Breastfeeding May Protect Mom From Disease

Women who breastfeed a child are much less likely to get metabolic syndrome, a condition linked to diabetes and heart disease.

A Kaiser Permanente study found that women who breastfeed lower their risk by 39 to 56 percent, depending on how long they nurse.

For women with gestational diabetes, the reduction is 44 to 86 percent.

In the study, women lactated for anywhere from 1 to 9 months.

"The findings indicate that breastfeeding a child may have lasting favorable effects on a woman's risk factors for later developing diabetes or heart disease," lead author Erica Gunderson said.

The results were based on a study of 704 women who had never given birth and did not have metabolic syndrome at the start. Over 20 y ears, there were 120 new cases of the condition.

Metabolic syndrome is a group of risk factors related to obesity and metabolism that strongly predicts future diabetes and possibly, coronary heart disease during midlife and early death, the news release said.

The study will appear in the February issue of Diabetes, a journal of the American Diabetes Association.