How to Reduce Risk for Breast Cancer and Osteoporosis

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By Bev Bennett

Women have a much greater risk than men for developing osteoporosis and breast cancer. But being overweight and skipping exercise increases both those risks, according to two research studies.

By putting on a few pounds every year from young adulthood to menopause, you become more susceptible to breast cancer, says Heather Spencer Feigelson, Ph.D., a senior epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta. Even gaining a modest amount of weight -- from 21 to 30 pounds during adulthood -- increases the likelihood of breast cancer by 40 compared with women who gain 5 pounds or less. Women who gain more than 70 pounds double their risk.

Feigelson based her conclusions on a 1992 survey of more than 60,000 women ages 50-74. The women were asked their weight at age 18, as well as their current weight, and then were studied for several years.

"To avoid or minimize your risk of breast cancer, get regular exercise and don't accumulate weight as you age," says Feigelson. "The lowest breast cancer risk is for women who don't gain weight and don't use hormone replacement therapy."

The good news, from another study, shows that losing weight may reverse the risks.

Women who intentionally lose 20 pounds or more as adults were 19 percent less likely to develop breast cancer than women who didn't lose weight. That was the conclusion of a study of more than 20,000 post-menopausal women conducted by University of Minnesota researchers published in the December, 2003, issue of the International Journal of Obesity.

Dieting down to a normal weight resulted in women having an incidence of cancer similar to non-overweight women who never lost weight. Losing weight unintentionally, say because of illness, did not have a decreased cancer risk according to the published report.

Overweight women often have greater bone density because they bear more weight as they walk. But that commonly accepted knowledge is open to interpretation.

A woman's proportion of fat tissue to lean muscle influences her bone density, says Bess Dawson-Hughes, M.D. and director of the Bone Metabolism Laboratory at the Jean Mayer U.S. Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. "For any given weight, there will be a higher bone density if the person has more muscle. The higher-muscle person has a higher bone density than a flabby person if both are the same weight," she says.

A Tufts study of about 150 premenopausal women showed that, independent of body weight, a higher proportion of body fat was linked to lower bone mineral density.

Exercise, and especially weight-bearing exercise, including running, walking and weightlifting, help strengthen bones and the muscles that support them.

America on the Move
Finding the will power to exercise is never easy, but the America on the Move Organization offers great motivational tools on its Web site: www.americaonthemove.org.

You can find health tips as well as a program that lets you log your activity to help keep you on track.

The following recipe, from the American Heart Association Low-Calorie Cookbook (Crown, 2003), makes a hearty one-dish dinner.

Ginger Chicken With Whole Wheat Spaghetti and Green Beans