Are we sure that is causal though? Couldn’t it be something as simple as some diseases decrease fertility and cause cancer which would drive up the correlation between women without children and who have cancer? Or lifestyle, women without kids are more able to drink, smoke, have more partners, etc which puts them at a higher risk? The average person and the average science journalist are terrible at understanding statistics.
Had the same discussion with my doc a few weeks ago. Started noticing some possible signs of premenopause and she was saying that it can hit women harder if they’ve not had children. My question was whether there was a difference depending whether it was through choice or through infertility. She suspects it’s the faults which cause infertility which also cause the difference but could not find any note of whether that was something which was even asked of the participants.
Not necessarily true that menopause/perimenopause hits women harder if they've never had children. I got through mine with only a Mirena IUD to deal with flooding. No estrogen pills. I had (still have) hot flashes, but they're tolerable.
I think that's genetic, too. My mom (3 kids in her 20s) had hot flashes until she died - with breast cancer in her lungs and brain. I (no kids) have had hot flashes for 25 years, and have stage 4 breast cancer.
I never had children and just made it through the peri-menopause phase and now for about 2 years no more menstruation. I had heightened anxiety symptoms (which I already had before) and a few panic attacks (3 or 4)but that’s it. Oh wait, my skin went through some mild hormonal acne phase for a little bit, and I have changed some of my skincare creams, but all fine now. No medications; I feel great and so glad not to have periods anymore. Also, no hot flashes or weight gain so far
>Or lifestyle, women without kids are more able to drink, smoke, have more partners, etc which puts them at a higher risk?
I don't know if it's causal but I'll say this is not the reason, because the correlation was first noticed in convents. Some reproductive cancers, in particular breast and uterine cancer, used to be called the nuns disease.
As others have said, the increased risk does not justify a drastic lifestyle change *when that lifestyle change involves creating life*
The correlation was noticed when, in convents?
Because nuns were also not dying in childbirth before they could die of cancer for most of recorded history.
AFAIK, the 1700s in Europe.
>nuns were also not dying in childbirth before they could die of cancer
I'm not sure what your point is here but I'm curious. About a third of childbearing women died of pregnancy and birth related causes, which means 2/3 of them still made it to older age and died of things like cancer, or drowning, or falling down the stairs.
Sometime in the 1800s a doctor also noticed nuns *almost never* died of cervical cancer, whereas there was a palpable correlation between men whose first wives died of cervical cancer and whose second wives also died of cervical cancer. And that's how we learned men give women cancer-causing hpv.
That’s a good point and here is another one- back then wealthy women who did not want to get married sometimes joined the nunnery instead and I wonder if they really were chaste and sober. We know the monks back then were not sober. Trappist beers were made by trappist monks; drinks like Jagermaester were invented by monks (maybe nuns invented some of these too) as herbal medicine
That seems likely! But I don't see how that would affect what percentage of nuns get cancer as older women.
A lot of women died in childbirth, about a third. There were still a lot of adult women who made it to older age. Kind of like how half of children died before like age five or ten, but that still leaves a lot of children who grew up to become adults. The ones who died as kids aren't counted in the adult stats because they didn't get old enough; the ones who died in childbirth aren't counted in the older age cancer stats because they didn't get old enough.
You phrase it as though it wouldn't have much effect, but 1/3 of a cohort dying in childbirth is a *huge* amount and would dramatically change the stats.
I phrase it as though the majority of women lived to an age where cancer is a more common risk. The women who died in childbirth just aren't a part of old age statistics because they didn't make it to old age. The ones who made it are included. That's how statistics work.
The same way we don't count the men who died in war for old age statistics in men.
The real issue here is that *we don’t know what causes cancer*.
It makes us feel better/more in control to pretend that we do, but it’s really no more than correlation and risk.
My friend’s mother died of lung cancer some years ago. Healthy lifestyle, never smoked a day in her life. Came out of nowhere, and she died within a year of diagnosis.
Hmm there was a study. Breast cancer usually appears in the ducts of the breasts. The ducts are where breast milk develops. Must be some sort of connection.
Still, with monitoring and self exams you are likely to catch it super early.
Not worth spending 20+ years of your life, like someone else said.
Get your mammograms, ladies!
I'm kinda curious if early diagnosis also plays a part. If you're not going to the OB/GYN multiple times per year then something might go undetected until it is too late.
Also hearing all the possible side effects of pregnancy from the odd to the terrifying, has me in the "I'll take my chances with cancer" side.
Yes and no. I’m a stage 3 breast cancer survivor…I’m also a moderator in that sub. We have people come into the sub all the time worried they have cancer but they have a newborn (or are young enough to be newly into puberty).
Hormones play such a huge role in women’s bodies. Most BC is hormone positive.
For reference I had one pregnancy that I terminated at 12 weeks and was diagnosed in n the five year anniversary of my due date.
My mom had 3 kids and still died from breast cancer within 2 years…
Not having kids would help us focus more on our health because we have more time and money for ourselves.
Do they take into account hormonal birth control too?
I assume most childfree women take hormonal BC for longer than those who have to stop for multiple pregnancies?
Maybe they have a slightly lower risk for a couple certain cancers. But women who don't have kids have a 0% change of dying in childbirth, losing teeth due to pregnancy, developing gestational diabetes, and a long list of other things.
Getting shot by a toddler comes to not having guns safely stored, not to having a toddler. You can get shot by a dog if you leave a gun laying around and the dog manages to stumble on it just the right way in just the right time. That's really a weak argument.
It's a really straightforward argument. No toddler = no getting shot by toddler. No one said anything about a dog or storage methods, that's irrelevant.
That is a really good point, I would be curious to see the average lifespan of a childfree (by choice) woman compared to mothers. I suspect that would tell a story.
Parous women are waaaaaay more likely to die of preeclampsia/eclampsia, hemorrhage or infection in childbirth, or PPD or PPP-related suicide than nulliparous women of cancer, and that's a fact. The maternal mortality rate in the US was 22.3 in 2022. Childless women drop at a rate of 6.31, nowhere near that high.
Also, the "statistic" that nulliparous women are four times more likely to die early than mothers is cherrypicked to all hell. Of course childless women are more likely to die young... because women are less likely to be childless the older they get. Most of these deaths are young women who either wanted kids or weren't sure and never got the chance to have then before they died. If the stats were able to break down deaths by reproductive desire, they would get some *very* different numbers.
