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The paper
J. Moon et al., “Lactation improves pancreatic β cell mass and function through serotonin production,” Sci Transl Med, 12:eaay0455, 2020.
When a woman becomes pregnant, her risk of type 2 diabetes increases for the rest of her life, perhaps because of her growing weight and rising insulin resistance. But if she breastfeeds, epidemiological studies have shown that the uptick in risk shrinks or disappears.
The mechanisms underlying this lactation perk have been unclear, but Michael German, a biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, hypothesized that the pancreas’s beta cells are involved. “For long-term protection over decades, you have to fundamentally change some part of the mechanism that controls blood sugar,” says German. “The best way to do that is by affecting the beta cell, because it makes the insulin.” Insulin helps glucose enter the body’s cells from the blood. But in type 2 ...
