Preventing breast cancer
There are certain factors that are within one’s reach to prevent breast cancer while others such as family history cannot be changed. It is very important to stick to these rules if you want to eliminate your risk of breast cancer while these steps are crucial to follow for people who have a medical history of breast cancer in their family.
The one obligatory no-no is smoking. There is crucial evidence in medical science to prove a correlation between smoking and breast cancer. This risk is increased for premenopausal women. Nevertheless, you will do your life a favor if you rest that pack of cigarette anyway.
The risk of breast cancer is also reduced if you breastfeed. The greater the amount of time you breastfeed the less exposed you are to the risk.
One medicine which cures and prevents many diseases is a healthy lifestyle. We can keep going about the many benefits physical activity brings for your health and there are a lot of studies and researches to prove this. This medicine also applies to breast cancer prevention. If you are way past beyond your young days and are worried that the ship has already sailed, you need not to worry anymore. Research suggests that physical activity even in the later part of life reduced breast cancer risk by 10 percent to 30 percent. A moderate 30-minute walk each day will suffice.
This will not only reduce the risk of the direct onset of breast cancer but will also protect you from obesity which in turn is a major cause of breast cancer. Especially after menopause where obesity increases the risk further.
Detecting breast cancer
You can beat breast cancer if you are able to detect it in the early stages. The more sooner it is detected the better it is for the patient’s overall health.
Regular breast self-test is the most common and easiest way to detect cancer at an early stage. Checking the breast for lumps and unusual textures are done. While some tumors or lumps may be too small to check with the human hand alone but self-screening is the most crucial help you can do to stop this life threating disease in its tracks
Moving on, a clinical breast exam is a next stage to detect breast cancer early on. It is usually performed by a health care professional. It should be a staple in women health care checkups starting as early as age 20.
A more complex and clinical way of detecting or screening for breast cancer is a Mammogram. It is like an X-ray that detects abnormal growth or changes in breast tissue. It is one of the most important tools in breast cancer detection and prevention at an early stage. There are also other more complicated and technological ways to detect breast cancer.
Curing breast cancer
According to the American Cancer Society, there are a number of ways to cure breast cancer:
- Surgery
- Radiation therapy
- Chemotherapy
- Hormone therapy
- Targeted therapy
- Bone-directed therapy
These therapies can be classified into broad groups and each patient is treated according to the type and condition of the breast cancer.