City Living and Breast Cancer

FitSugar — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:00:00 PST

October might have been Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but the research is not limited to a month. Researchers are persistent, and a new study gives city living women a reason to stay vigilant too.

New research from the UK indicates that women living in cities have much denser breast tissue than their country living counterparts. Combine this data with the previous research that indicates women with the densest breasts are considered four times as likely to develop breast cancer. There is a relationship between breast cancer and breast tissue.

There are three pieces of information to consider here:

Particles commonly found in air pollution, which is more common in urban areas, often mimic hormones that can interfere with the make up of breast tissue, and create denser tissue.
The more dense the breast tissue is the more difficult to detect tumors and suspicious growths with X rays. Mammograms are a specialized form of X-ray and are considered the most effective way of detecting tumors. Early stage cancer is more difficult to detect in dense breast tissue.
This study was performed on women who reside in London, 972 of them, in fact. An English health survey found that women residing in London were the thinnest in the country. This is important since there is an inverse relationship between breast density and body weight: thinner women generally have less body fat and therefore denser breast tissue.

If you live in a city, take heed. Remember to perform your monthly breast exams and take cancer screening seriously. You should also read 5 Things to Reduce Your Risk of Breast Cancer.

Source

DrSugar: The 411 on Mammograms

DrSugar — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:26:33 PDT

DrSugar is in the house! This week she's explaining how mammograms work and why they're important.

This week on DrSugar, I'm going to discuss the hows, whys, and whens of mammograms. Inspired to research the topic given my positive family history of breast cancer in my grandmother, I wanted to share the information I found with FitSugar readers to help clear up any confusion you may all have on the matter.

The National Cancer Institute defines a mammogram as an X-ray picture of the breast. The actual procedure involves the breasts being compressed between two firm surfaces to spread out the breast tissue and then X-ray images are taken. There are two types of mammograms, screening and diagnostic. A screening mammogram is used to check for breast cancer in women with no signs or symptoms of the disease. Screening mammograms typically involve two X-ray pictures of each breast and can make it possible to detect tumors that cannot be felt. Diagnostic mammograms are obtained to check for breast cancer after a lump or other sign or symptom of disease has been found. These differ from the screening mammograms in that they take longer to perform because more X-rays are taken to obtain images of the breast from multiple different angles.

More information on mammograms after the break.