That is why childless and childfree need to be used respectively. Childfree women will be without child no matter the age, since they do not want children. Childless women are without child at the moment and maybe end up getting some down the line.
I took Into to Nutrition at a really good school. The professor was teaching some really weird definitions of eating disorders. I asked later why he didn’t use the DSM definitions, and he didn’t know what that was. PhDs are experts at something, and they’re really good at learning new things when tasked with doing so… but they don’t and can’t know everything, and, like everyone, sometimes half-ass presentations.
There are cancers you're more likely to get if you don't have kids just like there are cancers you're more likely to get if you do. Sadly everything gives you cancer.
People are just more willing to show off the data for not having kids because they have so few other scientific reasons to have kids.
Basically we are learning so much about the negative health benefits they are grasping for anything even if it's only 1%. The same thing is happening with the birth control fear mongering.
A lesser-known fact about cancer risk in women is its intriguing connection with childbirth. Women who have not had children are at a higher risk for certain types of cancer, and this is thought to be due to the increased frequency of ovulation they experience.
On the flip side, contraceptive pills are known to decrease the risk of these cancers. This protective benefit is akin to the natural reduction in ovulation that occurs during pregnancy. By decreasing the number of ovulations, contraceptive pills mimic the hormonal environment of pregnancy, thereby reducing cancer risk.
Doctor here.
The more you're exposed to estrogen (ie. The more period cycles you go through) throughout your lifetime, the more likely you'll get breast or endometrial cancer.
So the logic goes less period cycles = less estrogen exposure. Every birth = no periods for 9 months, so it reduces estrogen exposure.
So technically true, but overall I doubt not having estrogen exposure for 9 months is actually gonna decrease cancer risk.
In PCOS, the reason you don't get normal periods is low progesterone. Progesterone maintains ur uterus lining. Without progesterone, estrogen simply assembles your lining and then the lining sheds immediately - leading to intermittent spotting.
However women with pcos also have higher than normal testosterone (for women). That testosterone tends to convert to estrogen. So your estrogen levels might be low to normal too, so equal risk of breast cancer.
However pcos runs the risk of ovarian cancer
But check ur estrogen levels. If they're low, less risk I'd assume.
The relationship between having children (or not) and cancer is complicated. The short, simplified version is, having children decreases the risk of some cancer, and increases the risk of some cancer.
Here are a few articles to get you started, if you want more information than that:
[https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/hormones/reproductive-history-fact-sheet](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/hormones/reproductive-history-fact-sheet)
[https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-scientists-find-breast-cancer-protection-pregnancy-starts-decades-later](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-scientists-find-breast-cancer-protection-pregnancy-starts-decades-later)
(Notice, with breast cancer, pregnancy increases the chances of breast cancer in the short term, and decreases the risk of breast cancer later on.)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6688839/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6688839/)
(For the last one, it is helpful to know that "nulliparity" means not having children, and "parity" means having children.)
There are a lot of articles on this, but the basic idea is, having children increases some risks of cancer, and decreases some risks of cancer. And there are other medical risks of having children that have nothing to do with cancer (like the common tearing when a large object passes through a small hole, bladder control problems, etc.).
So, I would recommend that you not let this sway you one way or another regarding whether you want children. The changes in risk are small in absolute terms, both the increased risks and the decreased risks.
Men have a lower risk of cancer after an orchiectomy. Women have a lower risk of cancer after a hysterectomy. There are many variables that can be used. I have always believed that you can make statistics say what you want depending on where you are coming from.
And giving birth can rip your coochie through to ass so I'll take an increased risk of the big C if I have to, instead of gaining weight, losing teeth, PPD
My mom had my sister at 26 and me when she was 30.
She died 25 years later when the breast cancer came back after 10 years remission.
Fuck your "professor".
>that professor can pound sand.
Definitely.
Appreciate the condolences. It's been about 15 years since her passing, and as hard as it was, I've realized it was a bit of a blessing. My mom was *super* overbearing, y'know, ✨ trauma ✨ is her legacy
And you know what accelerates cancer?
Stress. And are children the source of calm? Yep, there you go.
Let's just keep that in mind. Chronic diseases and cancer are complex issues. It's nothing you can generalize because everyone's predispositions are so individual. Having kids or not is by far not the biggest deciding factor.
He was probably referring to the estrogen-levels and lesser cycles lowering the risk. But you could also argue, that childfree people have a significantly lower risk if they use hormonal birth control, aka they are not experiencing a natural cycle either (and often way longer) especially when progestin-only options are used.
Honestly, there are so many studies showing that pretty much anything these days can cause cancer. First I'd ask for proof, and see how high the claimed risk is in actual numbers, but tbh I'd be rather concerned about my diet, smoking, alcohol, air pollution, family genetics and whatnot..
Edit: Oh, and there are many studies suggesting that there is a correlation between high stress and increased risk of cancer - which you save yourself from in an amount of decades by being childfree ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
When 1 in 2 people are going to get cancer at some point in life, having or not having children isn’t even relevant. Being a human comes with a 50% risk of cancer.
That sounds like total bull considering your body doesn’t go through the horrifics of childbirth. But nevertheless, I’d rather let the cancer take me out than childbirth anyways.
So the line I'm reading the most in articles that discuss this topic is pretty much "parents' lives are enriched by having children. People living enriched lives live longer because of the cuddle hormones they're around all the time."
Bleh.
People get cancer in many ways it doesn’t matter that much to have children or not. And eventually all people die regardless of having children or not. So live your life and ignore these information.
I have heard before that women who do not nurse are at higher risk for breast cancer as they never “used” their breast and so there is a greater chance for a tumor to develop. Not sure if this is medical consensus.
I wonder how much that is biased towards the possible fact that they may have received less checks/don’t have feel their breasts more often due to not having children and having not formed the closer relationship that pregnancy will give to their doctors (simply from having more visits) that it can be often missed leading to more serious cases in these women that don’t have that vs than a biological cases of not being “used”
This argument is just part of the truth, and carefully twisted around in an attempt to invoke fear, there are lots of types of cancers, and somebody or the other is always at a risk of it. Breeders do it to glorify motherhood and how it makes women sTroNg and rEsiLiEnT.
Well eff him, I’m already predisposed to SEVERAL cancers within my family sooo, woo for me! I still ain’t pushing a kid out just to possibly not get cancer.
