Researchers found that women who breastfed showed much lower rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and longer duration of breastfeeding was associated with lower risk of CVD in women with type 2 diabetes or gestational diabetes (GDM). The researchers are from the Global Centre for Asian Women's Health or GloW, based at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (NUS Medicine) and Harvard T.H.
Chan School of Public Health. Analyzing data from 15,146 women in the U.S.
with type 2 diabetes and 4,537 with a history of GDM across two significant studies—Nurses' Health Study I & II—the study revealed that compared with women who never breastfed, breastfeeding for over 18 months was related to a significant reduction in CVD risk by 32% among women who had a history of type 2 diabetes and 51% reduction in CVD risk among women whose pregnancies who were complicated by GDM. The research is published in the journal Diabetes Care . Having previously found that maintaining a healthy lifestyle before pregnancy including being a non-smoker, getting sufficient physical activity, adopting a healthy diet and having a healthy weight before pregnancy can prevent more than 50% of GDM diagnoses, and that optimal lifestyle habits in women with a history of GDM were associated with more than 90% reduction in later diagnosis of type 2 diabetes risk, GloW set out to identify modifiable factors at both molecular and behavior levels partnering with investigators from Université Paris Cité (UPCité.
