Today, about 8O% of US women breastfeed after giving birth — smart, very smart.
Breastfeeding benefits for mothers, infants and society add up to a long list. For mothers, we may be able to add yet another benefit — later protection against cardiovascular disease — to that list.
A new report from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) suggests breastfeeding for a cumulative 2 years or longer may reduce risk of myocardial infarction (MI) by almost 25%.
Starting in 1976, the NHS has prospectively followed over 120,000 nurses, collecting information from them every 2 years. Length of time breastfeeding was correlated with later MI.
Women whose lifetime breastfeeding was longer than 2 years were significantly less likely to report later having had an MI. Most of the women in this group breastfed more than one infant.
Breastfeedng for a shorter time did not offer measurable protection against future MI. Other risk factors for MI, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and being overweight, were taken into account when calculating the breastfeeding benefit.
How can breastfeeding many years earlier make such a difference?
Mothers who breastfeed have improved carbohydrate and lipid metabolism and fat stored during pregnancy may be lost more readily. Oxytocin, released with milk letdown, may allow breastfeeding women to have healthier responses to stress.
Among today's breastfeeding mothers, about 40% continue for 6 months and 20% for a year or longer. So it appears many women with 2 or more children may obtain the cardiovascular benefits of breast feeding.
Breastfeeding benefits to our society are huge. We have healthier mothers and children, lower health care costs and less environmental impact.
Yet our society does little to support breastfeeding mothers. Many women end up breastfeeding or pumping milk in a restroom, obviously not an ideal setting. Every workplace and public venue should consider breastfeeding women in space planning.
And, in my mind, a woman who chooses to discretely breastfeed in public should be completely accepted, not viewed as an exhibitionist with a wardrobe malfunction.