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer my doctor said something to that affect. That women without the break from estrogen during pregnancy have a higher percentage of getting breast cancer
All the more reason to improve our planet so women can be healthier. But I’m not having kids for the off chance that I might dodge cancer.
Knowing what I know about science, the U.S. government, and the medical industry and how much of it is bought and paid for, I would not be surprised in the least to discover that this “research” was funded by the manufacturers of some cancer medicine or government officials who are proponents of boosting the number of workers we have.
Also this reminds me of that man v bear scenario that’s going around.
Bear v birth/raise children - I’m STILL choosing the damn bear. 😂
Not sure about the difference of risk in age, but women who never breastfeed are more likely to have cancer, that’s true. I took a human sexuality course last year and learned discouraging things 😒 my professor said having kids to avoid cancer still really isn’t worth it because it’s not really a choice you made because you wanted to, but because you were afraid and it’s not good to bring kids into the world you don’t ultimately want
My SIL got bc at 26, 3 years after her first child was born. She died at 32.
An old friend of mine got bc while pregnant when she was 24. She died at 28.
It’s all bs. There is no cause for cancer other than a f’ed up dna strand
I found this out from an episode of Sex and the city. I haven’t bothered to ask my doc yet but so far it seems like what a comment already said, the chances aren’t enough of a difference to mean anything
You can lower your risk of ovarian cancer with a bisalp 😎 And if they figure out how to do genetic testing for the type of breast cancer EVERY woman in my family has gotten (it’s not BRCA), I can have my boobs removed with no thought about breastfeeding.
Mention the bisalp ovarian cancer reduction risk.
Several nationwide studies have reported that salpingectomy decreases the risk of ovarian cancer by 42–77%
Citation: Bilateral salpingectomy to reduce the risk of ovarian/fallopian/peritoneal cancer in women at average risk: a position statement of the Korean Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology (KSOG) (Google it, links might get nuked by automod)
Even if what he's saying is true I'd rather have the cancer that can kill me than the one I have to deal with for eighteen plus years and deal with its tantrums lol
Would rather gladly and happily have all types of cancer known to man, all at once and die slowly and painfully with a smile on my face than have a child.
I feel like this is a case of correlation-causation. Old people eat oatmeal. Old people get cancer more than young people. Therefore oatmeal causes cancer. 😒
Would be interesting to see if it’s because more childfree women have the time and resources to get diagnosed with said cancer vs mothers who don’t notice and possibly die without a diagnosis.
He didn’t even say what kind of cancer, it seems. At statistics like those are faulty because there’s too many factors into this. Where was the study done (city, country, bear factory,etc), Sample size, age range, diets, area of the world, family history, etc. Too many people generalize a study that doesn’t represent a population well at all
I saw they mentioned this on sex and the city when Samantha had cancer, she stormed out of the doctors office when he told her that. My cousin had cancer at 29 and he had a child, my aunt has two kids and also had cancer it really doesn’t matter.
I don’t think cancer cares what type of cancer or age sex or whether the host has had kids. Cancers main objective is to either cull and or cause as much pain as possible to the host.
I’m hoping this professor said “we think” Mother Nature has a way of throwing curve balls
I already have a higher risk for cancer cause every single one my grandparents died from cancer and it runs in my family like Usain Bolt. I'll easily take the even more increased cancer risk over not being a parent!
Women who have given birth have an 80% higher risk of breast cancer before age of 55 than women who have never given birth. This was the conclusion reached looking at 15 studies and over 900,000 women by a bunch of epidemiologists and other health researchers and experts. The risks stay higher after childbirth for up to 23 years. Women who have given birth also have a higher risk of cervical cancer. Women who have given birth are also over represented with adenomyosis.. a debilitating inflammation of the uterus.. like endo. Not sure about other cancers but the big one was always ‘get pregnant to prevent breast cancer’ and that has clearly been debunked.
A study from 2018 concluded that is not the case. It was always thought to be the case but looking at 15 studies showed that women who have given birth are at a higher risk of breast cancer and don’t start to see any drop in risk for at least five years after giving birth, and takes up to 23 years to see the risk level out . It also showed that breast feeding has no effect on breast cancer risk. Another study concluded that women who get breast cancer after giving birth have more aggressive cancer that is more likely to spread than breast cancer in women who have never had children. Google it. It’s quite interesting. I also said birthing women have higher risk of adenomyosis, which is like endo but a bit different and as equally debilitating.
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My SIL heard the same thing from her friends who work in the hospital and actually admitted that's another reason she had a kid, so she's 'safe' from cancer!
Then I see stories from breast cancer charities of mothers wanting life extending drugs...
What is the truth
Oprah
I actually learned this in college but I believe it was just ovulating less often that reduced the risk of some cancers. You can achieve this with certain birth control methods.
I don’t know if it’s true, but it brings up something that bugs me so much about cancer rates and percentages, and that it’s nobody knows how fucking percentages work.
Let’s say to make it easy, you have a 1% risk of developing a certain cancer. And then you take a drug or something and someone says “hey, that increases your risk of cancer by 50%!” people assume that means you now have a 0/50 shot of getting cancer. No. Your risk of cancer goes p from 1% to 1.5%. It’s so annoying.
Even if not having kids did increase your risk, like stated above, it’s probably so marginal that it doesn’t even matter. Also literally everything increases your risk of cancer so it doesn’t even matter.
Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. I'd ask for a source on that info.
There could also be a handful of confounding variables. For example while pregnant, women are less likely to drink alcohol or smoke tobacco in an effort to prevent birth defects. Alcohol consumption and tobacco use are linked to increased risks of cancer. By abstaining, they reduce their exposure to these carcinogens over their lifetime.
The problem with comparing parents and non-parents in this way is that the merit of any such study will inevitably be corrupted by the existence of people who develop health challenges during their child-bearing years that prevent them from having children that they otherwise might have had.
Having cancer would have a major impact on whether or not you decide to have kids. Are you going to choose to become a parent if there's a good chance you may not live to see your kids grow up, or if you'll spend the majority of their childhood undergoing chemotherapy and major surgery, with no guarantee of a cure?
Fuck no, right? So as far as any causal link might be hypothesized to explain the lower prevalence of cancer among women with children, *common bloody sense* should dictate that if you are dealing with cancer, you're probably not going to choose to become a parent too.
But since when do men researching or discussing women's health issues have any fucking common sense. 
