Does having more children raise the chance of breast cancer? An oncologist offers perspectives
According to the oncologist, women who give birth early have a lower chance of developing breast cancer than women who wait till later in life.
For women, breast cancer is a serious health risk. Numerous things contribute to it, including drinking alcohol, gaining weight, and not exercising regularly. Dr. Ritika Harjani Hinduja, Consultant in Radiation Oncology at P. D. Hinduja Hospital and MRC, stated in an interview with HT Lifestyle that a woman’s exposure to hormones produced by her ovaries (endogenous estrogen and progesterone) increases her risk of developing breast cancer.
The risk of breast cancer has been linked to reproductive factors that lengthen the time and/or intensity of exposure to ovarian hormones, which promote cell proliferation. Breast tissue is exposed to high hormone levels for prolonged periods of time due to a variety of circumstances, including late menopause, early menstruation, and other factors including being older when one first becomes pregnant and never having given birth.
The complicated relationship between having children and breast cancer was further elucidated by the oncologist:
Breastfeeding and pregnancy:
These two factors lower a woman’s lifetime menstrual cycle count, which lowers her cumulative exposure to endogenous hormones and lowers her chance of developing breast cancer. Pregnancy and breastfeeding have various effects on a woman’s biology, such as causing breast cells to specialize or develop so they can efficiently make milk. These cells are more cancer resistant.
The age of pregnancy:
A woman’s risk of breast cancer is correlated with the age at which she gives birth to her first child and the number of pregnancies she has. Pregnancy can raise a woman’s short-term cancer risk while simultaneously lowering her long-term cancer risk. Younger women who give birth to their first child are less likely to get breast cancer than women who choose to wait until later in pregnancy or do not have children at all.
Genetic damage in cells:
During pregnancy, breast cells proliferate quickly. Because of this, whatever genetic harm that occurs to the breast cells during pregnancy is also duplicated in the cells as they mature. Breast cancer may also result from this rapid genetic damage replication.
Hormone receptor-positive breast cancer:
Having many children can occasionally result in aberrant hormone-negative cell proliferation, which can then progress to a more aggressive form of hormone-negative cancer.
