Mom – How Long Did You Breastfeed?

Everyone knows that people who are overweight, eat the wrong food, don’t exercise, and smoke are at increased risk of getting type 2 diabetes. But a new risk factor has been discovered for women – how long they breastfed their babies.

Data from over 150,000 women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study showed that for every year spent breastfeeding, the women reduced their risk of developing diabetes in later life by 15%. The investigators say that breastfeeding puts a ‘metabolic burden’ on the body, resulting in increased sensitivity to insulin and thus improved glucose tolerance; and, of course, there’s higher carbohydrate use and energy expenditure during this time.

It seems that breastfeeding one baby for one year is better than one-year’s total breastfeeding shared between two babies – it has a 44% rather than a 24% reduction with two babies.

One mustn’t forget all the other advantages of breastfeeding over bottle-feeding: baby gets more antibodies from the mother to protect against illnesses, baby is less likely to develop allergies, less risk of infection to the baby due to contamination, and mother has a reduced risk of breast or ovarian cancer, less risk. And, as my old professor of OBGYN used to tell his students, “the milk comes in more attractive containers, too”.