Archive for the 'Breast Cancer' Category

Do you have fibrocystic breast condition? Is it true that fibrocystic breast disease increases the risk of breast cancer? Most of you might be in a wrong thought that fibrocystic breast condition can increase your breast cancer risk.

But, this condition of lumpy breast doesn’t increase your risk of breast cancer. So, if you really want to confirm it, try to know more about fibrocystic breast condition that is absolutely non-cancerous.

Fibrocystic breast disease is one of the most common breast conditions that take place in women. If you have fibrocystic breast disease, you will suffer with painful lumpy breasts.

If you are a premenopausal woman, then you must be very careful, since it is believed that this condition of fibrocystic breasts primarily affects women between the ages of 30 and 50 years and usually tends to cause very less problems after they reach menopause.

Estrogen and progesterone plays a vital role!

Menstrual cycle is the most significant factor, which mainly contributes to fibrocystic breast condition. During your normal menstrual cycle, many hormonal changes take place in your body.

Estrogen and progesterone are the two hormones that directly affect your breast tissues and leads to abnormal cell growth.

Feelings of happiness and optimism play a positive role against breast cancer.

Research published in the open access journal BMC Cancer suggests that while staying positive has a protective role, adverse life events such as the loss of a parent or close relative, divorce or the loss of a spouse can increase a woman’s risk of developing the disease.

Ronit Peled from the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, led a team of researchers who questioned 255 women with breast cancer and 367 healthy controls about their life experiences and evaluated their levels of happiness, optimism, anxiety and depression prior to diagnosis.

Peled said, “Young women who have been exposed to a number of negative life events should be considered an ‘at-risk’ group for breast cancer and should be treated accordingly”.

The researchers do point out that women were interviewed after their diagnosis, which may color their recall of their past emotional state somewhat negatively.

However, according to Peled, “We can carefully say that experiencing more than one severe and/or mild to moderate life event is a risk factor for breast cancer among young women. On the other hand, a general feeling of happiness and optimism can play a protective role”.

—-Find out the relation between breast cancer treatment and early menopause!

Are you undergoing breast cancer treatment? More often, it is believed that breast cancer treatment usually makes you to experience menopause ahead of time.

When you are undergoing hormone replacement therapy or chemotherapy for breast cancer treatment, you can probably experience various symptoms of menopause. If you stop taking hormonal therapy or any other breast cancer treatment, you can also experience certain side effects that are associated with early menopause.

How breast cancer treatment leads to early menopause?

The female sex hormones such as estrogen and progesterone, mainly affects the growth of breast cancer cells. When your treatment for breast cancer often involves hormonal therapy, it mainly interferes with the estrogen secretion in your body and possibly causes early menopause symptoms.

These symptoms of early menopause can mainly include hot flashes, sweats, dry skin, vaginal dryness, poor concentration levels, mood swings, and tiredness and urge to urinate frequently.

Apart from hormonal therapy, surgery, chemotherapy and radio therapy are also used in the treatment of breast cancer. However, some of these breast cancer treatments possibly affect the normal functioning of ovaries and causes early menopause in you.

A new study links having strong bones to an elevated risk of breast cancer. At first blush, that seems to put women in a bind: tumor if you do, fracture if you don’t. The temptation to punch a wall in frustration is totally understandable.

But you certainly shouldn’t be misled by these results into believing that doing things to make your bones stronger—like lifting weights and taking calcium—will increase your breast cancer risk. The new finding doesn’t have any such sinister implication.

Sizing up breast cancer risk in women over 60 is tricky business. The standard risk model takes into account, among other things, age, race/ethnicity, and family history of breast cancer, yet it produces only a rough estimate of a woman’s risk.

The new study, published online today in the journal Cancer, found that hip bone density, which can be measured with an X-ray scan, is just as good a predictor.

What’s more, combining the density scan with the risk model could more accurately pinpoint risk for women already at heightened risk for breast cancer, like those who’ve previously had breast biopsies.

Surgeons are increasingly offering an added benefit to their breast-cancer patients: removing the tumor and cosmetically repairing the breast at the same time.

Women with breast cancer traditionally would see a cancer surgeon to have the diseased tissue removed and later see a plastic surgeon for reconstruction.

Now, more cancer surgeons are getting trained in cosmetic techniques that preserve or restore a breast’s shape or appearance. This emerging field of “oncoplastic surgery” could allow a patient to minimize the number of times she must go under the knife.

The shift comes as traditional plastic surgeons turn increasingly to purely cosmetic procedures, which pay more. Indeed, the number of breast-reconstruction surgeries declined 29% to 57,100 last year from 2000, a development the American Society of Plastic Surgeons attributes in part to poor insurance reimbursement for these procedures.

Breast cancer strikes one out of eight American women at some time in their lives. Making plans for breast reconstruction at the same time as cancer surgery can speed a woman on the path of psychological, as well as physical, recovery. And by combining procedures to reduce the number of operations, it also reduces the risk of complications from successive surgeries.

A drug prescribed to combat brittle bones has been shown to prevent invasive breast cancer.

A study has found that raloxifene - a drug used to prevent and treat osteoporosis - reduces the risk of developing invasive breast cancers by more than 50%.

The drug works by binding to oestrogen receptors in the body, and by doing this it could be preventing some of the effects of oestrogen “that spur cancer growth”.

Previous research has suggested that raloxifene could potentially reduce the occurrence of oestrogen-receptor positive breast cancer, and this large study provides supportive evidence for this.

However, the actual role that the drug might play in the prevention of this type of breast cancer is uncertain.

It is necessary to point out that the women taking raloxifene were more likely to suffer blood clots and fatal strokes compared with those taking a placebo. To balance the benefits with any potential harms such as these, it is important to know the absolute number of people who would benefit from treatment.

For more information, visit: Medical News Today

Wondering what is Breast Cancer Walk? Through this passage you will come to know about breast cancer walk, some breathe taking breast cancer facts and most importantly breast cancer diet.

If you are in USA, then you should know this. The Avon Walk for Breast Cancer are held in cities throughout the USA.

Walkers have the choice of walking a marathon or half-marathon the first day, then all walk a half-marathon the second day, camping overnight.

Sounds Fun Right! It is lot of fun happening with a good cause.

Thinking what is the good cause behind these walks? For 2 days and 39 miles, everyone who has been touched by breast cancer touches you in gratitude. Your participation in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer events - as a walker, a crew member, a volunteer or a donor - will allow medically undeserved women and men to be treated giving them access to the care they require.

From these funds, all the hard-working research teams will be powered with the fuel for their quest for the cure. A bit of charity from your side in a most joyous way is the ultimate feeling one can experience. As you all know how having a good walk helps you keep fit, let’s look into some of the good reasons to join a walk for your benefit.

Find more about breast cancer, history of breast cancer and if you are at risk for the disease or not.

As you all know, breast cancer is a cancer of the breast tissue.

This is a devastating disease taking several lives of wives, sisters and mothers, your loved ones or people whom you know either closely or distantly.

In order to fight this disease, awareness has to be made to each woman with respect to whether they are at risk or not, if yes then how it can be prevented.

Women without any risk for the disease should also have awareness in order to stay away from it.

Worldwide, it is the most common form of cancer in females - affecting at some time in their lives, women who reach age ninety in the Western world. Since the 1970s, after lung cancer it is the second most fatal cancer in women and the number of cases has significantly increased, a phenomenon partly blamed on modern lifestyles in the Western world.

Surprised! Breast cancer can also occur in males because the breast is composed of identical tissues in males and females, although cases of male breast cancer account for less than one percent of the total.