Tuesday October 14, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- In the
National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the campaign organizers and sponsors
want as many women as possible to know the risk of breast cancer in hopes that
more women or even men may go to receive regular screenings for breast cancer.
The risk is not the same to everyone. That is why you are
not going to do screening at a young age.
But how many people really know they are in the low risk group or high
risk group remains questionable.
We'd like everyone who cares to know that a female's
education level could be a major risk factor.
Many people might have never thought of that. But that is what a recent
Japanese study suggests: the higher your education is, the higher risk of
breast cancer you face.
The study led by Fujino Y. and colleagues at the
University of Occupational and Environmental Health in Japan showed the highly
educated women were at two-fold higher risk for breast cancer compared to those
with low education.
For the study, Fujino and colleagues followed 110,792
residents ages 40 to 79 between 1988 and 1990.
During a 13-year follow-up, 169 cases of breast cancer were newly
diagnosed.
They found the risk of breast cancer in the women with
the highest education was more than 200 percent higher than that in the women
with the lowest education.
The researchers said even after lifestyle and
reproductive factors were adjusted, the association was not significantly
changed.
And the association was even
more significant among the younger than the elder women.
The study was observational. The results by itself cannot
explain how the education level affects the risk of breast cancer, particularly
in younger women.
Breast cancer found in
young women are often more aggressive or riskier than that found in the elder.
There are a few possible reasons that might explain
why.
Highly educated women more likely
work indoors, meaning they are less exposed to sunshine, earn a higher salary meaning
that they afford pricey foods that are actually less friendly to health, have
children at an older age or do not have any children because of their careers
or years they spent on education, meaning that they are more vulnerable to
breast cancer.
The highly educated women could also more likely do
office work and experience higher stress than those who do simpler work and
experience less stress, which is another risk factor for breast cancer.
In the National Breast Cancer Awareness, once again we
need to take protective measures to prevent the disease that kills more than
45,000 each year in the United States.
It is not the best interest of a woman to donate money to some
organization for research on drug development.
The government has spent $20 billion each year and you have already paid
your share.
Once again, breast cancer is a preventable disease and
you should not wait to develop it and then treat it.
When you get it, you have a 25 percent chance
to die within five years.
Be aware of
the risk and get to know how to protect yourselves.
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