Self-sacrifice

Contradictory to what is often thought, breastfeeding is no bad for a woman’s health. Mothers who breastfeed do not sacrifice themselves end their health, instead they do themselves a huge favor. Women who never breastfed are more likely to develop various forms of cancer. Breastfeeding will, in the end not lower het BMD (bone mass density). Karlsson points out that during pregnancy and lactation other factors then the harvesting of calcium from her skeleton for het child, too, will influence BMD, and that even multiple pregnancies and extended breastfeeding will not negatively affect BMI. Lenora et al, in their study amongst 210 women from Sri Lanka, aged 46-98, found that this extends beyond menopause. Japanese research showed that after an initial 5% loss BMD increases after weaning and stays steady for up to 5-10 years. First to notice that breast cancer is linked to certain groups of women more than others was the Italian physician Bernardo Ramazzini (1633-1714), who noted that this disease was seen more in nuns than married women. More recent scientific research confirms that not giving birth and not breastfeed will seriously increase the odds of developing breast cancer. Da Silva et al compared 100 women with and 203 without breast cancer, aged 36-64. They indeed found that breastfeeding offers a strong protection against developing breast cancer and that the dose:response ratio was high: the more months of breastfeeding, the lower the risk. DeRoo c.s. compaired women in Geneva (relatively high breast cancer rates) with women in Sjanghai (reltively low rates) and they, too, found remarkable differences. Especially the differences in reproductive factors (age at menarche, duration of fertile lifespan, pregnancy incidence and total lactation duration) were significant, as were smoking, hormonal contraception and hormone replacement therapy. Women who only breastfeed for a short period or not at all also are at an increased risk for epithelial ovarian cancer (Jordan et al, 2010).
Kurabayashi  T, Tamura R, Hata Y, Nishijima S, Tsuneki I, Tamura M, Yanase T: Secondary osteoporosis UPDATE. Bone metabolic change and osteoporosis during pregnancy and lactation. Clin Calcium. 2010 May;20(5):672-81.
Karlsson MK, Ahlborg HG, Karlsson C: Maternity and bone mineral density. Acta Orthop. 2005 Feb;76(1):2-13.
Lenora J, Lekamwasam S, Karlsson MK: Effects of multiparity and prolonged breast-feeding on maternal bone mineral density: a community-based cross-sectional study. BMC Womens Health. 2009 Jul 1;9:19.
DeRoo LA, Vlastos AT, Mock P, Vlastos G, Morabia: Comparison of women's breast cancer risk factors in Geneva, Switzerland and Shanghai, China, Preventive Medicine, In Press, Uncorrected Proof, Available online 2 October 2010,
(http://tinyurl.com/263q8rt)
De Silva M, Senarath U, Gunatilake M, Lokuhetty D: Prolonged breastfeeding reduces risk of breast cancer in Sri Lankan women: A case–control study. Cancer Epidemiology 34 (2010) 267–273
Jordan S, Siskind V, C Green AC, Whiteman D, Webb P: Breastfeeding and risk of epithelial ovarian cancer. Cancer Causes and Control, 2010, 21(1):109-116