternal-infant oral health, and by assisting its management, they can even implement the best development of a child’s immune system. The “primary” function of the dentist which is concretized in encouraging the planning of the first early visits of the interception of spoiled habits and incorrect lifestyles, together with the “internal” one of the intestinal and oral microbiota of the child together with breastfeeding have an indirect yet significant consequence of favoring the harmonic growth of the orofacial complex.