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Breastfeeding can deliver long-term heart benefits to both mother and child, a new statement from the American Heart Association (AHA) says.
The immune systems of newborns and infants can be strengthened by breast milk, which has long been acknowledged as an ideal nutrient during those first months of life.
But scientists also discovered recently that women who breastfed at least once during their lives had a 17 percent lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those who never did. Women who breastfed were 12 percent less likely to have a stroke, 14 percent less likely to have heart disease, and 11 percent less likely to develop cardiovascular diseases over the course of an average 10-year follow-up period. The analysis included health information for almost 1.2 million women from eight studies carried out in Australia, China, Norway, Japan, and the United States, and one multinational study between 1986 and 2009....