An article in the LA Times discussed a study where women who breastfed their infants were less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes. Of the women who did not breastfeed, 27% developed diabetes, compared to the 16% of women who did breastfeed. Two theories behind why breastfeeding reduces the risk of diabetes are that breastfeeding helps women lose weight, and lactation may help with glucose metabolism.
Interestingly, I found a couple articles claiming that breastfeeding reduces an infant’s chances of developing Type 2 diabetes later in life, and that non-diabetic people who were breastfed as infants have marginally lower insulin concentrations than non-diabetics that were formula-fed. There are many chemicals in breast milk that make it superior to formula, and breast milk has been shown to have some anti-inflammatory effects, namely due to the presence of interleukins. However it is still unknown if this or other factors are what protect against diabetes.
Other things to consider are mothers of lower socio-economic status or obese mothers are more likely to formula feed, and thus their children have an increased risk for diabetes and obesity due to environmental factors besides being formula-fed.
There are different possible reasons why breastfeeding may decrease the risk of Type 2 diabetes (and I suspect the real reason is still unknown), but it is interesting that it seems to have the same health benefit for both the mothers and infants.
Shari Roan. "Study: Women who breastfeed even one month reduce their diabetes risk." Los Angeles Times, Aug 31 2010
Undurti N Das. "Breastfeeding prevents type 2 diabetes mellitus: but, how and why?" Am. J. Clinical Nutrition, May 2007; 85: 1436-1437
Christopher G Owen. "Does breastfeeding influence risk of type 2 diabetes in later life? A quantitative analysis of published evidence." Am. J. Clinical Nutrition, Nov 2006; 84: 1043-1054
Sierra that is a very interesting article! I thought your insight to the fact that women who are obese or have a lower SES would be more likely to feed their babies formula than breast feeding. I do think there might be some correlation of breast feeding and reducing the risks for the mother's. Breast milk is passive immunity for the baby and its digestion might set up the digestion process for later in life better than formula fed children. I think it would be a great study to look within different SES and see if the correlation still stands. A study looking at lower SES and the incidence of type 2 diabetes in the mother and child if breast fed or formula and also in middle, and high SES. Another thing to consider is that those people in high SES might have had breast agumentations which might leave some women unable to breast fed. It would be interesting to see how their children (and the mothers) faired since most women who spend that kind of money tend to keep a healthy body type and would be unlikely to develop type 2 diabetes.
ReplyDeleteThere have been multiple studies that showed a correlation between a low socioeconomic status and a higher incidence of type 2 diabetes independent of race and age. However a study by Robbins et al. in 2001 did find that "Socioeconomic status is associated with type 2 diabetes prevalence among women, but not consistently among men". This again brings up the potential influence of the sex hormones in women that might put them more at risk of type 2 diabetes when living a relatively similar life to men within the same SES.
ReplyDeleteRobbins et al. AJPH 91(1):76-83 (2001)
This is a great area of debate. There are so many factors to consider in this area; many of them controversial. NPR actually had a great report on this a few months back. I'm unfortunately unable to find it archived on their website.
ReplyDeleteI like the scientific factors presented in the journal of clinical nutrition you have cited. I also find it fun to debate the social factors.
Here's the basics of the socioeconomic factors. Statistically, African American women are the demographic of women least likely to breast feed (http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/abstract/133/1/305S).
Now, go the Bureau of Labor and Statistics website: http://www.bls.gov/
Look up unemployment rates of white (most likely to breastfeed) and african-american women. You'll see that unemployment is double that for african-american women.
When you have no income, you're much more likely to spend money on calorie-dense, nutrition-poor foods. They're cheaper, by far (Eight Bar-S hot dogs cost 89 cents at King Soopers, eight white-bread buns are 99 cents. A single mango at Whole Foods costs $2). This leads to obesity; obesity leads to type II diabetes.
Maybe we're thinking too hard about the science behind what's in breast milk, and not enough on how to get low income families the proper nutrition.