Breastfeeding for any amount of time linked to lower blood pressure in toddlers, study finds

Breastfeeding for any amount of time, even just a few days, is linked to lower blood pressure in children at age 3, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The reduction in blood pressure found in the study "is of clinically important magnitude and surprising," Dr. Lori Feldman-Winter told CNN in an email. Feldman-Winter, who was not involved in the study, is the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Breastfeeding. "I may have expected a difference to be apparent just prior to or during adolescence, but the fact that these differences were seen as early as three years of age indicates that breastfeeding participates in metabolic programming that spans the life cycle," wrote Feldman-Winter, who is a professor of pediatrics at Rowan University's Cooper Medical School.