Breast Cancer Prevention

[wfeinn]

We heard this week about changes in recommendations for breast cancer screenings. This caused a lot of debate weighing the benefits of early detection versus unnecessary treatment, expense, and anxiety. If some say that avoiding overtreatment is worth a slightly elevated risk, then the greater success must be preventing the disease from occurring in the first place.

Prevention is more than early detection and treatment – it’s helping people avoid the entire experience. There are daily habits and environmental factors that have been linked to risk of breast cancer, like obesity, diets high in fat, heavy alcohol use, and exposure to chemicals in the environment. These are areas where prevention can occur.

It’s easy to celebrate the success of early intervention because we know who survived because of it. It’s harder to celebrate prevention because there’s no event to call attention to it, but that’s the greatest achievement.

[hamrinton]

Hi,

The breast cancered people in USA varies from a low of 22 per 100 000 in the East to 90 per 100 000 in North America. In other words there is approximately a six fold difference in the incidence and death rate of breast cancer between these two regions.

[hannyflow]

By informing yourself and take control of certain lifestyle factors, you decrease your risk of developing breast cancer cancer.Avoiding risk factors and increasing protective factors may reduce the risk, but this does not mean that they have cancer. Hopefully this will reduce deaths caused by cancer. Regular exercise and a healthy diet may be protective factors for certain types of cancer. Some risk factors for cancer could be avoided, but many may not. For cancer prevention, the number of new cases of cancer in a group or population is reduced.