Save Your Ta-Tas: Know the Facts About Breast Cancer
In case you couldn’t tell by the plethora of pink products from blenders to nail polish available in a store near you, Breast Cancer Awareness Month is in full affect. This year alone, there will be nearly 27,000 estimated new cases of breast cancer in Black women, according to statistics from the American Cancer Society. Even though White women are more likely to get breast cancer than Black women, we are most likely to die of breast cancer, at least partly because of... Read More
Terrified by Tumors
She looks so pulled together that you would never suspect what she’s hiding under her blouse. For some time, she’s been trying to ignore a tumor that’s now protruding through one of her breasts. The tumor is overshadowing her healthier breast and could fill a bra cup. “We call them fungating masses because they have grown so large that they have ruptured through the skin,” explains Wayne Frederick, M.D., director of the Howard University Cancer Center and chief of general... Read More
Why Breast Cancer Recurs
Not only do younger women tend to have more aggressive forms of breast cancer, but a recent study from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center found they are also more likely to have a recurrence of their cancer after treatment. According to the study, the type of treatment has a significant influence on whether the women relapsed. Recurrence, says study leader Beth M. Beadle, M.D., “remains a significant problem.” Since the best outcomes were in young women who... Read More
Post-Cancer Babies
Breast cancer treatment does not have to impede the possibility of motherhood for newly diagnosed women younger than age 40, says a new study. If a survivor acts quickly, her eggs can be preserved for future pregnancies and chemotherapy can begin as scheduled. “Some people have concerns that if they have fertility preservation treatment that it may impact cancer therapy,” says the study’s lead author Lynn Westphal, M.D., assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at... Read More
Will a Vaccine Stop Breast Cancer’s Return?
With early detection and advanced treatment, more women are beating breast cancer every day. But what if survivors could be assured the disease wouldn’t return? In spring 2009, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences started the first two phases of clinical trials to test a vaccine created to prevent breast cancer recurrence. Recurrences commonly happen within the first 3 to 5 years after initial treatment, and can often be predicted by tumor size, grade of cancer cells... Read More
Slash Your Risk of Dying From Breast Cancer
Breast cancer still claims the lives of about 40,000 women annually (180,000 will be newly diagnosed this year), but there is a simple way to lower your risk of succumbing to this disease: exercise. Recent research from the University of South Carolina found that just five hours a week of walking cuts your risk of death by more than 50 percent. Don’t have five free hours? Twenty minutes a day trims the risk by a third. The study, the first to connect fitness levels and the risk... Read More
To Mammogram or Not to Mammogram
The new mammography guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force have left women confused, frustrated and in some cases just plain angry. The Task Force’s new recommendations were a complete reversal of the guidelines women have followed, and relied on, for years: Getting mammograms annually, starting at age 40, was your best protection against breast cancer. Task force recommendations say women should wait until age 50 for their first mammogram and then only have... Read More
Keep Your Breasts in Tip-Top Health
By Joy Duckett Cain At first, the lump in Jasmine’s left breast was so small she didn’t even feel it. Her doctor discovered it last summer during a physical prior to her freshman year at Florida A & M University. We were told that, particularly among African-American teens and young adults, small lumps in the breast (called fibroadenomas) are fairly common. But as the months progressed and Jasmine’s lump grew from half a centimeter to more than 3 centimeters,... Read More