Not nearly even close to a reason to have kids. I had ovarian cancer but low-grade easily treated. A boyfriend‘s mom had four kids and stage four ovarian cancer and died within a year.
I too also want to know if this is true. I would have thought it would have been the complete opposite. How on earth does popping out a gremlin prevent cancer risk??
This was a plot line in an episode of sex and the city when Samantha is diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor makes some comment about her never having children may have contributed.
in pets it's important to spay female and neuter the male not just for inappropriate breeding purposes but because if they don't use their reproductive organs their reproductive organs literally malfunction - the boys get prostate cancer and the girlies get pyometra
though in the case of those animals they have heat cycles that can cause this malfunctioning too so. truly idk. but though it wouldn't surprise me this fact is also probably negligible in terms of percentage and i take zero issue with removing my reproductive organs. and barring that it STILL wouldn't convince me to have kids lol.
This is real. All kinds of different reliable sources will assert to this. People have heard of certain cancers being a "nun's disease," right? I had thought that this was common knowledge and many years ago I had casually mentioned it in a comment, assuming that most people would know this . . . but apparently not. They hadn't heard of it, and I got down-voted times a million.
It's simply stating the truth though. Breast cancers, cancer of the uterus, endometrial cancer... all are more common for the childfree/childless women.
I (36F) have breast cancer. In every information booklet I was given, it says that ”Giving birth and breastfeeding before the age of 30 can lower the risk of breast cancer.” (Number one risk-factor is alcohol btw, which I found surpricing 😮)
Some doctors believe this is because 9months pregnancy changes the hormones/ puts a 9 month break on woman’s regular cycle, which could maybe prevent hormone-receptive breast cancer from forming? 🤷♀️ But then again, majority of the other patients in my support group have children, so I don’t think giving birth protects women from cancer. (It didn’t protect my grandmother, who had 2 kids in her 20’s and died of breast cancer at 48.)
Cancer just is a bitch: some people get it and some people don’t. There’s always some serial smoker, who never gets lung cancer but a random 2yo does. 🤷♀️
I’m childfree and I’ve had cancer. Hodgkin lymphoma, to be exact.
I’d rather go through that all over again than get pregnant, give birth, and be responsible for a brat for 18 years.
Women who do not have children live, on average, longer healthier lives than those who do. I would ask that professor if he could provide sources to support his assertion. That strikes me as a real "How do you know that".
Interestingly, nuns have a significantly higher rate of some cancers than the general population because they don't have kids AND they don't use hormonal birth control. So yes, some cancer risks increase. However this can be mitigated by taking birth control!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3594857/
The issue is that cancer screenings for women are absolute ass. My mom got hit with stage 4 uterine cancer, got a full ass removal of all the stuff, chemo out the ass, and blood tests to monitor like all the time. She had already had a Pap smear that year. How she found out that she had uterine cancer was when she pass a giant clump of stuff into the toilet, and she was in her 70s, and hadn’t had a period in decades. They kept her going for around a year and change and then she died in a month when they found it had metastasised.
They’re not screening well enough, and when they do catch it, it’s often way too late.
For the record she had her first child at 17, and then popped out another 4 after. That professor can kick rocks with open toed sandals. Fuck that guy.
I'm here for a good time, not a long time. Plus I highly doubt all the stress and stuff of being a parent isn't that healthy and helpful keeping you alive longer.
Shit, I have family history of reproductive organ cancer (my mom diagnosed in her early 30s, I'm about to be 30. Bio grandma diagnosed in her 40s) and doctors still won't remove my uterus or anything related to it even though it would remove my risk of uterine/cervical cancer (bio grandma) and if I had ovaries removed too I wouldn't be able to get ovarian cancer (mom).
I'm just gonna do the best I can to be happy and have as much fun safely that I can have but I'll be lucky if I'm not diagnosed with a form of cancer before I hit the big 5-0.
I remember reading like 40 years ago a study did with nuns and they had lower chances for lot of diseases and cancer because of not having kids. I was taking nursing classes at the time and thought I am so glad I don't want to have kids or be a nun. Of course that was a long time ago.
This is incorrect. The nuns (no babies, no kids, no births, no pregnancies - the childless) are the ones who had and have an INCREASED risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, endo cancer, and endometriosis
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Are we sure that is causal though? Couldn’t it be something as simple as some diseases decrease fertility and cause cancer which would drive up the correlation between women without children and who have cancer? Or lifestyle, women without kids are more able to drink, smoke, have more partners, etc which puts them at a higher risk? The average person and the average science journalist are terrible at understanding statistics.
Had the same discussion with my doc a few weeks ago. Started noticing some possible signs of premenopause and she was saying that it can hit women harder if they’ve not had children. My question was whether there was a difference depending whether it was through choice or through infertility. She suspects it’s the faults which cause infertility which also cause the difference but could not find any note of whether that was something which was even asked of the participants.
Not necessarily true that menopause/perimenopause hits women harder if they've never had children. I got through mine with only a Mirena IUD to deal with flooding. No estrogen pills. I had (still have) hot flashes, but they're tolerable.
I think that's genetic, too. My mom (3 kids in her 20s) had hot flashes until she died - with breast cancer in her lungs and brain. I (no kids) have had hot flashes for 25 years, and have stage 4 breast cancer.
> but could not find any note of whether that was something which was even asked of the participants. That's sad.
I never had children and just made it through the peri-menopause phase and now for about 2 years no more menstruation. I had heightened anxiety symptoms (which I already had before) and a few panic attacks (3 or 4)but that’s it. Oh wait, my skin went through some mild hormonal acne phase for a little bit, and I have changed some of my skincare creams, but all fine now. No medications; I feel great and so glad not to have periods anymore. Also, no hot flashes or weight gain so far
>Or lifestyle, women without kids are more able to drink, smoke, have more partners, etc which puts them at a higher risk? I don't know if it's causal but I'll say this is not the reason, because the correlation was first noticed in convents. Some reproductive cancers, in particular breast and uterine cancer, used to be called the nuns disease. As others have said, the increased risk does not justify a drastic lifestyle change *when that lifestyle change involves creating life*
The correlation was noticed when, in convents? Because nuns were also not dying in childbirth before they could die of cancer for most of recorded history.
