Breastfeeding has health benefits, may reduce heart attack and stroke risk in mothers - study

Breast feeding has many health benefits for babies but it also benefits mothers too. A new study has found that mothers who breastfeed their babies for two years or more may reduce their risk of having a heart attack or stroke later in life.

According to the study. women who breastfed their babies for two years or more had an 18 per cent lower risk of heart disease and a 17 per cent lower risk of stroke. Additionally, feeding a child naturally may also help mums burn off more body fat.

Previous research has shown that breastfeeding can reduce a mother’s risk of breast and ovarian cancer, osteoporosis, and obesity. Scientists are now hoping that the new findings will encourage women to choose breast over bottle.

The longer a woman breastfeeds her child, the greater the protection the woman has against future heart problems, states Dr Sanne Peters, a Research Fellow in Epidemiology at The George Institute for Global Health at Oxford University, UK.

Researchers from Oxford University UK and two institutions in China (Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking University) examined health data from more than 280,000 Chinese women, nearly all of whom were mothers for eight years.

After adjusting the results for other risk factors, including smoking, high blood pressure and physical activity, they found that those mothers who breastfed their babies had a 9 per cent lower risk of heart disease and 8 per cent lower risk of stroke, compared to those who did not breastfeed.

The longer each woman breastfed her baby, the more their risk of cardiovascular disease appeared to reduce.

Each additional six months of breastfeeding per baby was linked to a four per cent lower risk of heart disease and a three per cent lower risk of stroke.

And among mothers who breastfed their babies for two years or more, heart disease risk was 18 per cent lower and stroke risk was 17 per cent lower than among mothers who never breastfed.

Sanne Peters, said the health benefits of breastfeeding could be explained by changes to the metabolism after a baby is born adding that;

Although we cannot establish the causal effects, the health benefits to the mother from breastfeeding may be explained by a faster ”reset“ of the mother's metabolism after pregnancy.

Pregnancy changes a woman's metabolism dramatically as she stores fat to provide the energy necessary for her baby's growth and for breastfeeding once the baby is born, she said.

Breastfeeding could eliminate the stored fat faster and more completely.

Breast milk can help protect newborns against infections and diseases, and is recommended for the first six months of a baby’s life.

The findings should encourage more widespread breastfeeding for the benefit of the mother as well as the child, said Oxford professor Zhengming Chen, the study’s senior author.

None of the 289,573 Chinese women whose data was used in the study had cardiovascular disease when they took part in the research, but after eight years, 16,671 had coronary heart disease, which includes heart attacks, and 23,983 had suffered a stroke.