Nursing may help prevent endometriosis
by Claudia Boyd-Barrett posted in Pregnancy
Breastfeeding ? especially for 1 year or more - may help protect you from a painful condition called endometriosis, a new study suggests.
Endometriosis happens when uterine tissue grows outside the uterus. The condition can lead to painful periods and pain during sex. What causes it is a mystery. About 1 in 10 women have endometriosis, and unfortunately there?s no cure.
Researchers from Harvard Medical School examined data from a long-term study on more than 72,000 women who had been pregnant at least once. None of the women had endometriosis at the start of the study. Within a 14-year follow-up period, just over 3,000 of the women had developed the condition.
The study authors found that women who had breastfed 1 year or more during their reproductive years were 32 percent less likely to develop endometriosis than women who breastfed less than a month.
What?s more, the risk for endometriosis declined the longer the women breastfed. For each additional 3 months of breastfeeding per pregnancy, the risk of endometriosis declined by 8 percent, the researchers found.
It?s not clear why breastfeeding seemed to have this protective effect. The authors said it could be related to hormone changes that happen during pregnancy. Additionally, breastfeeding delays the onset of periods post-pregnancy, which the study also linked to a decreased risk of endometriosis.
The study relied on women self-reporting how long they breastfed, so there...
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