Breastfeeding may help prevent cognitive decline

Women who breastfed performed better in all four of the cognitive tests measuring for learning, delayed recall, executive functioning and processing compared to women who had not breastfed.

New York: Women who had breastfed their babies performed better on cognitive tests after the age of 50 compared to women who had not breastfed, finds a new study.

The findings, published in Evolution, Medicine and Public Health, suggest that breastfeeding may have a positive impact on postmenopausal women's cognitive performance and could have long-term benefits for the mother's brain.

"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," said lead author Molly Fox from the University Of California-Los Angeles.