WSJ: How Exercise, Diet May Cut Girls' Later Breast-Cancer Risk

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

May 30, 2006

HEALTH JOURNAL
By TARA PARKER-POPE

The Case for Soccer: How Exercise, Diet May Cut Girls' Later Breast-Cancer Risk
May 30, 2006; Page D1

Most women start worrying about breast cancer in their 40s, a time when doctors start to recommend regular mammograms. But a growing body of evidence shows that a woman's risk for breast cancer may be determined far earlier in life. Cellular changes that can lead to cancer likely begin in childhood when breast tissue is just beginning to develop.

So while strategies like diet, exercise and -- for high-risk women -- prevention drugs like Tamoxifen may help stave off breast cancer in midlife, scientists are also beginning to look at prevention efforts for young girls. What's increasingly clear is that the health decisions parents make for their daughter in preschool, adolescence and the late teen years have the potential to dramatically alter her risk for breast cancer as she becomes a woman.

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Encourage exercise at a young age. Exercise early in life appears to lower a girl's hormone levels, and potentially delay the onset of her first period. The average age of first period today is about 12, but some girls start periods as early as nine or 10. Girls who don't get their periods until the age of 13 or 14 have a lower lifetime risk for breast cancer. Exercise before puberty lowers body fat and also damps down hormone production by the pituitary gland, keeping hormone levels low longer and thereby delaying menstruation. "It's important to start things young," says Anne McTiernan, director of the Prevention Center at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle and author of the book "Breast Fitness." Dr. McTiernan suggests an hour of daily exercise for girls, including recess and gym class.

The benefit of exercise continues into the teen years even after a girl starts her period, possibly by lowering body fat, which produces estrogen. Some of the most compelling evidence that athleticism in the late teen years influences breast-cancer risk comes from studies by Harvard researchers looking at breast-cancer risk among 5,400 former college athletes and nonathletes. The college athletes, the vast majority of whom also took part in high-school sports, had a dramatically lower risk for breast cancer. Among women of all ages, breast-cancer risk was 40% lower among former college athletes.

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URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114894689736865801.html (subscription)

[serryjw]

1. As a B/C survivor .....I agree 100%!!

n/t

[Captain Hilts]

2. This is old news, actually. Glad the WSJ is catching up!

Perhaps they'll think twice next time they trash Title IX.

[Ksec]

3. Took long enough for the WSJ to catch up with the rest of us.

Excercise cures many ailments.

I had high blood pressure and other borderline numbers , I took meds for a few years.

I then went to the local Y and started working out. Lifting weights, treadmill . I did not change my eating habits and 3 months later I had lost weight(not alot, but I turned fat into muscle which weighs more), my BP became excellent, all the other numbers came down into the better columns. All from excercise and nothing else.

Im living proof that working out can be all one needs to make themselves healthy and get off the meds. It really works.