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In many studies, it appears that women who have more children have a higher risk of heart disease and a shorter life span, but this effect is inconsistent across populations and no good explanation for it exists. Against this backdrop, new tools to assess biological age—the age reflected by one's biological state, rather than simply the number of years they have been alive—have revealed that pregnancy temporarily elevates biological age, while postpartum recovery can return it closer to baseline.

However, we still do not know how to connect these short-term changes to long-term health outcomes. This is the gap a paper published in Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism, titled "The Postpartum Recovery Window as a Determinant of Maternal Aging," aimed to fill.

Jesse Poganik, Ph.D., of the Division of Genetics within the Department of Medicine at Mass General Brigham, is the senior author of the paper and Stephen Albright, formerly of Mass General Brigham, is the lead author.

Why is having more children detrimental to the long-term health of some women, but not others? The researchers propose that the timing between pregnancies may be the key factor.

Since pregnancy elevates biological age and the postpartum period represents a window during which biological age recovers, the length of that window may be critically important. If the window is cut short by another pregnancy, the costs may compound across pregnancies.

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