No lady is to blame for getting BC. It just happends because we have boobs. I was dx last September with DCIS and in pre-op also found out I had type 2 diabetes.
Diabetes is genetic (all my dad’s fault!), cancer is in the family but not considered a strong risk as we are a large family (although waiting for genetics dept to get back to me).
Not overweight; never smoked; healthy diet etc. & still got it. I have upped my exercise quite a lot; & have dropped a dress size. It made me step back and consider what I could to prevent a recurrence & also keep diabetes under good control; I’m doing what I can & still enjoy an odd glass of wine & my favourite take-away but just in moderation.
Looked at the yellow wellies thread ,love it .Its good to laugh. Iwas real positive until i had my last day at work before my op then i think realisation crept in. It was good to work and be in a normal enviroment. Im hoping my friends will keep coming round and we can have lots of laughs still .They have been great up to now ,i am so lucky xx
The only thing I would add that if you really miss a glass of wine, have one every now and again. Especially if you have made other adjustments to your diet and lifestyle.
Surely we are fighting this awful disease so that we continue to enjoy life, I know I am.
Love from Smiles (enjoying a glass of nice white wine as it’s Friday) xx
Hi agree with Maria mine was caused by wearing an underwired bra and standing under a pylon in a field in the 80’s haven’t got any yellow wellies. Do see that thread. Don’t mean to belittle all the dark thoughts about ‘what if’ but this is beyond our control J xx
I was interviewed on the local radio just after one of the more recent “it’s your own fault you’ve got cancer because of your lifestyle” reports in the press. The radio blokey actually asked me outright what I could have done differently! If I’d been within arm’s reach I’d have clocked him one!
Horace said it all. You got cancer because you have breasts.
But now you’ve got it, you also have a massive support network with this forum, so pull up a keyboard, wander round, make yourself at home.
the two main risk factors for BC are being female and getting older… neither of those two things can we do anything about… the next most common reason accounting for under 10% of all breast cancers is gene mutations… again nothing you can do about that either.
alcohol, not breast feeding, obesity, no children, HRT, combined pill etc increase your risk of BC but account for less than 5% and for many of these risks it depends on the amount and length or time.
you could do everything right in terms of risk and still get BC and do everything wrong and never get it.
these things can increase your risks so being healthy can help reduce your risk… but dont forget breast cancer isnt your only health risk and somethings may help reduce your risk of other health problems… if you have a strong family history of heart disease for instance you may decide that having a glass of red wine a day to help reduce your risk of a heart attack out weights the 0.5% increased risk of breast cancer… not saying you should do this btw just need to be aware of both risks and benefits.
Can I also say that for some of us not all of those other things are simple life choices either (as often seems to be reported in the media).
I scored high on the risk factors that supposedly we can do something about as I had 1) contraceptive pill for many years to keep my endometriosis at bay 2) had lots of other hormone treatment as well 3) couldn’t have children due to severe endometriosis and therefore obviously couldn’t breastfeed.
I’ve been ill all my adult life and I said to my husband the other day that some women have children but I had endometriosis and breast cancer instead. That sounds so awful! I was laughing about it a bit too. Elinda x
This graph and analysis of the incidence of breast cancer in the UK makes interesting reading - the incidence has increased by 85% between 1971 and 2008, and has carried on increasing every year since 2008.
This suggest to me that factors such as age and genetic make-up contribute to probably no more than 50% - 60% of current breast cancers, since these factors are assumed to remain relatively constant over this period whilst the rate of cancer has increased dramatically. This would suggest to me that other factors - lifelong exposure to hormones through childbirth profile, HRT, diet, alcohol, obesity, exercise etc account for the increased cancers. This does not imply any fault at all - but it does imply there is something we could do about it.
The incidence has increased steadily with better awareness and also increased quite dramatically followingbthe introduction in the national screening programme which saw more cancer detected but at an earlier stage and cimbined wuth better tteatment resulted in a reduction in mortality. However we continue to be even more breast aware ourselves from monthly checking for lumps to now checking for any changes. One stop clinics meaning people can get tests and results on the same day and not lost to follow up, we also have better techniques such as two view mammos compared to the traditional one view, digital mammograms and the use if techniques such as MRI and pet scans for more complex cases. Means cancers are picked up now that wouldn’t have been recognised years ago or wouldn’t have been found with tradition methods. Extension of the screening programme to include other age ranges and the setting up of family history clinics also means women who were previously not screened are now getting check which will inevitably increase the incidence over the next few years too.
