[Slyfox]

Great post.

[homeschool mama]

**They found that the chances of breast cancer would decrease from 6.3 percent to 6 percent, a 5 percent drop. **

fuzzy math?!

[aruanan]

Study: Nursing babies cuts breast-cancer risk

I did a journal club presentation on this at least 4 years ago during my doctoral program. Another example of how long it takes for things to finally dribble out to the public via the news media. Anything that reduces a woman's number of ovulations reduces her lifetime risk of breast cancer. Some of these are: increased number of births, increased length of breastfeeding, later onset of menarche, earlier onset of menopause.

[dd5339]

Ping for my breast feeding, stay at home wife.

Semper Fi!

[Politicalmom]

Tell this to the "breast feeding Nazis", who were using case of the neurotic woman forcing her 8 year old to breast feed to castigate anyone who does so after six months.

[valkyrieanne]

Coupled with this week's stats about hormone replacement therapy (three times the risk of ovarian cancer!) it definitely seems like mother nature "knows best."

[knuthom]

there's been a lot of confusion about whether the number of children and breast-feeding had an effect on breast cancer

Part of the problem is that breastfeeding has to be defined. I saw some of the earlier studies and they included what I call "token breastfeeding". That is, if a woman ever breastfed her child, even if for only a couple weeks or heavily supplemented with formula, if was included as breastfeeding. Studies that take into account how long a woman nurses do find reductions in breast cancer rates.

[A Ruckus of Dogs]

The biggest risk factor for all kinds of cancer is age. People in developed countries live longer, so this is not surprising.

[Lorraine]

My "children" are now 21 and 19. The information that breastfeeding prevented breast cancer was written in several of the childcare books that I read back before they were born, and also in the LaLeche literature. I nursed both children - my son for two years which was considered quite a long time back then. I also remember discussing the cancer link with other new mothers back then, so I don't think this is anything new.