Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T. H.<br />Chan School of Public Health, told Nutrition Action Healthletter in 2010: “Probably the single most important<br />thing women can do to reduce their risk of breast cancer is to avoid weight gain in adult life.”<br />Being overweight also diminishes a woman’s chances of surviving breast cancer, though it is not<br />known whether losing weight after a breast cancer diagnosis enhances a lasting remission.<br />Among women already treated for breast cancer, consuming the alcohol equivalent of three or four drinks a week<br />increases the risk of a recurrence, especially for postmenopausal women and women who are overweight or obese.<br />A decades-long study conducted among 102,098 women in Norway<br />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.<br />You Can Take Steps to Lower Your Breast Cancer Risk -<br />Fear of breast cancer is widespread, yet many women don’t realize that adopting protective living habits may help keep it at bay.<br />Although Asian women who consume lots of these foods all their lives have one of the lowest rates of breast cancer,<br />the supposed protective substance in soy – isoflavones — showed no benefit among women who eat a Western diet.<br />Although there is no overall link between dairy products<br />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.
