Breastfeeding your children reduces your risk of having hot flashes and night sweats during menopause

Breastfeeding has been shown to have positive maternal health impacts, including on cardiovascular health and cancer risk. But not much research has been conducted to test the association between a woman’s lifetime lactation and the risk and duration of menopausal symptoms. Natalie V. Scime and her colleagues attempted to address this gap in knowledge using publicly available data from the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN), which they accessed via the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA). Their findings were published in August in an online first article in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

SWAN is an ongoing, multi-site, longitudinal, epidemiological study designed to examine the health of women during their middle years. Focus groups began in 1994, then a cross-sectional screener survey was done in 1995, and by the end of 1996, 3,302 eligible premenopausal women were enrolled from the cross-sectional phase into the longitudinal follow-up study. Eligible women were 42-52 years old, had a uterus and at least one intact ovary, reported a menstrual period within the past three months, and had not taken hormone medications in that time. Since 1996, the SWAN research team has completed 16 follow-up visits. (NACDA currently distributes data through the 10th visit.) For their analysis, Scime et al. used data from the baseline and first 10 follow-up visits (up until 2008). Participants’ lifetime lactation was estimated, which the authors defined as the duration of breastfeeding across all births, in months. Frequent hot flashes and night sweats were measured annually for 10 years, defined as occurring six or more days in two weeks. Scime et al. found that on average, “women reporting lifetime lactation between approximately 6 and 20 months experienced a 2.1-year reduction in hot flash duration and 0.8-year reduction in night sweat duration.” The authors conclude that since menopausal symptoms “are a significant concern for women, with far-reaching impacts on quality of life and health service use,” US healthcare policies and practice should focus on increasing breastfeeding rates. Click here to link to hundreds more publications that use SWAN data.