Everyone knows that breast milk is good for your baby’s health. Because of this, many mothers struggle to breastfeed their babies, and when the amount of breast milk is insufficient, they suffer from a sense of guilt. A recent study found that metabolic health is related to breast milk volume.
Lori Normsen-Rivers, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of Cincinnati’s Associated School of Health Sciences, conducted a case-controlled study to find out why some mothers don’t get enough milk despite their best efforts to breastfeed.
The researchers analyzed data from a randomized controlled trial in mothers who were tested for insufficient breast milk between February 2015 and June 2016. This included mothers aged 1 to 8 weeks postpartum who were 20 years of age or older and gave birth to healthy newborns aged 37 weeks or older. Participants weighed their babies before and following breastfeeding at home and measured the amount of breast milk.
The researchers looked at all factors contributing to metabolic syndrome, including participants’ blood pressure, plasma lipids, fasting blood sugar, fasting insulin, and insulin sensitivity. Overall, all measures were significantly worse in mothers who continued to produce low milk for no apparent reason when compared to controls.
Prof. Nomsen-Rivers, through a number of large-scale epidemiologic studies over the past decade, consistently found that women with higher body mass indexes (BMIs) had shorter breastfeeding periods, sparking many theories. explained that there is She said there is still a lack of research in this area, despite strong evidence that a higher body mass index is associated with poorer metabolic health, she said.
The results of this study strongly suggest that the cause of low milk production is not a lack of effort by the mother, but a physiological basis. The study results were published in the journal Breastfeeding Medicine under the title ‘Measures of Maternal Metabolic Health as Predictors of Severely Low Milk Production’.
