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10 Ways to Lower Your Risk of Breast Cancer

Most of the news we hear about breast cancer deals with addressing the disease after it's already been diagnosed. The best treatment for any disease, is through prevention. Here are 10 ways to lower your breast cancer risk.

1. Exercise and be consistant about it. Moderate physical activity, like brisk walking, 3 times a week can reduce a young woman's risk of developing breast cancer by 33%, and the risk of breast cancer after menopause by 26%.

2. If you smoke, quit now. The sooner, the better.

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Cancer Death Rate Declining

Some good news in the battle against cancer: recent findings in a report published in the latest issue of Cancer shows cancer death rates dropped steadily on average 2.1 percent per year from 2002 through 2004, nearly twice the annual decrease of 1.1 percent per year from 1993 through 2002.

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African American Women and Breast Cancer

“I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to see my children grow up and my grandchild grow, you get this really scary feeling inside,” says Rosamond Stallings. When 45 year old Rosamond Stallings was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 years ago, doctors urged her to immediately have a mastectomy. “They found like six malignant tumors,” says Rosamond.
Recent studies have shown that 30 percent or more of breast cancer patients fail to receive complete treatment, and that African American women are as much as 10 percent less likely than white women to receive optimal therapy. But now, supported by a $10 million grant from the Department of Defense, a study, led by a team of doctors at Columbia University Medical Center, will look at possible reasons for the disparity.

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BREAST CANCER RECURRENCE MARKER

Researchers have discovered how to identify women with breast cancer who are at risk for having the cancer spread.
This is quite a significant step, because currently, there’s no reliable way to see what cancers will spread and what won’t, and that means it’s hard to say which patients should be treated more aggressively and which can be treated less aggressively

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