12 ways to prevent breast cancer

Losing her 45-year-old mother to breast cancer when she was only 12 was a life-altering event for Brigitte McKinnon of Montreal, herself now 46. "Breast cancer meant death to me, and I feared it tremendously," she says. Understandably, given that her family history of this type of cancer didn't stop there; her mother's mother died of breast cancer at the age of 63, and her mother's sister was also diagnosed with the disease, although she survived.

So when Brigitte married and began having children of her own at about age 30, she was determined not to leave them on their own at the same tender age. "You start by understanding what breast cancer is, and then you ask yourself, What can I do today to prevent it?" she says.

She learned that there was a fair amount she could do. Some lifestyle choices can dramatically lower your breast cancer risk, while other choices are less clear-cut but are still suggestive of a lowered risk. Put together, Brigitte's daily lifestyle changes have added up to a "journey of wellness" that she feels is improving her chances of preventing this deadly disease.

One of her first decisions was to breast-feed each of her five sons. Then she started saying no to all fat and fried foods, ate organic fare wherever possible to minimize pesticide exposure, and became mostly vegetarian (she eats fish occasionally). She bikes and swims with her boys and her husband, Robert, with whom she runs a busy medical publishing firm, and practises yoga alone at home. Monthly breast self-exams are also part of her routine, as are daily time-outs for herself, even if it's just to take a 10-minute walk through her garden to admire her precious bonsai plants.

Brigitte is convinced that her lifestyle changes have kept cancer at bay. "Too many women change their lifestyle after they have breast cancer, but to me, breast cancer awareness was a gift because it forced me to learn to change my life around before I got a diagnosis. It takes discipline but it has made me very aware of the power of choice: you can make negative choices and you can make positive choices, and by making positive choices for yourself, you see the results."

Page 1 of 3