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Breastfeeding can have long-term cognitive benefits for the mother, a new study has found.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, conducted a study that found women over the age of 50 who had breastfed their babies performed better on cognitive tests compared to women who had never breastfed.
“While many studies have found that breastfeeding improves a child’s long-term health and well-being, our study is one of very few that has looked at the long-term health effects for women who had breastfed their babies,” Molly Fox, the study’s author, said in a news release.
“Our findings, which show superior cognitive performance among women over 50 who had breastfed, suggest that breastfeeding may be ‘neuroprotective’ later in life,” she added.
The study also found that the amount of time spent breastfeeding was associated with better cognitive performance.
“Future studies will be needed to explore the relationship between women’s history of breastfeeding and cognitive performance in larger, more geographically diverse groups of women. It is important to better understand the health implications of breastfeeding for women, given that women today breastfeed less frequently and for shorter time periods than was practiced historically,” Fox said.
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