tonya wright

More great rreasons to breastfeed.........


>From: "Deborah Gillespie" <debbie@...>
>Reply-To: <debbie@...>
>To: <debbie@...>
>Subject: More great news about breastfeeding
>Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 17:50:33 -0700
>
> Health - AP
>
> Breast-Feeding May Protect Vs. Cancer
> Thu Jul 18, 7:13 PM ET
> By EMMA ROSS, AP Medical Writer
>
> The number of children women have and the length of time they
>breast-feed them are the most important factors influencing their chance of
>developing breast cancer ( news - web sites) � even more important than
>genetic factors, major new research shows.
>
>
>
> The landmark study, published this week in The Lancet medical
>journal,
>found that if women in the industrialized world breast-fed each of their
>children six months longer, they could reduce their chance of breast cancer
>by 5 percent, even if they have a strong family history of the disease.
>
> Experts said the findings help explain the mysterious rise in breast
>cancer rates over the last century.
>
> "In the developed world there have been enormous changes over the
>last
>100 years in childbearing patterns and this illustrates that those changes
>can explain a great deal of the increase in breast cancer rates," said
>Eugina Calle, director of analytic epidemiology at the American Cancer
>Society ( news - web sites).
>
> The study involved 200 researchers across the globe examining more
>than 47 studies that investigated a total of 150,000 women worldwide. The
>analysis of the pooled information was conducted by epidemiologists at
>Oxford University in England.
>
> The idea that childbearing is linked to breast cancer dates to 1743,
>when an Italian researcher called the disease an occupational hazard of
>nuns, attributing their relatively high rate of breast cancer to their
>childlessness.
>
> Breast cancer rates really started to climb at the end of the 19th
>century, and by the 1950s, it was well established that the number of
>children a woman had was a major factor in breast cancer.
>
> In 1970, a study found that the age at which a woman had her first
>child was key, but that neither the number of children she had nor her
>breast-feeding habits mattered.
>
> "Since that time, almost every study on breast cancer has confirmed
>that finding on age at first birth, but there's been a lot of confusion
>about whether the number of children and breast-feeding had an effect on
>breast cancer," said the new study's leader, Valerie Beral, head of the
>Oxford epidemiology unit.
>
> Confusion has remained, particularly about the role of
>breast-feeding,
>because individual studies have been too small to provide answers, she
>said.
>
> The Oxford group started by looking at 20,000 women who had only one
>child and who had never breast-fed, and compared them with women who did
>not
>breast-feed but continued to have children.
>
> "The risks go down the more children you have. Even if they'd never
>breast-fed, the risk of breast cancer went down by 7 percent for every
>additional child," Beral said.
>
> The researchers also found that, regardless of the number of
>children,
>the risk of breast cancer dropped by 4.3 percent for every year the women
>breast-fed.
>
> The magnitude of protection was the same in all women, regardless of
>other characteristics, such as ethnic origin, drinking habits and age at
>menopause.
>
> In the developed world, women have on average two or three children
>and breast-feed each for about two or three months.
>
> A century ago � before oral contraception, infant formula, improved
>infant survival and career opportunities for women � Western women used to
>have six or seven children and breast-feed each for about two years � a
>pattern still dominant in many parts of the developing world.
>
> Today, women in the industrialized world have a 6.3 percent chance
>of
>getting breast cancer by age 70, compared with a 2.7 percent chance for
>their counterparts in poor countries.
>
> Part of the reason is that women in poor countries have children
>earlier, at about 18 or 19, compared with 23 or 24 in the developed world.
>
> But that couldn't explain all the difference in the breast cancer
>rates.
>
> "People have been struggling to fill that gap. Things like diet,
>alcohol ... all these things have come up in an attempt to explain the
>difference," Beral said. "But, it's prolonging breast-feeding and having
>lots of children that really pushes breast cancer rates down.
>
> "There are obviously other determinants, but they are much smaller.
>Those two factors account for much of the difference in breast cancer rates
>between developed and developing countries," Beral said.
>
> The study found that if women in developed countries had six or
>seven
>children instead of two or three, their risk of breast cancer would
>decrease
>from 6.3 percent to 4.7 percent.
>
> "If you add to that two years of breast-feeding per child � which is
>typical for women in rural areas of the developing world � you get a
>further
>40 percent reduction down to 2.7 percent," Beral said.
>
> Changing those two factors alone would more than halve the risk of
>breast cancer in the developed world, the study found.
>
> The researchers also calculated what would happen to breast cancer
>risk if women still had only two or three children but breast-fed each for
>six months longer than the norm of two or three months. That would
>translate
>to a maximum breast-feeding time of nine months per baby.
>
> They found that the chances of breast cancer would decrease from 6.3
>percent to 6 percent, a 5 percent drop.
>
>




The secret to life isn't getting what you want it's wanting it once you get
it-Katherine Hepburn in "Love Affair"

Remember starting the fire is easy, the hardest part is learning how to keep
the flame-Stevie Nicks "Love's A Hard Game To Play" Timespace


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