Feeding Your Baby for Cancer Prevention

   With October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I want to take some time to honor the brave women who have fought breast cancer and especially those who have lost that fight. No one wants to hear that they or their loved one has cancer. It is important that we support our friends and family who are fighting cancer and pray for their strength, health, and endurance. It is also important that we come along side those friends that are grieving a loss due to breast cancer and pray that God give them peace during their time of grief. 

  Since becoming a new mom, I have heard so many times of the importance of breastfeeding for my baby. Every once in a while, someone will also bring up the importance of breastfeeding for moms too! Did you know that breastfeeding our babies can lower our risk of developing breast or gynecological cancers?

  I want to put in a side note here. Before I became a mom, I leaned more toward the idea that "breast is best," but then, due to labor complications, my baby's second feed was formula. On top of that, I struggled with milk supply. The last two months of trying to breastfeed have been a journey with supplementing with formula, pumping, and trying a myriad of other things just to feed my baby. So now I understand... breastfeeding can be very hard and impossible even. That is why I now ascribe to the idea of "fed is best."

  All that to say, I still believe that the milk that God allows us to produce for our babies is still the best option for our growing little ones in an ideal situation. Not only that, but studies have shown multiple health benefits for the breastfeeding mother as well, one being prevention of breast cancer. From information from 47 studies, an article in the journal Cancer Medicine reported, "The relative risk of breast cancer decreased by 4.3% for every 12 months of breastfeeding, which was in addition to the 7.0% decrease in risk observed for each birth"(Stordal 2022). So why does this reduction of risk occur?

  The key is a decrease in the hormone estrogen. When women are breastfeeding, hormones associated with feeding their babies (most of the time) suppress ovulation which then leads to an overall decrease in the hormone estrogen. Estrogen has been found to fuel the growth of bad cancer cells. In addition, when a mom is breastfeeding, the breast tissue changes. These changes, as well as production of immune cells in breast milk, have been shown to clean out the breast tissue of bad cells that could later lead to cancer (Obeagu and Obeagu 2024; Sweet n.d.). Aren't our bodies amazing?!? 

So the next time you are breastfeeding your baby, thank God for the miracle He has given us that not only benefits our babies but can give us protection as well!

Obeagu, Emmanuel I., and Gertrude U. Obeagu. "Breastfeeding's Protective Role in Alleviating Breast Cancer Burden: A Comprehensive Review." Annals of Medicine & Surgery 86, no. 5 (2024): 2805-2811. Accessed October 3, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1097/MS9.0000000000001914.

Stordal, Britta. "Breastfeeding Reduces the Risk of Breast Cancer: A Call for Action in High-income Countries with Low Rates of Breastfeeding." Cancer Medicine 12, no. 4 (2022): 4616-4625. Accessed October 3, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1002/cam4.5288.

Sweet, Joni. "Breastfeeding and Breast Cancer: Does Breastfeeding Lower Breast Cancer Risk?" Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Accessed October 3, 2025. https://www.bcrf.org/about-breast-cancer/breastfeeding-breast-cancer-risk/.