Posted on 02/15/2007 8:05:05 AM PST by blam
Mothers get heart risk off their chest
15 February 2007
From New Scientist Print Edition.
Breastfeeding is well known to boost an infant's health, and now it seems it may be good for the mother as well.
In a study of 96,648 nurses who gave birth between 1986 and 2002, those who had spend at least two years of their lives breastfeeding were 19 per cent less likely to suffer a heart attack than those who hadn't breastfed at all. The difference was independent of any of the usual risk factors for heart disease, such as family history, diet or exercise levels.
One possible explanation, says study leader Alison Steube of Harvard Medical School, is that nursing a newborn may help a mother's metabolism switch from pregnancy mode back to normal. "Pregnancy is associated with a number of things that you normally wouldn't want to happen to your body," Steube says, including storing more fat and having higher than normal levels of fatty acids circulating in the blood. By breastfeeding, mothers can convert those energy reserves into nutrition for their infants.
"Breastfeeding isn't just good for babies, it's good for mothers, too," says Steube, who presented her findings at a meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in San Francisco last week. She recommends that mothers breastfeed for three months to a year after giving birth.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
So are breast massages good for women too?
health ping
19% less risk is statistically insignificant for any study and is undeserving of a report.
My former sister-in-law, a militant feminazi, Unitarian, and and la leche member, breast-fed her daughter until she was six because she cared so much about being a mother. Oh, and then when her daughter was eighteen, the mom ran off with the lawyer at the law firm she was interning at, and abandoned her husband and children. Oh, and this enlightened, New Age, "accept everyone and love every culture and country but your own" Liberal made my wife feel horrible because she only breast-fed our first daughter for a week before she decided that our child would starve to death if she didn't go on formula.
I've been caring for a friend's 5 month old baby boy for the past three weeks. He is SO much fun, and has been very, very good for my Mental Health. :)
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