In the Reproductive Risk Factors for Incontinence Study at Kaiser (RRISK), researchers found that mothers who never breast-fed were nearly at double the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes (T2D) compared to women who had never had children after studying 2,233 women — 1,828 of whom were mothers — between the ages of 40 to 78 in California.
Reported online in The American Journal of Medicine, the study concludes that mothers who supplemented feedings were also more likely to develop T2D than women with no children, while mothers who routinely breast-fed all of their children for at least one month were at equal risk of T2D as women who had never given birth.
Study author Dr. Eleanor Bimla Schwarz of the University of Pittsburgh and colleagues advise that “mothers should be encouraged to exclusively breast-feed all of their infants for at least one month.”
“No one is sure why breast feeding helps to prevent an increased risk of diabetes, and this is the first study ACSH staffers are aware of that demonstrates such an association,” ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross says. “However, this research needs to be followed up with further studies in order to confirm this theory.”