Breast-feeding lessens women's diabetes risk

Breast-feeding, backed for the health effects it bestows on the baby, also appears to reduce the mother's risk of developing adult-onset diabetes.

The protective effect probably comes from the way breast-feeding uses up energy and keeps blood sugar levels stabilized, said the report from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

A look at women 15 years after they had their last baby "found that each year a woman breastfeeds reduced her risk of diabetes by 15%," said Alison Stuebe, a physician who led the study.

The finding was based on a look at more than 150,000 U.S. nurses whose health histories have been tracked for years.

A woman with two children who breast-fed each of them for a year could reduce her risk of diabetes by nearly a third in later years, she said.

"A breast-feeding woman uses up about 500 calories a day making milk for her baby. That's the equivalent of running about four to five miles a day … a lot of energy," Stuebe said.

The study was published in the combined Nov. 23/30 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

Courtesy of LA Times