Researchers set out to assess the average total daily amount of vitamin K in colostrum and breastmilk of mothers who exclusively breastfed their infants. The study also sought to determine how much the mother's daily consumption of foods containing vitamin K (VK) affected the VK content of her colostrum or milk.
The women participating in the study were healthy nonsmoking mothers between twenty and thirty-five years of age who were not taking birth control pills, antibiotics, other medications or megadoses of vitamins. They were divided into four groups of fifteen participants each, determined by number of days postpartum. Colostrum was collected at between thirty and eighty-one hours postpartum, breastmilk was collected at one month, three months and six months postpartum. Only mothers who exclusively breastfed their infants at least five times a day were included in the study. Although the concentration of VK was found to be slightly higher in colostrum than mature milk, the authors point out that the total daily intake of VK in infants increases over time due to the fact that milk volume increases substantially over time. There did not appear to be any pattern between the number of hours postpartum that a colostrum sample was collected and the concentration of VK.
The VK content of many foods has not been adequately studied to accurately determine the maternal intake. Despite this, the authors went on to say that they could find no correlation between dietary VK intake and the VK level in breastmilk or colostrum. Dietary fat is essential to the absorption of VK, and VK concentrations in breastmilk tended to be greater in women who had a higher fat content in their diet.
A further conclusion of the study points out that VK appears to be found in the fatty portion of breastmilk. Since the fat content of breastmilk increases with the length of time spent at the breast per feeding, I would theorize that the practice of limiting the number of minutes at the breast per feeding could be decreasing the amount of vitamin K that exclusively breastfed newborns receive.
-Vitamin K in colostrum and mature human milk over the lactation period--a cross-sectional study American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1991, 53:730-35, abstracted by Althea Seaver
Reprinted from Midwifery Today E-News (Vol 1 Issue 41, Oct 8, 1999)
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