http://www.birthandbaby.com/shop/categories/Category73.shtml
Posted on 11/12/2004 8:08:41 PM PST by neverdem
VITAL SIGNS
Women who breast-feed have a lower risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis, even decades later, researchers have found. And the longer they nurse their babies, the smaller the risk becomes.
The findings grow out of the long-term Nurses' Health Study, which has followed the health of more than 120,000 women since 1976. The study, led by Dr. Elizabeth W. Karlson of Brigham and Women's Hospital, a Harvard affiliate, appears in the current issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism.
Rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that can destroy the joints, affects women much more often than it does men. Some scientists have theorized that male hormones may help hold the disease in check.
Indeed, the authors of this study said they had thought they would find that breast-feeding increased the risk for the illness, on the theory that the hormone prolactin, which rises when women nurse, might serve as a kind of trigger.
"However," they wrote, "our findings demonstrated the opposite."
The study also found that women from 30 to 35 with irregular menstrual cycles had a greater chance of developing rheumatoid arthritis later in life.
Among the women studied, those who reported having breast-fed for 13 to 23 months were one-fifth as likely as women who had not breast-fed to develop the arthritis. Those who said they had breast-fed for at least two years reduced their risk by half.
The researchers said their study did not confirm earlier findings that women who used oral contraceptives lowered their risk of the disease. And although rheumatoid arthritis often comes at the time of menopause, the study found no difference among women who had hormone therapy.
"This is junk science at its worst! Before anyone ever bottle fed,there were many incidences of rheumatoid arthritis"
I think most of the studies about breast feeding are junk science. God forbid you bottle feed your child. Totally politically incorrect today.
Bottle feeding is junk science. Breast feeding is BY FAR the most natural and effective means of feeding a baby. Nothing else even comes close...
It's PC to breast feed,work,and if they could find a way to "prove" that voting for Dems would cure cancer,they'd write that too.
My grandmother breast fed her children and unfortunately,had terrible arthritis in her fingers,which she got at a rather young age.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
This is good news for me. Inflamitory disease runs in my family big time. I had my kids in my mid 20s.
Yeah, I think everyone should eat their dinner in the bathroom.
I am amused by the strong suspicion that if they proved breastfeeding enabled the male to retain or regain erectile function you'd get whiplash watching the attitude reversal of most such Victorian posters.
btt
I have 4 kids and nursed each of them until they were around 18 mo of age. Granted the last few months were for their comfort as nursing was more of a security thing for them. It's good to know that because I was a human pacifier that my health risks are low.
Um, sometimes it doesn't work out quite that easy. Unless someone is being extremely public (whipping the breast out and calling attention to herself) you probobly wouldn't even know it's being done. A nursing top, blanket etc can offer a lot of discretion.
could you add the key word health to these when you post or ping them. I like to pass them on but have a hard time finding them when I go back to get them.
I wish I could breastfeed (stop laughing). I'm eaten up with arthritis and I'm only 32.
They've done studies similar to what you've asked, but they were with much smaller sample populations, and the results varied. What makes this study impressive is the much larger sample size and the length of the study.
I believe this is the study in question. Check their related links, or copy and paste (parity OR nulliparity) AND rheumatoid arthritis into PubMed's browser.
The wording here is not clear. Is there an increase in risk after 23 months or a further decrease?
My wife breastfeeds our son. He seems extremely healthy (knock on wood). Now that he is eight months he has also been eating solid foods for a while. On the subject of breastfeeding in public, my wife was initially very discrete, but she rapidly adopted the attitude that feeding the baby is much more important than worrying about other people's problems with it. Babies digest breast milk more rapidly than formula so they get hungry and need to be fed more often.
Check the link in comment# 35. It's not junk science. It's a discussion of risk factors. The female to male ratio in RA about 9 to 1. Women who already have RA before they become pregnant typically go into remission during pregnancy. Something is happening with hormones, although it's just not the whole story.
I could if I weren't so absent minded. I can usually depend on the Times to include health and medicine and other pertinent key words when I post from the Times, but this time they failed me. However, if I goof and forget, feel free to add it yourself.
Bottle-feed the ankle-biters all you want in front of me . . . but if I'm not at the Men's Club, I neither expect nor want to see breastage in public.
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