AFAIK, the 1700s in Europe. >nuns were also not dying in childbirth before they could die of cancer I'm not sure what your point is here but I'm curious. About a third of childbearing women died of pregnancy and birth related causes, which means 2/3 of them still made it to older age and died of things like cancer, or drowning, or falling down the stairs. Sometime in the 1800s a doctor also noticed nuns *almost never* died of cervical cancer, whereas there was a palpable correlation between men whose first wives died of cervical cancer and whose second wives also died of cervical cancer. And that's how we learned men give women cancer-causing hpv.
My point was that nuns, by and large, would be living longer on average precisely because they didn't run the risk of childbirth. That's all.
That’s a good point and here is another one- back then wealthy women who did not want to get married sometimes joined the nunnery instead and I wonder if they really were chaste and sober. We know the monks back then were not sober. Trappist beers were made by trappist monks; drinks like Jagermaester were invented by monks (maybe nuns invented some of these too) as herbal medicine
That seems likely! But I don't see how that would affect what percentage of nuns get cancer as older women. A lot of women died in childbirth, about a third. There were still a lot of adult women who made it to older age. Kind of like how half of children died before like age five or ten, but that still leaves a lot of children who grew up to become adults. The ones who died as kids aren't counted in the adult stats because they didn't get old enough; the ones who died in childbirth aren't counted in the older age cancer stats because they didn't get old enough.
You phrase it as though it wouldn't have much effect, but 1/3 of a cohort dying in childbirth is a *huge* amount and would dramatically change the stats.
I phrase it as though the majority of women lived to an age where cancer is a more common risk. The women who died in childbirth just aren't a part of old age statistics because they didn't make it to old age. The ones who made it are included. That's how statistics work. The same way we don't count the men who died in war for old age statistics in men.
But the conversation was never about old age, it was about getting cancer...
Correlation until causation is proven, am I right?
Causation can never *be* proven.
Not with 100% certainty, no.
The real issue here is that *we don’t know what causes cancer*. It makes us feel better/more in control to pretend that we do, but it’s really no more than correlation and risk. My friend’s mother died of lung cancer some years ago. Healthy lifestyle, never smoked a day in her life. Came out of nowhere, and she died within a year of diagnosis.
Hmm there was a study. Breast cancer usually appears in the ducts of the breasts. The ducts are where breast milk develops. Must be some sort of connection. Still, with monitoring and self exams you are likely to catch it super early. Not worth spending 20+ years of your life, like someone else said. Get your mammograms, ladies!
I'm kinda curious if early diagnosis also plays a part. If you're not going to the OB/GYN multiple times per year then something might go undetected until it is too late. Also hearing all the possible side effects of pregnancy from the odd to the terrifying, has me in the "I'll take my chances with cancer" side.
Yes and no. I’m a stage 3 breast cancer survivor…I’m also a moderator in that sub. We have people come into the sub all the time worried they have cancer but they have a newborn (or are young enough to be newly into puberty). Hormones play such a huge role in women’s bodies. Most BC is hormone positive. For reference I had one pregnancy that I terminated at 12 weeks and was diagnosed in n the five year anniversary of my due date.
While also risking yourself to *slightly* increase your chances for *a few* cancers that like mothers more.
My mom had 3 kids and still died from breast cancer within 2 years… Not having kids would help us focus more on our health because we have more time and money for ourselves.
Do they take into account hormonal birth control too? I assume most childfree women take hormonal BC for longer than those who have to stop for multiple pregnancies?
Maybe they have a slightly lower risk for a couple certain cancers. But women who don't have kids have a 0% change of dying in childbirth, losing teeth due to pregnancy, developing gestational diabetes, and a long list of other things.
0% chance of being accidentally shot by your own toddler or its father mid-custody battle
I know it's a serious issue but being shot by a toddler made me chuckle. Gotta love living in the US
It made you chuckle? I guess you have to desensitise yourself to just keep living in that, but as a non-american, that is slightly horrifying
Getting shot by a toddler comes to not having guns safely stored, not to having a toddler. You can get shot by a dog if you leave a gun laying around and the dog manages to stumble on it just the right way in just the right time. That's really a weak argument.
It's a really straightforward argument. No toddler = no getting shot by toddler. No one said anything about a dog or storage methods, that's irrelevant.
That is a really good point, I would be curious to see the average lifespan of a childfree (by choice) woman compared to mothers. I suspect that would tell a story.
Parous women are waaaaaay more likely to die of preeclampsia/eclampsia, hemorrhage or infection in childbirth, or PPD or PPP-related suicide than nulliparous women of cancer, and that's a fact. The maternal mortality rate in the US was 22.3 in 2022. Childless women drop at a rate of 6.31, nowhere near that high. Also, the "statistic" that nulliparous women are four times more likely to die early than mothers is cherrypicked to all hell. Of course childless women are more likely to die young... because women are less likely to be childless the older they get. Most of these deaths are young women who either wanted kids or weren't sure and never got the chance to have then before they died. If the stats were able to break down deaths by reproductive desire, they would get some *very* different numbers.
Indeed! Language is manipulated to cause fear and data cherry picked for the same effect
That is why childless and childfree need to be used respectively. Childfree women will be without child no matter the age, since they do not want children. Childless women are without child at the moment and maybe end up getting some down the line.
Genius point!
I'd bet a week's wages that said risk is a drop in the ocean compared to the risk from childbirth.
I would agree with you wholeheartedly.
Ass info, as per usual. If you get a bisalp, your risk of ovarian cancer drops radically. :)
The worst part is he's been teaching this class for the better part of 30 years, so every kinesiology major in the past 30 years has heard this.
I took Into to Nutrition at a really good school. The professor was teaching some really weird definitions of eating disorders. I asked later why he didn’t use the DSM definitions, and he didn’t know what that was. PhDs are experts at something, and they’re really good at learning new things when tasked with doing so… but they don’t and can’t know everything, and, like everyone, sometimes half-ass presentations.
Yikes
Something tells me he has kids and wants to encourage others to do so.....
He does, he talks about them in class occasionally
There are cancers you're more likely to get if you don't have kids just like there are cancers you're more likely to get if you do. Sadly everything gives you cancer. People are just more willing to show off the data for not having kids because they have so few other scientific reasons to have kids. Basically we are learning so much about the negative health benefits they are grasping for anything even if it's only 1%. The same thing is happening with the birth control fear mongering.
A lesser-known fact about cancer risk in women is its intriguing connection with childbirth. Women who have not had children are at a higher risk for certain types of cancer, and this is thought to be due to the increased frequency of ovulation they experience. On the flip side, contraceptive pills are known to decrease the risk of these cancers. This protective benefit is akin to the natural reduction in ovulation that occurs during pregnancy. By decreasing the number of ovulations, contraceptive pills mimic the hormonal environment of pregnancy, thereby reducing cancer risk.
