October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Here are some helpful tips from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance on how you can reduce your risk:
1. Maintain a healthy weight. Obesity raises the risk of breast cancer.
2. Eat healthy. Keep the veggie and fruit intake high and the sugar, refined carbs, and fatty foods intake low. Choose vegetable oils over animal fats and whole grains over processed white flour.
3. Keep physically active. Research indicates that increased physical activity reduces overall breast cancer risk by about 10 to 30 percent.
4. Limit alcohol consumption. Alcohol use is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.
5. Avoid hormone replacement therapy. Menopausal hormone replacement therapy increases breast cancer risk and should be avoided at all costs. If hormone replacement is necessary, however, avoid those that contain progesterone and limit your use to less than three years.
6. Talk to your doctor about taking an estrogen-blocking drug if you have a family history of breast cancer.
7. Do not smoke. Long-term smoking has been found to correlate with increased risk of breast cancer.
8. Breast-feed your babies for at least one year. Women who do so are found to be less likely to develop breast cancer later on in life.
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