Breast-feeding may protect some moms from cancer

August 10, 2009 Researchers discovered that women with a family history of breast cancer were 59 percent less likely to develop the disease if they breastfed their children.

And it didn't seem to matter if the breast-feeding lasted three months or three years. According to the report in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the protective effect was the same.

Why breast-feeding has this effect is still unknown. But researchers suspect it prevents breast inflammation following childbirth, a condition that is thought to increase the risk of cancer.

Researchers also found breast-feeding did not significantly affect the risk of women with no family history of breast cancer.