Here are some of the choices you can make to boost your good health and help lower your risk of breast cancer.
1. Stay active
Of all of the lifestyle choices women can make to reduce breast cancer risk, physical activity tops the list. According to an analysis of more than 50 studies carried out by Christine Friedenreich, an epidemiologist at the Alberta Cancer Board in Calgary, 45 to 60 minutes of moderate activity at least five days a week reduces breast cancer risk by a dramatic 30 to 40 per cent. Anything that gets your heart rate up and leaves you a bit sweaty and out of breath – for example, a brisk walk – qualifies as moderate physical activity. "Exercise can be anything from carrying loads of laundry to being active with your kids," says Brigitte.
On the other side of the coin, being sedentary boosts your risk of breast cancer. According to the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC), lack of exercise increases breast cancer risk by 60 per cent.
Don't fret too much if you've never exercised. Women who only become active after menopause have a rate of breast cancer that's close to that of lifelong exercisers. "It's best if people are active throughout their lives but if they haven't been, they can still benefit from exercise," says Friedenreich. "It's never too late to start to be physically active."
Why does exercise cut cancer risk? Researchers suspect that physical activity helps keep women lean. And staying lean prevents fat cells from producing extra estrogen, the hormone responsible for most breast cancers. "It all adds up to lowering your estrogen levels; you want to do everything in your power to keep your circulating estrogen levels low," says Brigitte.
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2. Maintain a healthy weight
Keeping a healthy body weight – defined as a body mass index (BMI) of less than 25 kg/m2 – protects women against breast cancer. But just how little weight you can gain and still be protected is not yet known. According to Health Canada, even a small weight gain – as little as five kilograms (11 pounds) – increases breast cancer risk, especially among postmenopausal women. But the Harvard Nurses' Health Study, a major ongoing research effort at the Harvard School of Public Health in the United States, found that the breast cancer risk doesn't kick in until there's a much greater weight gain. Every two years women enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study answer questions about their diet, lifestyle and health, and results from these assessments are published regularly. As part of this study, researchers found that women who had gained 20.5 kilograms (45 pounds) or more after the age of 18 and who had never used hormones had double the risk of postmenopausal breast cancer than women who had not gained weight. Women who did not use hormones and who did not gain weight in adulthood were at the lowest risk for postmenopausal breast cancer. The bottom line: Don't gain a lot of weight!
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3. Limit alcohol intake
Consuming alcoholic beverages increases estrogen in the blood and therefore ups your breast cancer risk. There's plenty of evidence of this: an analysis of more than 50 studies by the Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer found that every alcoholic drink increases breast cancer risk by about seven per cent. Researchers from the Nurses' Health Study reported that postmenopausal women who drank an average of 1.5 drinks a day were 30 per cent more likely than nondrinkers to develop breast cancer. And the SOGC warns that consuming more than two alcoholic drinks a day increases breast cancer risk by 60 per cent.
However, this increased risk can be tempered by consumption of folate. One study from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., found that the breast cancer risk of older women who drank alcohol but who also ate folate-rich foods, such as citrus fruits, tomatoes and vegetables, or took folate supplements, was about the same as that of nondrinking women who didn't consume much folate.
The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation recommends that all women play it safe and limit their alcohol consumption to no more than one drink (five ounces of wine, 12 ounces of beer or 1.5 ounces of liquor) per day.
Page 2 of 4 – Learn three more things you can do to prevent breast cancer on page 3.
