Supporters of eating less and exercising have won yet again as results from a new study have been divulged. According to researchers, around a third of all breast cancer cases in Western countries could possibly be avoided if women consumed less food and exercised more.
Even though early diagnosis, mammograms and better treatments have helped to slow the disease, experts are now focusing on changing unhealthy behaviors like overeating and being too sedentary.
This new study only adds to a string of existing findings that lifestyle changes in areas such as smoking, eating, exercising and sun exposure can have a crucial effect on all kinds of cancer rates.
The head of epidemiology, Carlo La Veechia, emphasized the importance of taking these findings seriously when he said “what can be achieved with screening has been achieved. We can’t do much more. It’s time to move on to other things.” He spoke last month at a European breast cancer conference in Barcelona.
Michelle Holmes, a cancer expert at Harvard University, warned that people might mistakenly believe that their likelihood of getting cancer leans more on their genes than on their lifestyle.
Breast cancer is currently the most common cancer among women. In Europe, around 421,000 new cases and almost 90,000 deaths occurred in 2008. Last year in the United States, there were more than 190,000 new cases and 40,000 deaths.
During an average woman’s lifetime, her chance of developing breast cancer is around one in eight. According to a 2006 study by British researchers, obese women are up to 60 percent more likely to develop any cancer than normal-weight women.
Numerous breast cancers are encouraged by estrogen, which is a hormone manufactured in fat tissue. This is why experts believe that the more fat a woman has, the more estrogen she is likely to produce, which could initiate breast cancer. This said, even slim women can help reduce their cancer risk with exercise by converting more of the body’s fat into muscle.
The American Cancer Society now recommends that women get 45 to 60 minutes of physical activity for five or more days a week to reduce their chances of getting breast cancer.
Some good news for women who have survived breast cancer and want children; a separate study has found that breast cancer survivors who have children later, do not seem to be at any more risk for dying from cancer. For a long time, doctors have been troubled that pregnancy could ignite hormonal changes which could cause the disease to return. For this reason, many women have been told to avoid getting pregnant after they recover from cancer. The European breast cancer conference had experts who announced that cancer survivors who get pregnant are safe and it does not appear to be linked to the disease’s recurrence.