Breast Cancer Risk Factors

Breast cancer risk factors are factors that put a person at an increased risk for breast cancer. Medical research is constantly being done to determine the various risk factors that contribute to a person's likelihood of getting breast cancer, and they are determined by taking a pool of people and making common assumptions. Breast cancer risk factors are determined by finding the things that the people who did have breast cancer all had in common; if only a few people have a certain risk factor in common then that is not a proper assumption that that certain thing is a risk factor, but if a great portion of the people have a certain thing in common and a large percentage of those people have contracted breast cancer it is a safe assumption that the said activity or attribute is a breast cancer risk factor.

Risk factors are usually not very hard to determine. When it comes to lung cancer, a risk factor for lung cancer is obviously those who smoke or live in the household with somebody else who smokes. Breast cancer is not as easy to determine risk factors for, however. Those who have had hormone replacement therapy or HRT are at an increased risk for breast cancer, as are those who have a family history of breast cancer.

Breast cancer statistics can help people to determine what breast cancer risk factors are. For example, most cases of breast cancer occur in Caucasian American women. Does this mean that being a white woman makes for a breast cancer risk factor? Perhaps. As you age, your likelihood of getting breast cancer increases, so it can also be said that being a middle aged woman is a risk factor for breast cancer as well. Breast cancer risks among Asian women are not as high as those white women who were studied in similar studies, but the actual risk for breast cancer has a lot to do with lifestyle as well.

If you are not a healthy eater and you do not respect your body and treat it well, you are creating a breast cancer risk factor all in itself. Risks for breast cancer are all too real, and for those who have suffered from breast cancer or even lost someone it is important to know the signs and symptoms and also how to go about preventing breast cancer in the first place.