How To Cut Cancer Risks In Mothers

Breastfeeding helps to reduce a mother's cancer risks, besides protecting her health in many other ways. Here are 10 - of many - good reasons why every mother should breastfeed her child.

• Breastfeeding Reduces Your Risk Of Breast Cancer. A fishing community living on boats in the delta of the Pearl River, Hong Kong, always breastfed their babies from one breast only, the right one, because their dress traditionally opened this side. In a study of the relation between breastfeeding and cancer on the womenfolk there done by doctors in 2 hospitals in Hong Kong, it was found that 27 out of 34 women over 55 had breast cancer in the breast which they had not used for feeding. In another hospital-based case-control study conducted in Athens (1989-98) involving 820 patients with confirmed breast cancer, it was found that prolonged breastfeeding (for 24 months and more) reduces breast cancer risk among premenopausal women.
• Breastfeeding Lowers Your Risk Of Developing Endometrial Cancer. In a 10 year WHO collaborative study of data from 6 countries reported in the International Journal Of Epidemiology (June 1995), it was found that long-term lactation significantly reduces the risk of endometrial cancer. The risk was found to be lowest in women who had just recently breastfed their babies.
• Breastfeeding Reduces Your Risk Of Developing Ovarian Cancer. In an analysis of 12 case-control studies, women who had breastfed an infant had a 20% lower risk of ovarian cancer than women who had never breastfed; each month of breastfeeding was associated with a 1% reduction in overall risk.