Is breast cancer in your future? Puberty is a time in a girl’s life considered highly sensitive to stimulation by the hormone estrogen and a critical window during which estrogen exposure could greatly influence the risk of breast cancer later in life.
read more
Breast cancer has been blamed on many different things, but pollution? A ground-breaking new study suggests pollution from traffic may put women at risk for this deadly disease. Researcher Mark Goldberg says, "We’ve been watching breast cancer rates go up for some time. Nobody really knows why, and only about one third of cases are attributable to known risk factors. Since no one had studied the connection between air pollution and breast cancer using detailed air pollution maps, we decided to investigate it."
read more
Be happy! – Here’s a new reason to be happy: Women who have a positive outlook on life are less likely to get breast cancer.
Getting divorced, or having a loved one die, increases your risk. BBC News quotes researcher Ronit Peled as saying, “We can carefully say that experiencing more than one severe and/or moderate life event is a risk factor for breast cancer among young women. On the other hand, a general feeling of happiness and optimism can play a protective role.”
read more
We long reported that our chances of getting cancer may be affected by what we eat. Now scientists say that eating grapefruit every day may raise the risk of developing breast cancer by almost a third. And while genes explain why Asian women get less breast cancer, their diet could also have something to do with it.
The BBC News reports that “a study of 50,000 post-menopausal women found eating just a quarter of a grapefruit daily raised the risk by up to 30%.” This is because grapefruit raises the levels of estrogen, which is the hormone associated with a higher risk of developing the disease. Grapefruit doesn’t boost estrogen levels directly, it inhibits a molecule in the body that is involved in metabolizing estrogen hormones. The result??more estrogen.
read more