New Study: Breastfeeding Saves Mothers' Lives Too

Breastfeed is best for babies up to 2 years and beyond, is what we usually read the labels of formulated milk for babies but with the new study, it shows that breastfeeding is not only good for children, but also for their mothers, providing more health benefits and preventing more maternal diseases than previously known.

Breastfeeding as recommended for a total of one year and exclusively for six months could protect babies and their moms from premature death and serious diseases and save the U.S. more than $4.3 billion in health care and related costs, according to a new study published online in Maternal & Child Nutrition.

The study results underscore the importance of policies that make it possible for women to breastfeed, according to study senior author Dr. Alison Stuebe, the distinguished scholar of infant and young child feeding at the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute and associate professor of obstetrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This new study also highlighted the importance of providing women with the support they need to breastfeed their babies, beginning at birth.

"Breastfeeding is far more beneficial in preventing disease and reducing costs than previously estimated," said lead author Dr. Melissa Bartick, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance.

Bartick said, "The results should compel all hospitals to develop programs aimed at helping new moms learn to breastfeed their babies."

For the study, the research team modeled two groups into "optimal" and "suboptimal" group. The "optimal" group was comprised of the majority of mothers' breastfed as recommended while "suboptimal" group was comprised of mothers' breastfed less than the recommended guidelines. Mother's diseases included in the study were breast cancer, premenopausal ovarian cancer, diabetes, hypertension and heart attacks. For children, were acute lymphoblastic leukemia, ear infections, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, gastrointestinal infections, lower respiratory tract infections, obesity, necrotizing enterocolitis and SIDS.

Using existing research and government data, these two groups were being compared and they projected the rates and costs of diseases that breastfeeding is known to reduce, along with the rates and costs of early deaths from those diseases.

The researchers found out that majority of the excess death and medical costs-- nearly 80 percent- were material from the data being gathered that suboptimal breastfeeding was associated with more than 3,340 premature deaths in the U.S. each year, costing the nation $3 billion in medical costs, $1.3 billion in indirect costs and $14.2 billion in costs related to premature deaths.

"Breastfeeding has long been framed as a child health issue, however, it is clearly a women's health issue as well," said study co-author Dr. Eleanor Bimla Schwarz, professor of medicine at UC Davis Health System. "Breastfeeding helps prevent cancer, diabetes and heart disease, yet many women have no idea breastfeeding has any of these benefits."