Reducing Your Risk Of Breast Cancer With Healthy Living While
you cannot predict whether or not you will get breast cancer,
pursuing a healthy lifestyle may reduce your risk of breast
cancer and other diseases. Maintain A Healthy Weight Your best
chance of decreasing your breast-cancer risk is to maintain a
healthy body weight, starting at a young age. The following
steps, from the nutrition and weight-management book "Eat, Drink
And Be Healthy" by Walter C. Willett, M.D., chairman of the
Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health
and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, can help
you to maintain a healthy body mass index or lower one that's
high. If your BMI (a measure of body fat based on height and
weight) is less than 25, you should work to keep it there. If
your BMI is greater than 25, you can improve your long-term
health by lowering your number. The more your BMI rises above
25, the greater your chance of developing breast cancer. Studies
have shown that having a BMI ab