Cutting Breast Cancer Risk: Reason to Breastfeed
Katherine A. Dettwyler, PhD
Texas A&M University
From: LEAVEN, Vol. 35 No. 2, April-May 1999, p. 29
We provide articles
from our publications from previous years for reference for our Leaders and
members. Readers are cautioned to remember that research and medical information
change over time
Between the two factors,
having been breastfed oneself and breastfeeding one's own children,
one could reduce the risk of breast cancer by almost half. Now breast
cancer strikes about one in eight women over the course of their lifetimes.
If one could reduce the chances to one in 16, that would be worth doing,
I would think.
These studies do not promise
anyone that they won't get breast cancer if they were breastfed and
breastfeed their own children; they merely lower the risk by half. Chances
are good that you won't get breast cancer no matter what you do - as
seven out of eight women don't. You can play the odds, or you can change
the way you live to reduce your risk.
It is interesting to look
at the steady rise in incidence of breast cancer over the last few decades
in light of this new information. Let me use my own mother as an example.
She was born in 1920, when almost all babies were still breastfed for
several years; her mother breastfed her. Thus she got the first type
of protection. By the time she started having children in the late 1940s
and up to the mid 1950s, many women were not breastfeeding their children
anymore (although my mother did). That means that there was an entire
cohort of women who had been breastfed as infants, but did not breastfeed
their own children. Thus they got the first type of protection, but
not the second. As they aged, they were at greater risk for breast cancer
than their mothers and grandmothers had been (because their mothers
and grandmothers had had both types of protection).
Then you come to my generation,
most of whom were born in the 1950s and 1960s and were not breastfed
as children, so they missed out on the first type of protection. When
they started to have babies in the 1970s and 1980s, many still did not
breastfeed their own children, thus missing out on the second type of
protection. As this cohort ages, those who were neither breastfed nor
breastfed their own children are at even greater risk than their mothers
bad been.
Could it be that the steady
erosion of these two sources of protection account for the steady rise
in breast cancer incidence in the US over the past four decades? At
the moment, this is just speculation based on the timing of the two
processes. I hope I have given you more to think about.
Freudenheim, J et al. Exposure
to breastmilk in infancy and the risk of breast cancer. Epid
1994; 5:324-31.
Newcomb, PA et al. Lactation
and a reduced risk of premenopausal breast cancer. New Eng J Med
1994; 330(2):81-87.
Page last edited Sun Oct 14 09:32:22 UTC 2007.
