Breastfeeding history and risk of overweight and obesity in middle-aged women
Breastfeeding can have a beneficial, long-term impact on a woman's risk of excess weight and abdominal obesity.
Cieśla, E., Stochmal, E., Głuszek, S. etal . History of breastfeeding and risk of overweight and obesity in middle-aged women. BMC Women's Health 21, 196 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-021-01332-2
Commentary
In Japan, there is a myth that breastfeeding helps women "lose weight". The idea is that breastfeeding causes an increase in metabolic activity necessary to maintain milk production and helps reduce maternal fat accumulation during pregnancy. The study presented here evaluated the association between breastfeeding duration and body mass index in middle-aged women.
The study
The analysis included body mass index, body fat percentage, and waist-to-height ratio and was conducted on a group of 7500 menarcheal 55.5±5.3 year old women.
Results.
Analysis of adjusted odds ratios showed no significant association between breastfeeding duration and the risk of excess weight or obesity in premenopausal women.
There are reports that women who have given birth to two children after menopause and breastfed for 1-6 months or more than 12 months have a lower risk of abdominal obesity. Women who gave birth to three or more children and breastfed for one to six months also had a low risk of abdominal obesity, and no relationship was found between duration of breastfeeding and risk of excess body fat.However, these analyses are based on a "cross-sectional" approach, so what factors did not lead to obesity? However, these analyses were "cross-sectional" and could not account for the variable of what factors did not lead to obesity, and the only result was that many of the breastfeeding women were not abdominally obese.
