Talk about inflation! Something cost $25 in 1965 would ring up as $188.77 today.
Likewise, in 1965 the average woman's waist size was 24 to 25 inches; today, the average measure is 34 to 35 inches, and growing.
(Guys, a similar inflation is happening to you, but we’ll save that for another time.)
At the same time, the incidence of breast cancer in women ages 25 to 39 has almost doubled — and it’s growing by more than 2 percent annually. And while the incidence in older women has recently declined, it's still much higher than in earlier decades.
A new study brings these two trends together: Looking at the medical history of 93,000 women 50 and older, researchers in the United Kingdom found that an increase in skirt size is the single strongest predictor of a woman's risk for breast cancer.
If you've expanded one skirt size from 10 to 12, or 16 to 18 in the past decade, your breast cancer risk balloons 33 percent. If you jump two sizes, it rises 77 percent!
It seems that more fat around the waist (and your internal organs) fuels inflammation, a known cancer trigger, and increases your body's levels of estrogen, which some breast cancer cells gobble up.
So if you're skirting the overweight line, your best move is to lose one pound a week by eating nine servings of veggies and fruit daily; eliminating red meat, added sugars and syrups, and all trans and saturated fats; and starting a walking regimen that gets you to 10,000 steps a day.
It would be a waste not to try
© 2024 NewsmaxHealth. All rights reserved.