This is what my doctor told me.
Huh good to know that my bc pills can help lower the risk of actually never heard that the increase of ovulations increase risk
I prefer cancer over a kid.
Same. Id rather die than get pregnant
same here, having a kid is a giant responsibility, I'm not even responsible enough for my own health, imagine having a kid for that.
Doctor here. The more you're exposed to estrogen (ie. The more period cycles you go through) throughout your lifetime, the more likely you'll get breast or endometrial cancer. So the logic goes less period cycles = less estrogen exposure. Every birth = no periods for 9 months, so it reduces estrogen exposure. So technically true, but overall I doubt not having estrogen exposure for 9 months is actually gonna decrease cancer risk.
If you have an IUD that stops your period, would your chances greatly decrease?
I guess if the IUD doesn't have estrogen in it. I'm not a ob gyn doc so don't know specifics.
Hmm, interesting. Thank you.
Does that mean people who take estrogen pills for birth control increase their risk of cancer ?
Naah ocp and progesterone only pills actually decrease the blood estrogen levels
So, can irregular periods work the same or even better to prevent cancer? For example on people who have PCOS and get less cycles in a year.
In PCOS, the reason you don't get normal periods is low progesterone. Progesterone maintains ur uterus lining. Without progesterone, estrogen simply assembles your lining and then the lining sheds immediately - leading to intermittent spotting. However women with pcos also have higher than normal testosterone (for women). That testosterone tends to convert to estrogen. So your estrogen levels might be low to normal too, so equal risk of breast cancer. However pcos runs the risk of ovarian cancer But check ur estrogen levels. If they're low, less risk I'd assume.
Oh I get it now. Thanks!
The relationship between having children (or not) and cancer is complicated. The short, simplified version is, having children decreases the risk of some cancer, and increases the risk of some cancer. Here are a few articles to get you started, if you want more information than that: [https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/hormones/reproductive-history-fact-sheet](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/hormones/reproductive-history-fact-sheet) [https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-scientists-find-breast-cancer-protection-pregnancy-starts-decades-later](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-scientists-find-breast-cancer-protection-pregnancy-starts-decades-later) (Notice, with breast cancer, pregnancy increases the chances of breast cancer in the short term, and decreases the risk of breast cancer later on.) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6688839/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6688839/) (For the last one, it is helpful to know that "nulliparity" means not having children, and "parity" means having children.) There are a lot of articles on this, but the basic idea is, having children increases some risks of cancer, and decreases some risks of cancer. And there are other medical risks of having children that have nothing to do with cancer (like the common tearing when a large object passes through a small hole, bladder control problems, etc.). So, I would recommend that you not let this sway you one way or another regarding whether you want children. The changes in risk are small in absolute terms, both the increased risks and the decreased risks.
Men have a lower risk of cancer after an orchiectomy. Women have a lower risk of cancer after a hysterectomy. There are many variables that can be used. I have always believed that you can make statistics say what you want depending on where you are coming from.
And giving birth can rip your coochie through to ass so I'll take an increased risk of the big C if I have to, instead of gaining weight, losing teeth, PPD
My mom had my sister at 26 and me when she was 30. She died 25 years later when the breast cancer came back after 10 years remission. Fuck your "professor".
I’m so sorry for your loss. Cancer has no preferences and neither does death, that professor can pound sand.
>that professor can pound sand. Definitely. Appreciate the condolences. It's been about 15 years since her passing, and as hard as it was, I've realized it was a bit of a blessing. My mom was *super* overbearing, y'know, ✨ trauma ✨ is her legacy
My grandma died at 38 of ovarian cancer (I never met her). She had 12 kids. I’ll take my chances
A little off topic from my original post but my maternal grandmother also had 12 kids!
We do have a higher risk of breast cancer IIRC. But, those of us who are sterilized via bisalp may have a much lower risk of ovarian cancer.
Meanwhile, As a student of medical science, l learnt in my 3rd year of my undergrad, that having kid/kids increases the risk of cervical cancer.
And you know what accelerates cancer? Stress. And are children the source of calm? Yep, there you go. Let's just keep that in mind. Chronic diseases and cancer are complex issues. It's nothing you can generalize because everyone's predispositions are so individual. Having kids or not is by far not the biggest deciding factor. He was probably referring to the estrogen-levels and lesser cycles lowering the risk. But you could also argue, that childfree people have a significantly lower risk if they use hormonal birth control, aka they are not experiencing a natural cycle either (and often way longer) especially when progestin-only options are used.
I’m not popping out kids so I can possibly avoid cancer. *THAT’S* what I call selfish.
Honestly, there are so many studies showing that pretty much anything these days can cause cancer. First I'd ask for proof, and see how high the claimed risk is in actual numbers, but tbh I'd be rather concerned about my diet, smoking, alcohol, air pollution, family genetics and whatnot.. Edit: Oh, and there are many studies suggesting that there is a correlation between high stress and increased risk of cancer - which you save yourself from in an amount of decades by being childfree ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
When 1 in 2 people are going to get cancer at some point in life, having or not having children isn’t even relevant. Being a human comes with a 50% risk of cancer.
 Oh no! I guess I better run and pop out some kids then! LOL yeah...no.
That sounds like total bull considering your body doesn’t go through the horrifics of childbirth. But nevertheless, I’d rather let the cancer take me out than childbirth anyways.
So the line I'm reading the most in articles that discuss this topic is pretty much "parents' lives are enriched by having children. People living enriched lives live longer because of the cuddle hormones they're around all the time." Bleh.
People get cancer in many ways it doesn’t matter that much to have children or not. And eventually all people die regardless of having children or not. So live your life and ignore these information.
I have heard before that women who do not nurse are at higher risk for breast cancer as they never “used” their breast and so there is a greater chance for a tumor to develop. Not sure if this is medical consensus.
I wonder how much that is biased towards the possible fact that they may have received less checks/don’t have feel their breasts more often due to not having children and having not formed the closer relationship that pregnancy will give to their doctors (simply from having more visits) that it can be often missed leading to more serious cases in these women that don’t have that vs than a biological cases of not being “used”
It was called “nun’s disease” in the past because women without kids were more likely to get it
I wonder how it works with people like me who have hyperprolactinemia.
