Mothers who do not breastfeed their newborns for at least one month are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes at some point in their lives than women who do.
In type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, either the body does not produce enough insulin or the cells ignore the insulin that the body needs to turn food into energy. To see how long a new mother needs to breastfeed to ward off diabetes, researchers compared the incidence of type 2 diabetes in 2,233 women between the ages of 40 and 78 years from California, dividing them into three groups: those who had never had children (405 women), those who had children but never breastfed them (703 women) and those who had breastfed (1,125 women).
It was found that 188 (26 percent) of the study mothers who didn't breastfeed their infants later went on to develop diabetes compared to 202 (18 percent) of women who exclusively breastfed their newborn at least one month and 71 (17 percent) of women who never had children.
Previous research has demonstrated health benefits to mothers who breastfed as long as six months or a year. The above findings suggest that even a month of breastfeeding can have positive, lasting effects. The findings highlight the importance to maternal health of consistent lactation after each birth and add to the growing body of evidence that not breastfeeding might add to health risks.