<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"I remember the exact moment I was first hit with breast cancer anxiety. It was about 10 years ago, when I was an assistant health editor at Glamour. Like many medical reporters, I had the bad habit of suddenly imagining I had symptoms of whatever illness I happened to be researching. So one day after interviewing several young women who were battling breast cancer&amp;amp;#8212;women barely older than I was&amp;amp;#8212;I snuck off to a bathroom stall to frantically check myself for lumps. Breast cancer suddenly seemed so&amp;amp;#8230;imminent, and no other illness frightened me the way it did. I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t have any risk factors or a family history, and a subsequent checkup showed I was fine, but the fear stuck with me. A few years later, I even convinced a doctor to prescribe a mammogram for me at age 33, seven years younger than typically recommended. Not surprisingly, I was, yet again, A-OK. I figured my paranoia was abnormal, that my work had sensitized me to the risks&amp;amp;#8212;until I found out that those kinds of worries are incredibly common. Breast cancer has become the health nightmare of choice for many of us: In a Glamour poll, 82 percent of women said they&amp;amp;#8217;re afraid of getting the disease at some point in their lives. &amp;amp;#8220;Every month during my period, my breasts feel a little lumpy,&amp;amp;#8221; says Analisa Alaniz, 29, a business development representative in San Antonio. &amp;amp;#8220;And every month I get panicky and check them over and over again, even though my doctor has reassured me that they&amp;amp;#8217;re just fibrocystic, which is common and benign.&amp;amp;#8221; Breast cancer is a serious women&amp;amp;#8217;s health threat: More than 200,000 American women are diagnosed with the disease every year. But our fears about its prevalence, deadliness and inevitability may have outpaced reality. A recent study by the American Cancer Society (ACS) found that people often &amp;amp;#8220;hold beliefs about cancer risk at odds with the prevailing scientific evidence&amp;amp;#8221;; when it comes to breast cancer, our &amp;amp;#8220;beliefs&amp;amp;#8221; may actually be keeping us from protecting ourselves. I finally realized this for myself when I began researching my new book about breast cancer, Previvors. Here, I hope to set the record straight. Myth #1 Breast Cancer Is Striking More Women, and at Younger and Younger Ages &amp;amp;#8220;I hear about young women being diagnosed and I think, This could happen to me,&amp;amp;#8221; says Meg Power, 21, left, a student in Chicago who is scared of getting breast cancer, though she has no known risk factors. A full 86 percent of women we polled said they thought the age when women develop breast cancer is dropping. Fact: The stats on this point are quite reassuring. Not only have rates of the disease among younger women stayed the same for nearly 25 years, but survivorship is up: Death rates for women under 50 decreased significantly (by 3 percent per year) between 1990 and 2006. While women in their twenties and thirties do get the disease, almost two thirds of new cases will occur after age 55, according to the ACS. Many young women&amp;amp;#8217;s fears seem driven by one statistic in particular: that one in eight women will develop breast cancer during her lifetime. That&amp;amp;#8217;s technically true, but the word lifetime is key&amp;amp;#8212;it means from birth to death, which is often 80-plus years. It&amp;amp;#8217;s more useful to think about your risk in terms of the next 10 years, says Eric Winer, M.D., chief scientific adviser for Susan G. Komen for the Cure and director of the breast oncology center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. &amp;amp;#8220;A young woman in her thirties has a one-in-200 chance of developing breast cancer by age 40,&amp;amp;#8221; he estimates. That&amp;amp;#8217;s not nothing, but it&amp;amp;#8217;s less than many of us imagine. Myth #2 There&amp;amp;#8217;s Nothing I Can Do to Lower My Risk &amp;amp;#8220;I feel like breast cancer is inevitable,&amp;amp;#8221; says Cheri Osmundsen, 34, an occupational recruiter in San Clemente, California, who has no known risk factors. &amp;amp;#8220;It&amp;amp;#8217;s as if I&amp;amp;#8217;ve accustomed myself to the idea that I will face this battle sometime.&amp;amp;#8221; Fact: Don&amp;amp;#8217;t be paralyzed by fear! Young women can take steps now that may protect them down the road, says Debbie Saslow, Ph.D., director of breast and gynecologic cancers for the ACS. If you&amp;amp;#8217;re not already following these cancer-fighting guidelines, do: Keep alcohol to one drink a day. Eat lots of fruits and veggies. Eat whole grains, not processed ones. Limit intake of processed or red meats. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/2010/11/your-breasts-are-not-a-ticking-time-bomb/5>