Should you worry about taking birth control pills for fear of getting breast cancer. There's not a lot of studies about the correlation of birth control pills and breast cancer. However according to some studies, women who are using birth control pills have a slightly greater risk of breast cancer than women who never use them. However any correlation between birth control pills and breast cancer is not established yet. To be safe any woman must consult with her doctor first before taking any birth control pill.

Breast Cancer and Pregnancy

A lot of questions have been raised about breast cancer and pregnancy. Since every woman's risk of breast cancer grows with age, getting pregnant at an older age is a concern for some women. Here are some important facts or researches about breast cancer and pregnancy.

Some factors associated with pregnancy are known to reduce a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer later in life:

• The younger a woman has her first child, the lower her risk of developing breast cancer during her lifetime.
• A woman who has her first child after the age of 35 has approximately twice the risk of developing breast cancer as a woman who has a child before age 20.
• A woman who has her first child around age 30 has approximately the same lifetime risk of developing breast cancer as a woman who has never given birth.
• Having more than one child decreases a woman’s chances of developing breast cancer. In particular, having more than one child at a younger age decreases a woman’s chances of developing breast cancer during her lifetime.
• Although not fully understood, research suggests that pre-eclampsia, a pathologic condition that sometimes develops during pregnancy, is associated with a decrease in breast cancer risk in the offspring, and there is some evidence of a protective effect for the mother.
• After pregnancy, breastfeeding for a long period of time (for example, a year or longer) further reduces breast cancer risk by a small amount.

Pregnancy-Related Factors that Increase Breast Cancer Risk

Some factors associated with pregnancy are known to increase a woman’s chances of developing breast cancer:

• After a woman gives birth, her risk of breast cancer is temporarily increased. This temporary increase lasts only for a few years.
• A woman who during pregnancy took DES (diethylstilbesterol), a synthetic form of estrogen that was used between the early 1940s and 1971, has a slightly higher risk of developing breast cancer. (So far, research does not show an increased breast cancer risk for their female offspring who were exposed to DES before birth. Those women are sometimes referred to as “DES daughters.”) You can read more about this here!