A – Z of Breast Cancer: CAUSES

Doctors talk about risk factors for cancer, not causes. This is unnerving. Cause says to me concrete knowledge and the possibility of cure, whereas ‘risk factors’ sounds way too nebulous for my liking. Apart from age and genes, about which you can do nothing, these risk factors include health factors such as being overweight, especially after you’ve had the menopause. NB:I am slim and I have not yet had the menopause.

Hormonal factors are also key...

Anything that affects your hormones like HRT and the Pill may increase your risk of breast cancer, as can not having babies and not breast feeding. Guess what? I have always avoided the pill and I breast fed my baby for ages in the belief that it would protect him from eczema and asthma. I didn’t know then that it had the added benefit of protecting against breast cancer. Hurray for breast feeding! Oh yeah I forgot, he got eczema and asthma, and I got cancer. Still, I wasn’t breast feeding my baby merely as a prophylactic and I don’t regret it for a minute. Apparently starting your periods at a young age also increases the risk of breast cancer. Late developers rejoice. Oh no, hang on, I was fifteen before my periods started. Not having much luck am I?

Stress is another factor

This is tricky. You are supposed to remove stress from your life. Well, if you knew how to do that you wouldn’t be stressed in the first place would you? You’d just see stress coming and take a ring road round it. If only life were that simple. I can’t take a diversion around my family, the economy, the mean minded restructuring that is going on at my work. I have to live with it. And here’s the rub. Being told you have cancer is stressful. Steer your way round that one.

Lifestyle factors

Finally, things like poor diet and drinking too much alcohol can also put you at risk. This seems fair to me. How many times have I sanctimoniously looked into other people’s shopping trolleys at Tesco and scorned their crisps and white bread and ready meals. Seems I was justified after all. I don’t eat too much junk and I don’t smoke but lest you think I’m some kind of po-faced, born again health freak, I will admit to really quite liking wine. Recently nature has made me cut back by ensuring that I now fall asleep half way through the third glass, so I’m not an alcoholic, but I do love a drink with my friends (or without them for that matter). But now they have started those annoyingly effective Know Your Limits adverts on TV in which you see a kind of X-ray of a woman drinking some red wine which travels straight to her boob. Great. It makes it look like wine is to breast cancer what Baby Bio is to house plants. It’s just not fair. I wonder what the instance of cancer in nuns is. Still, I am firmly of the belief that having no vices is a vice in itself. Maybe if I just cut back a bit.

The rules are there are no rules

Cancer is so damned arbitrary. I bet there is more than one post menopausal, pill popping lush out there who does not have cancer and I bet there is more than one saint who does. If you are that saint, take heart: If you have been doing nothing wrong, you can attract no blame. It is not your fault. And that has to be good news.

Read more at http://breastcancercares.blogspot.com/