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One of the known risk factors for breast cancer is fluctuating levels of the hormone called estrogen. Estrogen is an important hormone that causes a girl to develop curves, maintain a pregnancy and in helping a mother produce breast milk to nourish her child. Estrogen, along with a few other female hormones, needs to remain at steady levels because fluctuations cause myriad problems. It is believed that when a woman goes through life with her hormones out of control, including estrogen levels that are too high, breast cancer can result.
When a woman breastfeeds her child, her hormones equalize because of the milk production. When ovulation is suppressed by breastfeeding and then the ducts which produce milk physically change, these are things that scientists point to as possible factors in reducing the risk of breast cancer.
Since pregnancy and breastfeeding both create a stable estrogen presence, it is interesting to note a recent study performed by the American Association for Cancer Research. It showed that women who began having children early in their life or who had several children seemed to be protected from cancerous masses fueled by estrogen even if they did not breastfeed, but not cancers caused by factors other than hormones. Women who chose to have their first child in their late twenties and thirties did not have the same protection from either type of cancer. It is to be noted that breastfeeding protected each group of women from both types of cancerous tumors in their breast tissue.
Some people believe that the protection from cancer given through breastfeeding reaches farther than the mother. Since breastfed children are generally less obese than children who were bottle fed, and that breastfed babies are given special immunization through the breast milk, many experts think that these children have been given a healthy edge against cancer that bottle fed babies were not.