Being overweight or obese increases uterine cancer risk
Those extra pounds you’re carrying around may be causing you more harm than you think. Women who have a BMI of 25 and above are more likely to have endometrial (uterine ) cancer.
Just a quick reminder, BMI stands for Body Mass Index which is a measure of how much body fat you have. BMI is calculated using your height and weight to determine if you are underweight (less than 18.5), normal (18.5 to 24.9), overweight (25 to 29.9) or obese (above 30).
Obesity is a known risk factor in perimenopausal women, but a new study has shown that obesity is a factor in women under 45 who get uterine cancer. It showed that women who had their last period before the age of 45 and had a BMI over 35 were 22 times more likely to get uterine cancer than women of the same age group. Women who had a BMI above 25 were 6 times more likely to develop the disease than similar women.
Women who had their last period after the age of 45 and had a BMI above 35 were about 4 times more likely to get ovarian cancer than women of the same age.
The theory behind this is that of “unopposed estrogen”. After menopause (when your periods stop) there is virtually no progesterone or estrogen produced by the ovaries. However, estrogen is produced in the fat cells of the body. The more body fat you have, the more estrogen you produce. Without any progesterone, there is nothing to oppose the estrogen. This leads to a hormonal imbalance which encourages the growth of endometrial cancer.
Obesity increases your chances of getting heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and a host of other problems. It is important to realize that being overweight also increases your chances of developing cancer.
Source
Filed under: Diet & Weight loss, General
Tags: BMI, Body Mass Index, obesity, overweight, uterine cancer
Mammograms Not Improved By Pausing Hormone Therapy
Post-menopausal women on hormone replacement are usually advised to stop taking their hormone therapy for 1-2 months before they have a mammogram to screen for breast cancer based on research that suggested that this would improve the quality of the mammogram. Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) makes the breast tissue appear more dense (thicker) so that it’s more difficult to examine the breast tissue properly. This leads to an increase in “false positive” results when doing a mammogram.
False positives are mammograms in which it looks like there is cancer present in the breast even though the breast is actually normal. If your mammogram looks abnormal in any way, you are usually asked to come back for a repeat mammogram. This can produce a lot of unnecessary anxiety in women who actually have nothing to be worried about.
New research has shown that temporarily stopping hormone therapy before a mammogram has no benefits in terms of reducing the number of false positeve results. Repeat mammograms for false positives contribute aabout 25% to the overall cost of mammograms to the U.S. government. An additional problem is that women are being exposed to additional x-rays which are potentially harmful to the body but which is necessary to confirm that they don’t actually have breast cancer. In spite of all the criticism of mammograms for breast cancer screening, right now this is the most effective, readily available way for women to get screened for breast cancer.
Filed under: HRT
Tags: breast cancer screening, breast-cancer, hormone-replacement-therapy, HRT, mammograms
Eating meat not linked to breast cancer in older women
Meat is good! Well, it’s not all bad anyway. There are several things that have been linked to breast cancer in postmenopausal women like smoking etc. Well, now it looks like eating meat is not one of them.
Meat produces chemicals called “meat mutagens”, which are thought to cause changes in the DNA in cells. Changes in the DNA (mutations) are what triggers cancer. Apparently, eating any type of meat, whether white or red, no matter how it’s cooked, does not increase the resk of developing breast cancer in postmenopausal women.
Researchers found that even in those who were already had high risk factors for developing breast cancer e.g women who smoked, drank alcohol, used menopausal HRT, had no children or were obese, eating meat did not appear to increase their risk of developing breast cancer.
I need to stress that this study looked at the diet of post-menopausal women in relation to breast cancer. It is still possible that eating large amounts of meat as a teenager when the breasts are developing, may increase breast cancer risk.
Filed under: Health issues
Tags: alcohol, breast-cancer, meat and breast cancer, meat mutagens, postmenopausal women, smoking
