- (Photo: Reuters/Ali Jarekji)
A recent study suggests women, including nuns, should begin using birth control to decrease their chances of ovarian, breast and endometrial cancers.
Australian doctors Kara Brit of Monash University
- (Photo: Reuters/Ali Jarekji)
A recent study suggests women, including nuns, should begin using birth control to decrease their chances of ovarian, breast and endometrial cancers.
Australian doctors Kara Brit of Monash University and Roger Short of the University of Melbourne published their findings in The Lancet medical journal.
Along with the sacred vows of obedience and poverty taken by the 95,000 nuns in the world today, these servants of God also take the vow of chastity.
Short and Brit argue that reproductive factors, including having children at a young age, having multiple children, and breast feeding greatly decrease the risk of breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancers.
The increased chance of cancer in nulliparous women is caused by a more frequent amount of menstrual cycles, compared to the less frequent menstrual cycles of pregnant and lactating women.
JF Fraumeni and colleagues conducted a controlled experiment on 31,658 U.S. nuns from the year 1900 to 1954. Results indicate that over the period of 54 years, the probability of death for nuns was tripled compared to the general female population.
“It is not known how to improve the health of breasts that do not need to lactate, ovaries that need not ovulate, and a uterus that does not need to menstruate,” wrote Brit and Short.
Similarly, the risk of cancer jumps by 17 percent for every five years' delay in menopause.
The study also contends that the overall mortality rate for those regularly taking