Sunday, January 10, 2010

5 Things You Can Do Now to Help Prevent Breast Cancer - Breast Cancer Prevention

By Veronica Carrillo

There is overwhelming evidence that a woman's genetic makeup and the environment that we live in are closely related to some women being diagnosed with breast cancer. The positive and negative impact of a woman's lifestyle also greatly heightens the risk of this type of cancer. Here are a few issues to think about when looking at what you can do to lower your risk of this deadly disease:

Although the etiology of some 95% of breast cancer cases is still not known, that relating to the remaining 5% of new cases has been identified as being associated with aspects of hereditary. Of particular note, are those individuals who are known to be carriers of the susceptibility genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2. In such cases, there is an additional risk of some 30-40% in respect of breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Which of these manifests itself is dependent upon the particular part of the protein in which the mutation occurs.

While it is a correlation between obesity and cancer, estimates show that being overweight counts for about one in seven men and astoundingly one in five women contributing to some form of cancer related deaths in the US alone.

High Fat Diets: Studies have also been shown by the NIH (The National Institute of Health) that women who consume at least 40% of their nutrition from high fat foods, added a 15% chance of developing breast cancer than those who only consumed about 20% of foods which contained a high concentration of fats.

Alcohol and Cancer: While it is true that a glass of wine a day reduces many health problems, other alcohols such as hard liquors, mixed drinks, etc., actually increases the risk of breast cancer. Yet even with lower doses of daily alcohol usage, breast cancer is increased by 35%. And that number increases by 7% with each drink per day in what is called as DDS (Dose-Dependant-State).. Good news however; studies have shown that decreasing your intake of alcohol or quitting altogether will reverse the risk.

Cancer tests are normally done in the form of a mammogram, where an x-ray of the breast area is done to see the presence of the cancerous cells and possible metastasis (spread of the disease.) If the cancer is in its initial stages, it is going to be treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy. So that means you cannot afford to disregard any symptoms which may foresee the onset of cancer. A proper diagnosis and immediate treatment is going to check the metastasis and prevent the cancer from spreading. So, if you see any of these symptoms given above, go in for a thorough checkup right now.

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