Breastfeeding has long been promoted for optimum infant well-being but researchers have discovered that it is not only good for babies but mothers as well.
In a study published in the journal Maternal & Child Nutrition, Alison Stuebe and colleagues showed that breastfeeding protects moms from premature death and serious diseases when done as recommended, resulting in $4.3 billion in savings for health care and related costs in the United States.
According to Stuebe, the results of the study highlight how it important it is for policies to be in place that would allow for women to breastfeed as recommended, which is exclusively for six months and for a total of one year.
"Paid leave keeps mothers and babies together ... Enacting paid family leave will impact the lifelong health of women and children," she said, noting that 22 percent of mothers who work return to their jobs just 10 days after giving birth.
Aside from policymakers, the researchers are also calling on hospitals to develop programs that will teach new mothers how to breastfeed their babies so it can be carried out properly, allowing both mom and baby to reap the full benefits of breastfeeding.
For the study, Stuebe and colleagues worked with two groups of moms: one breastfeeding as recommended and the other breastfeeding according to current U.S. rates. They also used existing government and research data to project costs and rates of health conditions that breastfeeding has been shown to reduce, alongside costs and rates of early deaths from those health conditions.
In children, diseases listed include Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, necrotizing enterocolitis, obesity, lower respiratory tract infections, gastrointestinal infections, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, ear infections and acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
In mothers, diseases listed include heart attacks, hypertension, diabetes, pre-menopausal ovarian cancer and breast cancer.
Based on their findings, the researchers saw that the breastfeeding at current U.S. rates was associated with over 3,340 premature deaths in the country every year, which cost the U.S. $3 billion in medical costs, $14.2 billion in related costs and $1.3 billion in indirect costs. Additionally, almost 80 percent of these premature deaths and medical costs were maternal.
According to Eleanor Bimla Schwarz, breastfeeding has always been framed as an issue related to child health, but it is clearly a women's health as well. She added that breastfeeding can prevent heart disease, diabetes and cancer but many women don't know this.
Receiving funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the study also involved Melissa Bartick, Andrew Schaefer, Brittany Green, Debra Bogen, Briana Jegier, Tarah Colaizy and Arnold Reinhold.
Photo: Chris Alban Hansen | Flickr
