Study: Breastfeeding Even More Of A Health Issue For Moms Than For Babies
"The most surprising thing is that breastfeeding is even more of a maternal health issue than a children's health issue. It has a bigger impact in terms of medical cost and a bigger impact in terms of lives saved. And most of that impact is derived from encouraging women to breastfeed as long as they can for each child. For example, if women optimally breastfeed — meaning breastfeeding for at least one year — and we got the current breast feeding rates from about 30 percent of mothers up to 90 percent, we could avert 5,023 cases of breast cancer per year. Put another way, you would need only about 397 women to optimally breastfeed to avert one case of breast cancer.
The numbers are even more dramatic for other diseases:
- For hypertension, assuming the same scenario, you'd avert 35,392 cases and 322 deaths; and only 55 women would have to breastfeed to avert a case of hypertension.
- For heart attacks, 235 women would have to breastfeed optimally to prevent a heart attack; 162 would need to breastfeed each child for one year to prevent a case of diabetes.
This is the first study that combines maternal and pediatric diseases into a single unified model; you can see the whole scope of the public health impact of breastfeeding. So, for instance, only 597 women or children would have to breastfeed (or be breastfed) optimally to prevent death from the 14 maternal or pediatric diseases we looked at."
