Breastfeeding isn’t only good for the baby—the mother also benefits and reduces her risk of heart disease or stroke.
Women who breastfed at some point in their lives are 11 percent less likely to develop cardiovascular disease than a woman who never breastfed and they also had a 12 percent lower risk of strokes.
Earlier studies have suggested that breastfeeding also lowers the risk of type 2 diabetes, and ovarian and breast cancers.
Researchers from the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria reviewed eight studies that had tracked nearly 1.2 million women who had their first child when they were 25 as an average. Only a quarter of the women followed health guidelines and exclusively fed their babies breastmilk for the first six months, the researchers noted.
(Source: Journal of the American Heart Association, 2022; doi: 10.1161/JAHA.121.022746)
