The anthropologist James Mackenna He published two studies in 1997 in Pediatrics. His work was based on the control of brain waves, eye movements and the breathing rhythms of mothers and children. He also used infrared cameras to record their movements during sleep. His conclusions were very important and allowed him to defend that the colecho protects from sudden death.
Babies have different sleep patterns than adults. They spend more time in mild sleep (REM), in which they are much more receptive to environmental changes. When they reach the stages of deeper sleep they have episodes of apnea of an average of 15 seconds, from which they easily wake up and resume the REM sleep phase.
That's why babies' awakenings are normal and healthy. They need to remain alert in sleep as a survival mechanism.
The study perfectly recorded that when mother and child collect their breaths, heart rhythm and movements they synchronize. The mother is more alert and their sounds, rubbing and movements are a beneficial influence for the child. and baby when they sleep together are synchronized, the movements and breathing of each affect the other. The phases of REM sleep of both increase and the baby is extremely sensitive to the presence of the mother, maintaining the possibility of waking up in moments of apnea.
The colecho not only improves thermoregulation, the stability of the respiratory and cardiac rhythms, but it is a very beneficial factor in maintaining the lactation and its duration, which has long been known to exert a protective effect, by itself, on the sudden death. By facilitating breastfeeding, colecho is already a factor in the prevention of sudden death, which adds to the synchronization of sleep cycles.
The study concludes with a call to health authorities to make efforts to encourage breastfeeding in the minimum duration recommended by WHO and also of safe colecho. Other works by this author will influence the importance for the brain and emotional development of the schoolboy, as well as the differences in sudden sample data between different cultures related to survival or not in the normal way in which human children have always slept : the colecho.
