Breastfeeding may help prevent cognitive decline: Study - Hindustan Times

A new study led by researchers at UCLA Health has found that women over the age of 50 who had breastfed their babies performed better on cognitive tests compared to women who had never breastfed.

"Our findings, which show superior cognitive performance among women over 50 who had breastfed, suggest that breastfeeding may be 'neuroprotective' later in life," Molly added.

Results from the cognitive tests also revealed that those who had breastfed, regardless of whether they were depressed or not, 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.

Separate analyses of the data for the depressed and non-depressed groups also revealed that all four cognitive domain scores were significantly associated with breastfeeding in the women who were not depressed.

But in the women who were depressed, only two of the cognitive domains - executive functioning and processing speed - were significantly associated with breastfeeding.

When they added up all the time a woman spent breastfeeding in her life, they found that women who did not breastfeed had significantly lower cognitive scores in three out of four domains compared to women who had breastfed for 1-12 months, and in all four domains compared to the women who had breastfed for more than 12 months