Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T. H.
Chan School of Public Health, told Nutrition Action Healthletter in 2010: “Probably the single most important
thing women can do to reduce their risk of breast cancer is to avoid weight gain in adult life.”
Being overweight also diminishes a woman’s chances of surviving breast cancer, though it is not
known whether losing weight after a breast cancer diagnosis enhances a lasting remission.
Among women already treated for breast cancer, consuming the alcohol equivalent of three or four drinks a week
increases the risk of a recurrence, especially for postmenopausal women and women who are overweight or obese.
A decades-long study conducted among 102,098 women in Norway
and Sweden found that, compared with nonsmokers, those who smoked 10 or more cigarettes a day for 20 or more years had a third higher risk of developing invasive breast cancer, and girls who started smoking before age 15 were nearly 50 percent more likely to get breast cancer.
You Can Take Steps to Lower Your Breast Cancer Risk -
Fear of breast cancer is widespread, yet many women don’t realize that adopting protective living habits may help keep it at bay.
Although Asian women who consume lots of these foods all their lives have one of the lowest rates of breast cancer,
the supposed protective substance in soy – isoflavones — showed no benefit among women who eat a Western diet.
Although there is no overall link between dairy products
and breast cancer risk, high-fat dairy foods like cheese, ice cream and whole milk, which naturally contain estrogen, may shorten the lives of breast cancer survivors.
