4 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BREAST CANCER

Oct 28, 2014 Emmanuel Opiyo Health, Life Style 0

1. Nursing your baby and breast feeding.

Women who breastfeed for over 6 months are less likely to develop early breast cancer than women who do not breastfeed – as long as they do not smoke – a nurse-led study suggests Emilio Gonzalez-Jimenez PhD, of the University of Granada in Spain, and his colleagues drew from the medical records of 504 women (between 19 and 91 years of age) who had been treated for breast cancer at one of the city’s hospitals. Women who had not breastfed their babies were, on average, found to get breast cancer 10 years earlier than breastfeeding mothers. The university team included a number of factors in their analysis – age of breast cancer diagnosis, length of breastfeeding, family history of cancer, obesity, alcohol consumption and smoking habits.

Regardless of the patients’ family history of cancer, the researchers said, breastfeeding meant that mothers who were going to develop the disease were going to do so at a later age.

2. Wash your bra daily, use a deodorant not an antiperspirant

In media stories and on Internet postings some factors have been widely rumored to increase breast cancer risk. For example, right now, there is no evidence to back the claims that antiperspirants, under-wire bras, and wearing a bra at night are causes of breast cancer. The claims are based on these concerns:

Antiperspirant chemicals are absorbed through the skin, block the release of toxins when you sweat, and cause these toxins to build up in the breast.
Under-wire bras cause breast cancer by blocking the drainage of lymph fluid from the bottom of the breast so it can’t get back into your body.

There is no scientific evidence to support either of these claims. Even the strongest antiperspirant doesn’t block all perspiration in the armpit. Most cancer-causing substances are removed by the kidneys and released through urine or processed by the liver. Sweating isn’t a significant way for your body to release toxins. And while there are concerns about chemicals, such as phthalates and parabens used for fragrance and preservation, from a whole list of personal care products (including antiperspirants) being absorbed by the body, these chemicals are unlikely to be culprits in causing breast cancer. Under-wire bras do not cause breast cancer. Only one scientific study has looked at the link between wearing a bra and breast cancer. There was no real difference in risk between women who wore a bra and women who didn’t wear a bra. Being overweight does increase breast cancer risk though, and women who are overweight are more likely to have larger breasts and wear a bra. Women who don’t wear bras are more likely to be at a healthy weight.

3. Do not wear a bra while asleep or do not wear an under wire bra

Very often You’ve probably heard the unfortunate rumors that wearing a bra to sleep causes breast cancer, or that it causes breast sagging because it supposedly weakens breast tissue. But aside from the fact that it may not be all that comfortable, there’s no evidence to suggest that there are negative health effects to wearing a bra to sleep. As Amber Guth, M.D., an Associate Professor of Surgery and Director of the Breast Cancer Surgery Multidisciplinary Fellowship at NYU Langone Medical Center, previously told HuffPost Style,

There is certainly no evidence that sleeping in bras is either helpful or harmful.

The cancer rumor in particular began with the 1995 book Dressed to Kill, which included claims that daily wear of tight-fitting bras increased risk of breast cancer by constricting the lymphatic system, thereby trapping toxins in the body, Shape magazine reported. But there is no actual science whatsoever to back up this claim. And in general, wearing a bra doesn’t seem to have any effect on breast cancer risk. A recent case-control study published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention could find no association between breast cancer risk and bra-wearing among post-menopausal women.

The risk was similar no matter how many hours per day women wore a bra, whether they wore a bra with an under-wire, or at what age they first began wearing a bra, study researcher Lu Chen, MPH, who is a researcher in the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said in a statement.

On the flip side, there don’t seem to be any real benefits to wearing a bra to sleep — it’s not like doing so will keep your breasts perky, HuffPost Women reported. Instead, time, gravity, pregnancy and breastfeeding are the usual culprits when it comes to breast changes like sagging. However, women with large breasts (say, a D cup or higher) might want to wear a bra at night for the support, Huff Post Style reported. If you do choose to wear a bra to sleep, you might want to opt for a soft one without an under-wire. As Nemours’ Teen Health website points out, wearing a too-tight bra (or wearing a bra that digs into your skin) can lead to breast irritation or make you have trouble sleeping.

Courtesy of Huffingpost.

4.Always cover your chest completely by your dupatta or scarf when under the sun

Yes. In fact, most skin cancers are a direct result of exposure to the UV rays in sunlight. Both basal cell and squamous cell cancers (the most common types of skin cancer) tend to be found on sun-exposed parts of the body, and their occurrence is related to lifetime sun exposure.

The risk of melanoma, a more serious but less common type of skin cancer, is also related to sun exposure, although perhaps not as strongly. Skin cancer has also been linked to exposure to some artificial sources of UV. Basal and squamous cell skin cancer. Many observational studies have looked at the link between basal and squamous cell skin cancers and sun exposure.

These studies have found that basal and squamous cell skin cancers are linked to certain behaviors that put people in the sun, as well as a number of markers of sun exposure, such as: spending time in the sun for recreation (including going to the beach), spending a lot of time in the sun in a swim suit, living in an area with a high amount of sun, serious sunburns in the past (with more sunburns linked to a higher risk), signs of sun damage to the skin, such as liver spots, actinic keratosis (rough skin patches that can be precancerous), and solar elastosis (thickened, dry, wrinkled skin caused by sun exposure) on the neck.

Melanoma Observational studies have also found links between certain behaviors and markers of sun exposure and melanoma of the skin, including: Activities that lead to “intermittent sun exposure,” like sunbathing, water sports, and taking vacations in sunny places, previous sunburn, signs of sun damage to the skin, such as liver spots, actinic keratoses, and solar elastosis. Melanoma of the eye, use a deodorant not an antiperspirant has also been linked to sun exposure in some studies.