If given the option, mothers often opt to breastfeed their infant baby post birth because of all the health benefits that come with it. If you’re a mother who has chosen to breastfeed their baby currently or in the past, you can very well relate to this.
Breast milk contains the perfect amount of nutrition for a baby, which is a mix of vitamins, proteins, and fat. It also has antibodies that help fight off viruses and bacteria as well as reduce a baby’s risk of asthma, allergies, ear infections, respiratory illness, and bad diarrhea. (1)
Considering all these benefits for a baby, most mothers sacrificially choose to breastfeed over infant formula even though it is a time consuming and sometimes painful responsibility. Regardless of the level of commitment it takes to breastfeed, mothers are selflessly driven to nurture their child in the best way they could.
Benefits of breastfeeding for mothers
With this in mind, we now know that mothers also reap a number of benefits from breastfeeding. For one, it costs nothing compared to infant formula. It also helps new moms lose their pregnancy weight as well as reduce their risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and osteoporosis. (2)
New Research Findings: Breastfeeding Good For Mothers, Too
A 30-year recent study also found that breastfeeding for at least six months minimizes a mother’s risk of type 2 diabetes by 47%. This study was published in the JAMA Internal Medicine on Jan. 16, 2018 by the Kaiser Permanente Research.
This research began in 1985 with about 5,000 adults ages 18 to 30 under the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study that assessed cardiovascular disease risk factors. Dr. Erica P. Gunderson, Ph.D., MS, MPH, and senior research scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research pooled this 30-year follow-up data together along with statistics from 1,000 members of Kaiser Permanente Northern California to study the association between breastfeeding duration and diabetes development.
Dr. Gunderson and her colleagues found that “Women who breastfed for six months or more across all births had a 47 percent reduction in their risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those who did not breastfeed at all. Women who breastfed for six months or less had a 25 percent reduction in diabetes risk.” (3)
This same finding was consistent with another study spearheaded by Dr. Gunderson for women with gestational diabetes who got routine biomedical screening when they gave birth and years later.
According to this study, the results of lower diabetes risk from long-term breastfeeding were the same across all samples that consisted of a black and white woman, with and without gestational diabetes. The biological mechanism that can explain this finding is that breastfeeding has protective effects on the lactation-associated hormones that control blood insulin levels.
Dr. Tracy Flanagan, MD, and director of women’s health for Kaiser Permanente Northern California says, “this is yet another reason that doctors, nurses, and hospitals, as well as policymakers, should support women and their families to breastfeed as long as possible.” Based on all these findings from a 30-year study, Kaiser Permanente strongly provides support for all mothers who choose to breastfeed.
Conclusion
We’ve always known that breastfeeding is beneficial for babies and it also provides the benefit of helping mothers lose weight but we never knew about its ability to reduce the risks of type 2 diabetes until now. While we don’t condemn or criticize any mother who chooses to not breastfeed out of personal or medical reasons, it’s important to celebrate women’s ability to feed a child out of their own breast milk and also heavily benefit from it in all aspects of their health.
