I’ve discovered one of the single biggest triggers for breast cancer. It raises your risk of the disease by 60 per cent… but no one is talking about it. Here’s everything you need to know, revealed by a leading oncologist
Women who delay having children have a much higher risk of developing breast cancer, a leading doctor has warned at the world’s largest cancer conference. This comment will reopen the debate about having children later in life.
Director of medical oncology at Galliera Hospital in Italy, Dr. “Women are having children much later and there are problems with that,” Andrea DeCensi said.
‘People are reluctant to talk about it, but delayed childbearing is one of the biggest contributing factors to rising breast cancer rates.’
Her remarks come after a sharp rise in the number of young people contracting the disease, with 8,500 cases diagnosed in young women each year in the UK.
It has long been suggested that having children at an early age may help protect against ovarian and breast cancer. However, experts warned against increasing fears among career women who postponed having children and could not get pregnant.
But Dr DeCensi believes girls as young as 16 need to be educated about the risks.
‘Biologically, women are ready for pregnancy immediately after their first menstrual period,’ he said. ‘The optimal age range for childbearing is between 20 and 35. After that, not only does it become more difficult to get pregnant, but the risk of breast cancer also increases significantly. And this is something many women don’t know.
Dr DeCensi said: ‘As a society, we are having children later and later; “Education, work and living expenses all have an impact on whether women have children,” she said.
Waiting to have children later in life is one of the biggest risk factors for breast cancer, experts say
‘The problem is that this goes against what the body is biologically designed to do, resulting in an overall increase in breast cancer cases.’
Teaching girls in school about the risks of delaying having children in health education could help push back rising rates, she added.
‘Many women don’t realize that waiting to have children can have an impact on their risk of breast cancer, and by the time they go for their first screening at age 40 or 50, it’s too late to change this.’
Dr DeCensi agrees that lifestyle factors such as inactivity, poor diet and obesity contribute to increased cancer rates; but argued that delayed childbearing remains ‘a significant societal risk factor that no one wants to talk about’.
Although the link between reproductive factors, hormones, and a woman’s risk of breast cancer is extremely complex, having younger children has been shown to protect against the disease.
This is because breast cells remain in an immature and vulnerable state until the woman becomes pregnant.
These immature cells are more sensitive to estrogen and other growth-promoting hormones and are more likely to grow in abnormal ways, increasing the risk of cancer.
Having children earlier means that those cells that are there to produce milk can perform their natural functions sooner, shortening the time window for the cells to proliferate.
According to a study published in the British Journal of Cancer, women who give birth to their first child in their thirties are 60 percent more likely to have the disease before menopause than those who give birth at age 22.
And with each pregnancy, the risk drops to nine percent.
Studies have also shown that breastfeeding has a protective effect, delaying the onset of the disease by 10 years; however, this is only seen in women who have been breastfeeding for more than six months and are non-smokers.
Experts are still not sure why this is the case, but one leading theory is that breastfeeding prevents the body from producing enough of the female sex hormone estrogen. Research shows that cancer cells can feed on estrogen and grow.
11 types of cancer, including breast and ovarian, are currently on the rise among young people, but no single cause has been identified, with obesity, ‘forever chemicals’ remaining in the body and early exposure to antibiotics also thought to play a role.
Fiona Osgun, head of health information at Cancer Research UK, said: ‘Cancer is a complex disease and many factors affect a person’s risk of developing cancer.
‘Having children reduces one’s risk of getting breast cancer, but this is a very personal decision that people make for many reasons, and there are many other ways women can reduce their risk of cancer that will have a much greater impact.
‘Not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight and cutting down on alcohol are just some of the proven steps that will make a bigger difference.’
Breast cancer is now the most common cancer in the UK, with more than 59,000 new cases of breast cancer each year. However, survival rates are high; About 77 percent of women remain cancer-free for a decade or more.
