Breastfeeding your baby also means guaranteeing a healthy heart, according to the results of a study published in the medical journal JAHA. Indeed, giving the breast would protect women from cardiovascular diseases.
Breastfeeding is already known to be effective for protect women from breast cancer and is recommended for protect babies from ENT infectionsof obesity and the heart of premature babies. This new study tells us that it would also reduce the risk of heart disease in women.
Researchers from the University of Oxford (UK) and the Chinese Academy of Medicine and Peking University analyzed the medical data of 289,573 Chinese women from the China Kadoorie Biobank study which provided detailed information about their pregnancy and their lifestyle between 2004 and 2008. Almost all the women had had children and none had cardiovascular illnesses.
Participants completed questionnaires to indicate the number of pregnancies, abortionslive births and total duration of breastfeeding for each birth.
The researchers used this data to calculate the average duration of breastfeeding per child and the cumulative duration of any breastfeeding for all children. A series of physical measurements were taken and a blood sample was collected.
Breastfeeding protects women’s hearts
During the study, 49,377 incident cases of cardiovascular disease were recorded, including 16,671 cases of coronary heart disease and 23,983 stroke (14,290 ischemic strokes and 2,998 hemorrhagic strokes).
The results of the study showed that women who breastfeed had a 10% lower risk of developing coronary heart disease or having a stroke and that the longer they breastfed the stronger this link was. Indeed, for women who breastfeed for 6 months longer, the risk of cardiovascular disease also decreases by 3% to 4%.
“Although we cannot establish causal effects, the maternal health benefits ofbreastfeeding explained by a more rapid reset of the metabolism after pregnancy. Pregnancy changes a woman’s metabolism dramatically as she stores fat to provide the energy needed for the growing baby. Breastfeeding could eliminate stored fat more quickly and permanently,” explained Sanne Peters, a researcher at the University of Oxford and author of the study.
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