Are you breastfeeding, or did you breastfeed, your baby? You've made the choice that is best for your baby and, research suggests, it's a big bonus for you as well.
The longer a woman breastfeeds, the better her natural defenses against heart disease and diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, the journal Diabetes reports.
Metabolic syndrome is the diagnosis for an individual who has at least three of these symptoms: obesity, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, high fasting blood glucose and low HDL cholesterol.
"In the study known as CARDIA, researchers monitored 704 women who were between the ages of 18 and 30 during their first pregnancy. All women were free of metabolic syndrome at the beginning of the study. Twenty years later, those who breastfed longer during the first nine months after giving birth were significantly less likely to have developed metabolic syndrome."
Research also suggests that breastfeeding improved the health of women with gestational diabetes mellitus (high blood glucose levels during pregnancy).
http://www.naturalnews.com/028646_brstfeeding_metabolic_syndrome.html