So although I do agree that lifestyle factors play a part and that maintaining a healthy lifestyle can help minimise your risk if breast cancer but over all the majority of cancers develop outwith our control… There is still so much we don’t know but hopefully in time we get to understand it better and find other wats to help reduce our risk.
I’m probably being a bit thick here but I’m not sure I understand. I’ve looked at the graph and can see the dramatic rise which was starting just prior to screening.
Are we saying that prior to this there would be similar numbers of women who had breast cancer but that it was undetected and that they either died from something different or the primary wasn’t discovered?
On the otherhand, there could be other factors that have caused the dramatic rise or it could be a combination of other factors and screening?
From the graph you will see that although the incidence of bc was lower the death rate was higher meaning that some women would have died from breast cancer without ever being diagnosed with it. However some will have died from other causes or was stated on their death cert as dying from other causes. For example if somebody had undiagnosed lung mets, chronic asthma and died from pneumonia at 60 caused by the mets it may have gone on the death cert as pneumonia and chronic asthma. However had that woman been diagnosed with bc at 55 and treated for it she may never have gone on to develop the mets in the first place and lived to old age. Sometimes the docs were aware of the actual diagnosis but put other things innthe death cert tonptotect the family or to prevent the need for post mortems if they were having treatment for a known disease. Things like this were fairly common evrn in the 70s especially as cancer had such a taboo surrounding it.
And doctors also got away with s lot more that they just couldn’t do nowadays… Think Harold shipman.
Please don’t buy into this blame rubbish. Policy makers love to emphasise links between lifestyle and disease, because it let’s them off the hook - and lazy journalists are happy to repeat clap-trap, because it saves having to do proper research. I do sometimes wonder if those who point the finger, and imply that women get BC because they eat too much/drink too much/ don’t excercise enough (and therefore don’t really deserve help), have a misogynistic agenda. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t recall reading that lifestyle is to blame for prostrate cancer.
LG, very good point. Just out of curiosity (and to follow your point through a bit) does anyone know if there has been similar research into the causes of prostate or testicular cancer? I’m not for an instant trying to be anti-men here, just interested in the differences of attitude towards female and male cancers, attitude of the media that is.
Am sorry to post this without the relevant statistics, but Greta, the bcc nurse adviser on the younger womens forum in Manchester said that the numbers of younger women getting bc are actually declining slightly. I know this is already a smaller subset of women, but as we are probably the heavy drinking, late giving birth, pill taking, ready meal exposed, chemical ridden group. ( I know I am being over the top here) I just wonder how and why that might be happening. If any of the mods are reading could you find the statistics she used . I am no way saying this goes against the idea of healthy lifestyle not being of benefit, but it does make me wonder about the issue of blame and responsibility.
Thanks Lulu that is very helpful. I suppose we are not comparing like with like when say looking at the 70s and then 2008 then it’s not entirely possible to see the actual health trends. What we are seeing is almost entirely better screening, diagnosis and medical record keeping.
CM - I actually think that men get quite a raw deal when it comes to health. Women’s health problems dominate the media more with all the negative and positive connotations that go with that.
I believe that the stats show that men are less likely to go to their GP so you’d hope for a greater emphasis on their issues.
I think all sorts of disease is blamed on lifestyle though and some of this will be true. It’s how not to throw the baby out with the bathwater with all this. It’s good if people improve their lifestyles but bad if people are blamed. Elinda x
Hi
I think we also have to remember that there are problems with oestrogens in water - lots of problems in NE rivers were reported around the time of my first dx ('97) where all the fish were found to be female because of the amount of oestrogens in the rivers - causes were given as wee from the pill takers and the increased use of tampons which are flushed down the loo. Cows are also given hormones incl oestrogen to increase milk yield hence wariness about dairy products. There’s also the issue of stress - much of which is imposed on us rather than chosen. As my BCN once said to me - no evidence doesn’t mean its not true, just means the science hasn’t been done or hasn’t yet been reported - they could be a factor, or not.
The great think about lifestyle changes like dietary factors and exercise is they make you feel better and if other benefits accrue from that, then brilliant, but I really don’t like this blame culture. Enjoy life xx