What about your risk of dying from breast cancer?
Submitted by Dr.Kattlove’s Cancer Blog
Many things increase a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer. Some she can control, others she can’t. Uncontrollable items are, starting periods at a young age, ending them at a late age, having few or no babies and having them late in life. Of course, the biggest uncontrollable gorilla in the room is what a woman inherits from her parents, but I’m not going to talk about that this time.
High-risk items a woman can control are, whether if she has a baby she doesn’t nurse, whether she takes hormones after menopause, gets fat or drinks too much.
Another important question is, if a woman gets breast cancer, how these factors affect her chance of surviving the cancer. It turns out that most of these don’t hurt her chances and some my even help.
We know this because of research done by some British researchers that was published in this month’s Journal of Clinical Oncology. The Brits looked at the history of some 4500 women with breast cancer and matched them with some of the risk factors I mentioned above.
It turns out that survival in women with most of these risk factors is not affected. That is, if a woman who began her periods early, or ended them late, or took hormones developed breast cancer, she did as well as women without these issues. In fact, the women who took hormones may have fared better with their breast cancers than women who stayed away from them. This makes sense because these women tend to develop hormone sensitive breast cancers that are generally less aggressive and more easily treated – as long as they are caught early.
Big surprise was with alcohol. Although drinking increases a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer, women who drank had better outcomes – were less likely to die of their cancer - than women who kept away from the stuff. The researchers couldn’t explain this but weren’t recommending trips to the local pubs; they couldn’t be sure this finding would hold up if more studies were done. Still, there’s no harm in a drink or two and it might get a woman through some rough spots.
One risk factor was dangerous – obesity. The more overweight a woman was, the more likely she was to die of her breast cancer. So take this to heart and keep slim – even if you have to cut down on the booze.
In addition, women with any of these risk factors should be especially sure to get their mammograms. Even heavy drinking won’t help if the cancer is caught too late.
