It’s relatively common knowledge that long term breastfeeding reduces the risk of developing breast cancer later in life. Even so, some prominent cancer organizations still don’t wholeheartedly embrace the premise.  Cancer.org reports:

Not breast-feeding: Some studies have shown that breast-feeding slightly lowers breast cancer risk, especially if the breast-feeding lasts 1½ to 2 years. This could be because breast-feeding lowers a woman’s total number of menstrual periods, as does pregnancy. But this has been hard to study because, in countries such as the United States, breast-feeding for this long is uncommon.

Yet I find it ironic there is enough information to make the following claim:

Breast implants: Silicone breast implants can cause scar tissue to form in the breast. But studies have found that this does not increase breast cancer risk. If you have breast implants, you might need special x-ray pictures during mammograms.

A new study has shown significant reduction in breast cancer rates in women who carry the BRCA1 gene, which puts them at high risk for breast cancer.

The Telegraph reports:

Amongst the general population of healthy women, breastfeeding for a year reduces the risk of breast cancer by 4.3 per cent, the authors said.

Almost 6,000 women with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes were included in the study, with around half having already been diagnosed with cancer.

The cancer sufferers had breastfed for an average of two months less than those without cancer.

It was calculated that breastfeeding for one year reduced the risk of cancer by 32 per cent and for two or more years cut it by almost half.

The researchers said each year of breastfeeding reduced the risk of breast cancer by 19 per cent.

Unfortunately, the breastfeeding advantage was not found for the BRCA2 gene.

I find it extremely interesting and important to note that the difference between developing and not developing breast cancer was only an additional two months of breastfeeding for the women in the study.