There's been a huge drop in heart attacks for mums who breastfeed. If a Mum breastfeeds she could see her risk of a heart attack drop by almost 20%. The only thing is that she'd have to do it for at least two years to have the desired effect. This new statistic comes from the Harvard Medical School who studied 96,648 nurses who had given birth between 1986 and 2002. The nurses who breastfed their children for two years or more were 19% less likely to end up having a heart attack than their colleagues who didn't breastfeed at all.
The massive drop was recorded even after scientists took risk factors such as diet, exercise and family medical history into account.
'Pregnancy is associated with a number of things that you normally wouldn't want to happen to your body,' said the study's lead researcher Alison Steube, '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.' Her recommendations were that mothers should breastfeed for anything from three months to a year.
February 2007
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