Ladies, were you born chubby?
If so, you might have a higher risk of getting breast cancer. According to Web MD, a woman's early growth patterns can help predict her chance of developing the disease.
Researchers at Statens Serum Institute in Denmark studied the health records of more than 100,000 women from birth through late adulthood - to see which ones developed breast cancer. Here's what they determined:
Researchers at Statens Serum Institute in Denmark studied the health records of more than 100,000 women from birth through late adulthood - to see which ones developed breast cancer. Here's what they determined:
- The more a girl weighs at birth, the higher her breast cancer risk. Specifically, if she weighs more than 7.7 pounds, her risk goes up by 10%.
- On the flip side, girls who are thinnest at age 14 are most likely to develop the disease as adults.
- And finally, the taller a girl is at age 14, the higher her risk. Every 2 inches she is over 5 feet raises her risk of breast cancer by 11%-- Basically, the faster a girl develops, the more likely she is to have the disease later in life. Karin Michels is a breast cancer researcher from Harvard. And she says these findings are another good reason to monitor what your kids eat. She says red meats and dairy products are full of growth factors, and they can stimulate a girl's body to grow more quickly. So there might be an opportunity to reduce your daughter's chances of developing breast cancer later in life, by changing her diet while she's still young.
