For decades, the experts at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have been studying the correlation between birth control pills and breast cancer. Some made entire careers out of it.
Even back when I worked at the NCI, 30 years ago, there were idiot-savant statistical biospecialists who claimed they had settled the questions of safety surrounding the use of birth control. I confronted one statistician about her questionable numbers back then. (I’ll tell you the whole story in just a moment.)
As it turns out, I was right to question my colleague. Clearly — as a new, powerful study shows — the safety questions were far from settled.
In fact, a new Danish study of 1.8 million women published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that long-term hormonal contraception — as used in birth control pills and hormonal intrauterine devices (IUDs) — increased the risk of breast cancer by 38 percent over 10 years. The risk for breast cancer increased 9 percent in the first year, eventually increasing to 38 percent by the 10th year.
As I said, evidence linking hormonal birth control and breast cancer has been around for decades. But this study is the first to reveal the risks associated with newer — so-called “low-dose” — hormonal formulations within a large population. Many women took these newer, low-dose pills believing they were much safer than those taken by their mothers or grandmothers, which had higher doses of estrogen.
The new study compared risk in Danish women who used contraception and those who didn’t. And the Danish socialized healthcare system made it easy for researchers to access and examine private information like this.
(The Danish government issued universal health identification numbers to all Danes back in 1940, which has facilitated detailed medical research for decades. You may recall that 1940 was also the year that the German National Socialists, otherwise known as Nazis, invaded and occupied Denmark…)
Low-dose estrogen just as dangerous as older pills
Back in the 1970s, manufacturers lowered the amount of estrogen in birth control pills in an attempt to lower the breast cancer risk (as well as other health risks). But clearly, it didn’t work.
Dr. David Agus, a colleague from my days doing cancer research at NCI, spoke with CBS News and said, “With the lower dose of oral contraceptives, we thought there wouldn’t be as much of a risk as the higher dose, but it turns out to be the same.”
Plus, experts thought that using a hormonal device, such as an IUD, in the reproductive tract, rather than taking an oral dose of hormones, would be safer. But that approach didn’t improve risks either.
Another colleague, Dr. Marisa Weiss — whom I knew in Philadelphia in the mid-1990s when she founded “Living Beyond Breast Cancer,” now www.breastcancer.org — told The New York Times that these newer hormonal contraceptives carry a “small,” but “measurable risk.”
Really, my friends?
Anything else that increased breast cancer risk by 38 percent wouldn’t be considered “small.”
In fact, none of the government’s favorite cancer risk factors come anywhere near causing a nearly 40 percent increase in breast cancer risk. Not alcohol, fats, sun exposure, or even smoking.
What you don’t hear about is what really increases breast cancer risk. The following factors have been shown to increase the odds of breast cancer by 300 to 400 percent:
- early age at first menstrual cycle
- late age at first pregnancy
- no or fewer pregnancies
- lack of breastfeeding
- late age at menopause
As you can see, these real risk factors also involve estrogen hormones.
Basically, estrogen stimulates the growth of breast cells, including breast cancer cells. So, prolonged, unopposed estrogen stimulation is the common risk factor.
On the other hand, during pregnancy, other reproductive hormones balance out estrogen. Overall, a woman who has fewer menstrual cycles during her lifetime markedly reduces her lifetime exposure to estrogen, and thereby reduces breast cancer risk.
Of course, it’s not politically correct to point out that carrying pregnancies to term massively reduces your odds of breast cancer.
Instead, experts advocate hormonal birth control to prevent pregnancy, placing women at increased risk to begin with. And these drugs increase the risk of breast cancer even further.
And “enlightened” organizations like Planned Parenthood deride all the effective, non-hormonal approaches to birth control such as “natural family planning,” rhythm method (tracking ovulation and most fertile days), or even (heaven forbid) abstinence, as “insane throwbacks to the superstitious.”
You decide what’s insanity or superstition when it comes to blind faith in mainstream medical technology…
Still skating on thin ice
It’s obvious that the real explanation for today’s breast cancer epidemic is falling birth rates. And hormonal birth control just doubles down, and adds to the problem.
In our public schools, teachers advocate (and even provide) hormonal birth control, instead of encouraging abstinence for underage children. But, as this study would suggest, starting girls so young on hormonal drugs places them at an increased risk of developing breast cancer. In addition, evidence links hormonal birth control to blood clots, depression, suicide, and weight gain.
Around this time of year about 30 years ago, I took my daughter to a new, local skating rink in downtown Bethesda, Maryland — where the National Institutes of Health is located.
We ran into one of the big-name epidemiologists from NCI, who knew all about statistics, but nothing about biology or medicine. At the time, she was being celebrated for “proving” that birth control pills were safe.
I used our chance encounter to point out to her that, from everything I knew about human biology, and regardless of her statistical manipulations, I thought her findings were “on thin ice.”
Clearly, I didn’t change her mind. And all along, these all-wrong phonies skated on thin ice throughout their whole careers.
For natural approaches to reducing your risk of breast and other cancers, as well as a lifetime of prevention and survival, refer to my online Authentic Anti-Cancer Protocol. To learn more, or to enroll today, simply click here.
P.S. Tomorrow, I’ll follow up on this story with some simple supplements shown to combat cancer. Stay tuned!
Sources:
“Contemporary Hormonal Contraception and the Risk of Breast Cancer,” N Engl J Med 2017; 377:2228-2239
“Birth Control Pills Still Linked
to Breast Cancer, Study Finds,” New York Times (www.nytimes.com) 12/6/2017