We’ve long known that breastfeeding benefits a baby in many more ways than just filling his little tummy.  The latest issue of Obstetrics and Gynaecology carries details of a study that says breastfeeding is good for mom’s heart in ways beyond knowing her little bundle of joy is well fed.

The study, conducted at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, didn’t even include breastfeeding mothers.  Instead, it involved 140,000 study participants who were post-menopausal.  The average study participant hadn’t breastfed a baby for more than 35 years.

The researchers discovered that mothers who had once breastfed a child were 10% less likely to have heart disease or to have had a heart attack or stroke than mothers who had not breastfed.  Their risk of elevated cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, and diabetes were also reduced, even if they’d breastfed for just one month.  The mothers who reported breastfeeding for a year or longer experienced a decreased risk by 12% for high blood pressure and their risks for diabetes and high cholesterol were cut by as much as 20%.

The study doesn’t explain exactly why breastfeeding provides decades of health protections for mothers but one possibility is the reduction in fat stores that are used when breastfeeding.  The process is probably more complex than that, though, as the research team strongly suspects hormones stimulated by breastfeeding play a role, too.

Even without knowing the exact mechanism behind the process, continued research is making it clear that breastfeeding provides a lifetime of health benefits for both mother and child and the longer the breastfeeding lasts, the more abundant the benefits.