While stalking Sammi's blog I came across her post about breast cancer awareness month. When I was 20 I went to the OB/GYN for a check up. After reading my family history and seeing that my maternal grandmother died young of Ovarian cancer, and my mother had Colon cancer she told me that I'm pretty much high high risk for breast cancer. What a nice thing for her to say huh? When I was in junior high I had to go to the DR for a breast cancer scare. Thankfully after a few ultrasounds it was just dx as "lumpy breasts", I forgot the medical term for it, LOL. Needless to say giving myself exams is extremely difficult. Hard to decide the difference.
While pregnant with my 2nd child I came across 101 Reasons To Breastfeed and right there in the top 5 was this...
Reason #4: Not breastfeeding increases mother's risk of breast cancer
Many studies have shown that women who breastfeed have lower risks of developing breast cancer. Recently, data from 47 studies in 30 countries was re-examined. The study group concluded that the incidence of breast cancer in developed countries could be reduced by more than half if women had the number of births and lifetime duration of breastfeeding that have been common in developing countries until recently. According to the analysis, breastfeeding could account for almost two-thirds of this estimated reduction in breast cancer incidence.
Jernstorm, H et al "Breast-feeding and the risk of breast cancer in BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers." J Natl Cancer Inst. 2004;96:1094-1098
Lee, SY et al "Effect of lifetime lactation on breast cancer risk: a Korean women's cohort study." Int J Cancer. 2003;105:390-393
Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer (2002). "Breast cancer and breastfeeding: collaborative reanalysis of individual data from 47 epidemiological studies in 30 countries, including 50,302 women with breast cancer and 96,973 women without the disease." Lancet 360: 187-95
Zheng et al, "Lactation Reduces Breast Cancer Risk in Shandong Province, China" Am. J. Epidemiol. Dec. 2000, 152 (12): 1129
Newcomb PA, Storer BE, Longnecker MP, et al. "Lactation and a reduced risk of premenopausal breast cancer." N Engl J Med. 1994;330:81-87
So I decided that if breastfeeding will reduce my chances of getting it then I'm all for it. Selfish I know ;-P
Hey not too selfish! Just 2 spots down is this.
Reason #6: Formula feeding increases baby girls' risk of developing breast cancer in later life.
- Women who were formula-fed as infants have higher rates of breast cancer as adults. For both premenopausal and postmenopausal breast cancer, women who were breastfed as children, even if only for a short time, had a 25% lower risk of developing breast cancer than women who were bottle-fed as infants.
Freudenheim, J. et al. 1994 "Exposure to breast milk in infancy and the risk of breast cancer". Epidemiology 5:324-331
That concludes my PSA for breastfeeding, LOL!
Anyway, I thought I would share Sammi's blog post about this website that gave me a chuckle.
OCTOBER IS BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH
"So I thought I'd pass along one of me favorite websites that promotes Breast Cancer research and awareness. It is Save 2nd Base. Isn't that catchy name?? Go check them out. Half of all their proceeds to go The Kelly Rooney Foundation.
So ladies, go feel your boobs :)"
...off to feel my chi-chi girls!
