Member-only story
10 Top Tips to Drop Your Breast Cancer Risk
BREAST CANCER MORTALITY IS DROPPING, but are you doing all you can to reduce your risk of getting (and dying) from the disease?
Breast cancer incidence is rising; in fact, rates have risen in most of the past four decades. From 2010 to 2019, the incidence has risen by 0.5 percent each year. On the other hand, breast cancer mortality has been dropping steadily (since peaking in 1989).
The breast cancer death rate dropped by nearly half (43 percent) from 1989 to 2020, according to findings published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. Unfortunately, racial disparities persist.
This decline in breast cancer death rates is significant and may be attributed to earlier detection through awareness and screening plus management advances. While I welcome the improvements in breast cancer mortality, I want to focus on some key ways you may reduce your risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer.
Let’s get to the top ways to significantly reduce your chances of getting (or dying from) breast cancer.
1. Don’t smoke.
If you currently smoke cigarettes (and have for more than ten years), you have a higher risk of developing breast cancer. This finding is not particularly surprising, nor is the fact that the duration of smoking matters: Those…