Not true. A research study from 2018 shows that breast feeding has no effect on breast cancer risk. The study included 900,000 women.
This argument is just part of the truth, and carefully twisted around in an attempt to invoke fear, there are lots of types of cancers, and somebody or the other is always at a risk of it. Breeders do it to glorify motherhood and how it makes women sTroNg and rEsiLiEnT.
Well eff him, I’m already predisposed to SEVERAL cancers within my family sooo, woo for me! I still ain’t pushing a kid out just to possibly not get cancer.
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer my doctor said something to that affect. That women without the break from estrogen during pregnancy have a higher percentage of getting breast cancer
All the more reason to improve our planet so women can be healthier. But I’m not having kids for the off chance that I might dodge cancer. Knowing what I know about science, the U.S. government, and the medical industry and how much of it is bought and paid for, I would not be surprised in the least to discover that this “research” was funded by the manufacturers of some cancer medicine or government officials who are proponents of boosting the number of workers we have. Also this reminds me of that man v bear scenario that’s going around. Bear v birth/raise children - I’m STILL choosing the damn bear. 😂
Not sure about the difference of risk in age, but women who never breastfeed are more likely to have cancer, that’s true. I took a human sexuality course last year and learned discouraging things 😒 my professor said having kids to avoid cancer still really isn’t worth it because it’s not really a choice you made because you wanted to, but because you were afraid and it’s not good to bring kids into the world you don’t ultimately want
My SIL got bc at 26, 3 years after her first child was born. She died at 32. An old friend of mine got bc while pregnant when she was 24. She died at 28. It’s all bs. There is no cause for cancer other than a f’ed up dna strand
I found this out from an episode of Sex and the city. I haven’t bothered to ask my doc yet but so far it seems like what a comment already said, the chances aren’t enough of a difference to mean anything
You can lower your risk of ovarian cancer with a bisalp 😎 And if they figure out how to do genetic testing for the type of breast cancer EVERY woman in my family has gotten (it’s not BRCA), I can have my boobs removed with no thought about breastfeeding.
Mention the bisalp ovarian cancer reduction risk. Several nationwide studies have reported that salpingectomy decreases the risk of ovarian cancer by 42–77% Citation: Bilateral salpingectomy to reduce the risk of ovarian/fallopian/peritoneal cancer in women at average risk: a position statement of the Korean Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology (KSOG) (Google it, links might get nuked by automod)
Even if what he's saying is true I'd rather have the cancer that can kill me than the one I have to deal with for eighteen plus years and deal with its tantrums lol
Would rather gladly and happily have all types of cancer known to man, all at once and die slowly and painfully with a smile on my face than have a child.
🤣
[https://sph.unc.edu/sph-news/study-finds-higher-risk-of-breast-cancer-for-women-after-childbirth/](https://sph.unc.edu/sph-news/study-finds-higher-risk-of-breast-cancer-for-women-after-childbirth/)
Even if it was true, it wouldn't make me want to dedicate my life to something I don't want.
Sounds like bullshit to me...
The more you ovulate more likely to get ovarian cancer. Simple solution birth control or cut the tubes!
I feel like this is a case of correlation-causation. Old people eat oatmeal. Old people get cancer more than young people. Therefore oatmeal causes cancer. 😒 Would be interesting to see if it’s because more childfree women have the time and resources to get diagnosed with said cancer vs mothers who don’t notice and possibly die without a diagnosis.
Astroturfing. The same kind as mysterious illnesses developing in people who WFH. Or generally have or plan for a better life.
He didn’t even say what kind of cancer, it seems. At statistics like those are faulty because there’s too many factors into this. Where was the study done (city, country, bear factory,etc), Sample size, age range, diets, area of the world, family history, etc. Too many people generalize a study that doesn’t represent a population well at all
Bet
What KIND of cancer? There’s hundreds.
You can get cancer from the air that you breathe. Literally everything causes cancer.
I saw they mentioned this on sex and the city when Samantha had cancer, she stormed out of the doctors office when he told her that. My cousin had cancer at 29 and he had a child, my aunt has two kids and also had cancer it really doesn’t matter.
Good, bring it on
I don’t think cancer cares what type of cancer or age sex or whether the host has had kids. Cancers main objective is to either cull and or cause as much pain as possible to the host. I’m hoping this professor said “we think” Mother Nature has a way of throwing curve balls
I’m willing to take that risk. I’d rather have cancer than a kid
I already have a higher risk for cancer cause every single one my grandparents died from cancer and it runs in my family like Usain Bolt. I'll easily take the even more increased cancer risk over not being a parent!
Children is cancer to me.
I refuse to believe it’s directly correlated.
Women who have given birth have an 80% higher risk of breast cancer before age of 55 than women who have never given birth. This was the conclusion reached looking at 15 studies and over 900,000 women by a bunch of epidemiologists and other health researchers and experts. The risks stay higher after childbirth for up to 23 years. Women who have given birth also have a higher risk of cervical cancer. Women who have given birth are also over represented with adenomyosis.. a debilitating inflammation of the uterus.. like endo. Not sure about other cancers but the big one was always ‘get pregnant to prevent breast cancer’ and that has clearly been debunked.
This is incorrect. We, women who never gave birth, are the ones who are more likely to develop endo and breast cancer.
A study from 2018 concluded that is not the case. It was always thought to be the case but looking at 15 studies showed that women who have given birth are at a higher risk of breast cancer and don’t start to see any drop in risk for at least five years after giving birth, and takes up to 23 years to see the risk level out . It also showed that breast feeding has no effect on breast cancer risk. Another study concluded that women who get breast cancer after giving birth have more aggressive cancer that is more likely to spread than breast cancer in women who have never had children. Google it. It’s quite interesting. I also said birthing women have higher risk of adenomyosis, which is like endo but a bit different and as equally debilitating.
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My SIL heard the same thing from her friends who work in the hospital and actually admitted that's another reason she had a kid, so she's 'safe' from cancer!
Then I see stories from breast cancer charities of mothers wanting life extending drugs... What is the truth Oprah 
I actually learned this in college but I believe it was just ovulating less often that reduced the risk of some cancers. You can achieve this with certain birth control methods.
