The Lifestyle of Breastfeeding Mother, Based on the Teaching of Avicenna (Ibn Sina)

Abstract

Background:  Breast-feeding is considered a global standard. Certainly special strategies have an important role in mother’s success in exclusive feeding of the neonate and preservation of the mother’s health.   Healthy lifestyle in mothers can be one of the most effective measures to achieve this success. Unfortunately, due to the great attention to the growth and nutrition of the child in the first year of birth, mother's life style is neglected during lactation. Considering the widespread acceptance and interest in complementary medicine, it seems logical to search in Persian Medicine documents to find a guideline regarding the proposed issue. In Persian Traditional Medicine, a lot of attention has been paid to the lifestyle for all lifetimes, including lactation. In the present study, the views of Avicenna -renowned Iranian scientist- were discussed about the life style of mothers during lactation. Material and Methods: In this study, Al-Qanun fi al-tibb by Avicenna (11^th) and for thorough discussion also reviewed the views of a later Iranian scientist, Kholase al-hekma by Mohammad Hossein Aghili Alavi Khorasani (18^th) were studied to collect all of information about life style of mothers during lactation. Furthermore, a search in PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, Sid, Iran doc was done to get related data about this field from 1990-Jan-1 to 2018-Dec-30. Conclusion: Healthy lifestyle during lactation has six main axes. These six axes include air, nutrition, physical activity and massage, sleep and wakefulness, evacuation of harmful substances and maintaining essential ingredients, and psychic movement and repose. In order to the mother would be able to produce adequate milk for the infant and her health would be preserved.