Natalia: Your opiniom that late pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer may seem absurd to some. It's like we're urging women to have children younger and for many women this means delaying their careers.
AnaM:Here, it's important to just stick to the facts. Pregnancy and breast-feeding help protect women from breast cancer. It's all because of the unique biology of the breast. Our other organs—the heart, kidneys, lungs—are fully made and are working before or immediately after birth. But the breast is totally unique, requiring many more steps to fully mature and develop the capability to fulfill its primary job: to make milk. The breast takes nine months in utero and 10 years in adolescence to be built, and even then it can't make milk until the first full-term pregnancy. So until that happens, if it happens, it remains an immature organ and very responsive to a whole host of chemicals that look like, smell like, taste like, or act like estrogen. Exposures to these and other hormones over time can lead to extra cell growth, including abnormal cell growth like cancer.
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