Causes of breast cancer
Did you know that 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer over a course of a lifetime? It's true! That is a huge percentage of women. Naturally, it makes sense that we should be doing all that we can to ensure that if it is possible we prevent this cancer in ourselves and in our loved ones. The term "cause" could be misleading simply because the word suggests that there was something that a person did to bring the cancer that they have on themselves. This is not always the case; breast cancer is almost always the side effect of living unhealthily or of a genetic connection. These side effects or common factors are called risk factors. Fortunately there are many different things that you can do to change the risk factors that lead to a breast cancer diagnosis. But let's start by discussing what types of risk factors you can change to try to avoid any causes of breast cancer.
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Age and gender are the most common risk factors for breast cancer. Breast cancer is a disease that is mostly confined to women. In fact, women are 100 times more likely to get breast cancer than men. The majority of women who have advanced breast cancer are over the age of fifty. Another risk factor for breast cancer is a family history of breast cancer. Of those who are diagnosed with breast cancer, approximately 20-30% had some sort of family history of the disease. That leads to the logical conclusion that genetics has something to do with what causes breast cancer.
It has been found that there are specific genetic defects that predispose an individual to be 80% more likely to have breast cancer. Other risk factors that exist for women who may have breast cancer include issues related to increased exposure to estrogen. For example, experts agree that women who begin menstruation early and who do not start menopause until later in life, have higher levels of estrogen and therefore are at a greater risk for breast cancer. Although estrogen does not technically cause breast cancer, most women who suffer from breast cancer have some kind of estrogen level abnormality.
The body's chemistry may reveal more about the causes of breast cancer especially when we read that women, who took drugs like DES (diethylstilbestrol) to prevent miscarriage, may have been at an increased risk for breast cancer. Hormone replacement therapy drugs are also being closely scrutinized as there have been some associations found between being on an HRT routine for several years and the onset of breast cancer. HRT is something that some women take to reduce the symptoms of menopause. Chemistry of the body in the form of such things as cholesterol levels and other heart health issues may also play a role in determining one's cause for contracting breast cancer. Although the theory is controversial, some doctors strongly believe that there is a convincing link between obesity and breast cancer.
Their logic behind this theory is that women who are obese have higher levels of estrogen in their bodies. As was brought up earlier, there is a strong link between estrogen and breast cancer. Exposure to radiation is another risk factor that some say may be responsible for causing breast cancer. Those who have received radiation therapy as children or have had radiation treatment to any area of the body are at greater risk. The risk from radiation is even greater if the radiation was experienced by a female in the chest area while she was developing breasts. While all of these risk factors pose plausible arguments for a cause for breast cancer, it may comfort you to know that there is no science behind the beliefs that some have that breast implants, antiperspirants, and wearing underwire bras increase your risk of getting breast cancer.