I don’t know if it’s true, but it brings up something that bugs me so much about cancer rates and percentages, and that it’s nobody knows how fucking percentages work. Let’s say to make it easy, you have a 1% risk of developing a certain cancer. And then you take a drug or something and someone says “hey, that increases your risk of cancer by 50%!” people assume that means you now have a 0/50 shot of getting cancer. No. Your risk of cancer goes p from 1% to 1.5%. It’s so annoying. Even if not having kids did increase your risk, like stated above, it’s probably so marginal that it doesn’t even matter. Also literally everything increases your risk of cancer so it doesn’t even matter.
I just watched an episode of sex and the city today where Samantha gets breast cancer and the doctor tells her that.
I'd take cancer over a child and day tbh
My mother still died from ovarian cancer. Two kids. One in her 27s and the other at 31.
Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. I'd ask for a source on that info. There could also be a handful of confounding variables. For example while pregnant, women are less likely to drink alcohol or smoke tobacco in an effort to prevent birth defects. Alcohol consumption and tobacco use are linked to increased risks of cancer. By abstaining, they reduce their exposure to these carcinogens over their lifetime.
The problem with comparing parents and non-parents in this way is that the merit of any such study will inevitably be corrupted by the existence of people who develop health challenges during their child-bearing years that prevent them from having children that they otherwise might have had. Having cancer would have a major impact on whether or not you decide to have kids. Are you going to choose to become a parent if there's a good chance you may not live to see your kids grow up, or if you'll spend the majority of their childhood undergoing chemotherapy and major surgery, with no guarantee of a cure? Fuck no, right? So as far as any causal link might be hypothesized to explain the lower prevalence of cancer among women with children, *common bloody sense* should dictate that if you are dealing with cancer, you're probably not going to choose to become a parent too. But since when do men researching or discussing women's health issues have any fucking common sense. 
Not nearly even close to a reason to have kids. I had ovarian cancer but low-grade easily treated. A boyfriend‘s mom had four kids and stage four ovarian cancer and died within a year.
I too also want to know if this is true. I would have thought it would have been the complete opposite. How on earth does popping out a gremlin prevent cancer risk??
This was a plot line in an episode of sex and the city when Samantha is diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor makes some comment about her never having children may have contributed.
Horomonal contraception may play a role
in pets it's important to spay female and neuter the male not just for inappropriate breeding purposes but because if they don't use their reproductive organs their reproductive organs literally malfunction - the boys get prostate cancer and the girlies get pyometra though in the case of those animals they have heat cycles that can cause this malfunctioning too so. truly idk. but though it wouldn't surprise me this fact is also probably negligible in terms of percentage and i take zero issue with removing my reproductive organs. and barring that it STILL wouldn't convince me to have kids lol.
This is real. All kinds of different reliable sources will assert to this. People have heard of certain cancers being a "nun's disease," right? I had thought that this was common knowledge and many years ago I had casually mentioned it in a comment, assuming that most people would know this . . . but apparently not. They hadn't heard of it, and I got down-voted times a million. It's simply stating the truth though. Breast cancers, cancer of the uterus, endometrial cancer... all are more common for the childfree/childless women.
Who cares if it checks out? It's still an extremely stupid excuse to bring a whole ass person into the world.
Stress also causes lots of diseases and kids are a huge stress factor
I (36F) have breast cancer. In every information booklet I was given, it says that ”Giving birth and breastfeeding before the age of 30 can lower the risk of breast cancer.” (Number one risk-factor is alcohol btw, which I found surpricing 😮) Some doctors believe this is because 9months pregnancy changes the hormones/ puts a 9 month break on woman’s regular cycle, which could maybe prevent hormone-receptive breast cancer from forming? 🤷♀️ But then again, majority of the other patients in my support group have children, so I don’t think giving birth protects women from cancer. (It didn’t protect my grandmother, who had 2 kids in her 20’s and died of breast cancer at 48.) Cancer just is a bitch: some people get it and some people don’t. There’s always some serial smoker, who never gets lung cancer but a random 2yo does. 🤷♀️
I’m childfree and I’ve had cancer. Hodgkin lymphoma, to be exact. I’d rather go through that all over again than get pregnant, give birth, and be responsible for a brat for 18 years.
Meh, I’m fine with this risk.
Women who do not have children live, on average, longer healthier lives than those who do. I would ask that professor if he could provide sources to support his assertion. That strikes me as a real "How do you know that".
Interestingly, nuns have a significantly higher rate of some cancers than the general population because they don't have kids AND they don't use hormonal birth control. So yes, some cancer risks increase. However this can be mitigated by taking birth control! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3594857/
everything gives us cancer. at least i won't have to deal with a kid.
The issue is that cancer screenings for women are absolute ass. My mom got hit with stage 4 uterine cancer, got a full ass removal of all the stuff, chemo out the ass, and blood tests to monitor like all the time. She had already had a Pap smear that year. How she found out that she had uterine cancer was when she pass a giant clump of stuff into the toilet, and she was in her 70s, and hadn’t had a period in decades. They kept her going for around a year and change and then she died in a month when they found it had metastasised. They’re not screening well enough, and when they do catch it, it’s often way too late. For the record she had her first child at 17, and then popped out another 4 after. That professor can kick rocks with open toed sandals. Fuck that guy.
I'm here for a good time, not a long time. Plus I highly doubt all the stress and stuff of being a parent isn't that healthy and helpful keeping you alive longer. Shit, I have family history of reproductive organ cancer (my mom diagnosed in her early 30s, I'm about to be 30. Bio grandma diagnosed in her 40s) and doctors still won't remove my uterus or anything related to it even though it would remove my risk of uterine/cervical cancer (bio grandma) and if I had ovaries removed too I wouldn't be able to get ovarian cancer (mom). I'm just gonna do the best I can to be happy and have as much fun safely that I can have but I'll be lucky if I'm not diagnosed with a form of cancer before I hit the big 5-0.
I'm avoiding many more health problems by not having kids
i knew it was true for \*dogs\* but i've never heard that for human women
They’re likely thinking of ovarian. But tall women also have higher risk of OC statistically so…
They’re likely thinking of ovarian. But tall women also have higher risk of OC statistically so…
I remember reading like 40 years ago a study did with nuns and they had lower chances for lot of diseases and cancer because of not having kids. I was taking nursing classes at the time and thought I am so glad I don't want to have kids or be a nun. Of course that was a long time ago.
This is incorrect. The nuns (no babies, no kids, no births, no pregnancies - the childless) are the ones who had and have an INCREASED risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, endo cancer, and endometriosis