A new study shows that people who have breastfed or have been pregnant are less likely to experience early menopause.
Christine Langton at the University of Massachusetts has concluded with several other studies that pregnancy and breastfeeding affect the timing of menopause. Initially, this has been a study hard to document and track because as women age their periods tend to change and it is hard to pinpoint exactly when menopause actually begins. Also, as women age, their periods can be irregular which can be a sign of menopause or your body changing. But menopause is confirmed after twelve months with no menstrual cycle.
Langton thought it would be smarter and more effective to study health records from volunteers that spanned over two decades. Langton and her colleagues were able to look and examine at the health records in Nurses’ Health Study II and were able to study the pregnancies, breastfeeding and menopause data of over 100,000 women who chose to volunteer. The data they examined concluded that people who were pregnant for at least six months had a much lower risk of experiencing early menopause versus those who did not experience pregnancy at all. “We observed a linear trend,” Langton said. “Women who had one pregnancy had an 8 percent lower risk, those who had two pregnancies had a 16 percent lower risk, and those that had three pregnancies had a 22 percent lower risk.”
People who breastfed also lowered their risk of early menopause. People who breastfed for at least seven to twelve months over the course of their life no matter how many children they had were 28 percent less likely to experience menopause before the age of 45 than those who had breastfed their children for less than a month. Those who exclusively breastfed their children for a total of seven to twelve months over the course of their lifetime and had three pregnancies had a 32 percent lower risk of early menopause.
The team notes that this is only an observed correlation. They can’t be too sure that pregnancies or breastfeeding influence the timing of menopause. However, because ovulation is temporary paused during pregnancy and during breastfeeding, this may pause the monthly loss of eggs. So in theory, this occurrence could preserve egg and stave off menopause for longer Langton notes.
Source: New Scientist