Breastfeeding: Protection from Cancer

I had a nephew who did not taste a drop of breastmilk in his short life. And I say ’short life’ because he was diagnosed with a congenital type of cancer at age two. He, Pyro, valiantly fought for over a year but the cancer was too aggressive and his body so young. I had often wondered if things could have gone better for him had he been breastfed. He died at age three.

I was a breastfeeding advocate even before I got married. And when we found out that we were pregnant, we made sure we got all the help we can get to prepare for the baby. We attended breastfeeding seminars and in these seminars we were often told that one of the benefits of breastfeeding is lowering risks for certain types of cancer for both the mother and the child.

So having suffered much pain over the loss of my nephew, I vowed even more to breastfeed my child.

Breastfeeding was one of ten recommendations in the conclusion of a recently published report (Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective) by the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR). It was found that after looking at a host of variables with diet, nutrition, weight and activity, lactation was the only one found to lower risk of breast cancer throughout a woman’s life. This is especially good news since the breast cancer that afflicts women before menopause is different from the one they have after menopause. It is believed that the protection is linked to breastfeeding’s effect on a woman’s hormones, which delays the return of menstruation. It has already been established that the fewer menstrual cycles a woman has during her lifetime, the lower her risk for breast cancer gets.

Breastfeeding also protects the child from cancer in two ways. First, breastmilk provides protection from the more common childhood cancers like leukemia by passing on the mother’s antibodies which boosts the baby’s immune system and possibly stops any genetic changes. Secondly, breastfeeding protects from developing obesity in the child, possibly due to the transfer of appetite-regulating hormone leptin. Fats from childhood are carried over into adulthood, an excess of which has been convincingly linked by AICR experts to cause six common cancers: colon, kidney, pancreas, endometrium, adenocarcinoma of the esophagus and post-menopausal breast cancer. Essentially, not being overweight when you were young because you were breastfed will lower your risks for these types of cancer in adulthood.

These findings should especially encourage more women to breastfeed exclusively for six months to get maximum benefits. Furthermore, the longer a woman breastfeeds, the more anti-cancer benefits she gets for herself and gives to her child. Breastfeeding has been touted to have so many benefits and medical research has proven again and again that these are true. There really is no good reason NOT to breastfeed and surely, the threat of cancer is more than enough reason to insist on all the protection one can get… and in breastfeeding’s case, give.

Talk about long-term investments.

Source:
Medical News Today