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A specialist at the Medifem Multi Specialist Hospital, Dr. Oyeronke Suliyat Oyawoye, has explained some of the factors that put women at higher risk of getting breast cancer, one of them being having children late.

According to the medical practitioner, while there is no guarantee that having children early will save anyone from getting breast cancer, especially for women, there are greater chances that when they give birth early and breastfeed children, their bodies could fight against the cancer.

“Another risk factor that can be modified is having children later than usual and not breastfeeding. So, if you don’t give birth early, you have a high chance of getting it, but all these things I’m mentioning doesn’t mean that if you do them, you will definitely get breast cancer, but they are part of them.

“So, the risk to get breast cancer in general are multi-factorial. There is the lifestyle factor, there is the environmental factor and then you have your genetics as well playing part. So, I’ve just mentioned some of these factors that can increase your chance. It’s like playing a lottery: the more entries you have, the higher chance you have of being picked,” she said.

Dr. Oyeronke Suliyat Oyawoye made this known in an interview with GhanaWeb’s Stella Dziedzorm Sogli in a special interview to mark the Breast Cancer Awareness month.

The specialist also noted that other factors that could lead to breast cancer in women include early menstruation and late menopause.

“For women, if you menstruate earlier than usual – before the age of 12, you are at a higher risk of breast cancer, and if you have your menopause after the age of 55, those women are at a higher risk of breast cancer.

“This is because they are exposed to hormones in the body; there are hormones that make a woman a woman, so your estrogen, for example, you are prone to it, and these hormones can encourage the cells to divide. So, if you are exposed to it for a longer time, there is a risk that your cells will divide abnormally,” she added.

About breast cancer:

Breast cancer starts in the breasts and then the cells start to overgrow, leading to swelling of the breasts. Since those cells no longer obey the command that the genes give them to stop dividing, they will keep dividing and when the breast is no longer convenient for them, they then detach themselves and spread to other parts of the body.

They then go through the blood to other organs, developing into the various stages of the disease: stage one, stage two, stage three or stage four. All those stages represent how far the cancer cells have reached.

Early screening and detection means that you catch it while it is still in the breast before it gets to other organs where no one wants to touch it because it is very risky.