Does Breastfeeding Influence The Prevention Of Childhood Diabetes?
Babies who are exclusively breastfed for a long period of time may have a lower risk of developing type 1 diabetes, according to a study conducted in Sweden. Most children with diabetes have type 1 diabetes. This disease makes the pancreas unable to make enough or even no insulin. Insulin is necessary to create energy from the food you eat.
The researchers compared data from 517 children in southeastern Sweden and 286 children in Lithuania who had recently been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes with children who did not have diabetes. They were children aged 0-15 years.
The results showed that children who were exclusively breastfed tended to have a protective effect on the development of type 1 diabetes in the two countries. This was particularly true of exclusive breastfeeding for more than five months, and even more so when breastfeeding lasted 7 to 9 months.
The researchers also found that delaying the introduction of new foods, as well as cow’s milk, appeared to have a protective effect against the development of type 1 diabetes.
Breastfeeding: all benefits
Recently, studies have shown that breastfeeding can reduce the risk of developing high blood pressure, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. It’s possible that colostrum, which contains protein-rich fluids, that you produce before mature milk comes in, can protect children from infection and inflammation that can lead to chronic diseases.
Another theory is that breastfed infants tend to grow more slowly and steadily while formula-fed infants often have periods of more localized growth. This is because breast milk contains fewer calories than formula.
Recall that the World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of breastfeeding and then continue while introducing new foods until 2 years of age.
Breastfeeding also helps prevent diabetes in mothers
But breastfeeding not only helps prevent childhood diabetes, it also protects mothers who have had gestational diabetes. According to a recent study, breastfeeding disrupts metabolism and protects against diabetes for up to 15 years after delivery.
An interdisciplinary team of scientists from Munich has studied the metabolism of women with gestational diabetes. The researchers were able to show that breastfeeding for more than three months causes long-term metabolic changes.
The study started from the fact that four percent of all pregnant women in Germany develop gestational diabetes before the birth of their child.
Despite their blood sugar levels initially returning to normal after delivery, one in two of the affected mothers develops type 2 diabetes in the next ten years. While breastfeeding has been shown to reduce this risk by 40 percent, the reasons were still unclear.
Lactation and gestational diabetes
In a previous study, breastfeeding for more than three months after delivery was found to have a protective effect, which can last up to 15 years after gestational diabetes. In this most recent study, it was examined whether metabolism might be responsible for this.
For their analysis, the scientists examined nearly 200 women who had developed gestational diabetes. The researchers observed that metabolites in women who had breastfed for more than three months differed significantly from those in those who had had shorter periods of breastfeeding.
The researchers found that longer periods of breastfeeding were linked to a change in phospholipid production and low concentrations of branched-chain amino acids in the mothers’ blood plasma. This is interesting because the metabolites involved were linked in previous studies with insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, according to the authors.
The results of this study provide new insights into the metabolic pathways related to type 2 diabetes that are influenced by breastfeeding and therefore could be the underlying reason for the protective effect.
