Half of breast cancers may be prevented with these two simple things

Half of breast cancers may be prevented with simple changes like adopting a healthier lifestyle and high-risk women taking preventative drugs like tamoxifen, according to a new report.

"Women need to have better access to understanding how breast cancer risk accumulates and how these lifestyle factors add up over the years to increase risk," Dr. Graham Colditz, associate director for prevention and control at Siteman Cancer Center and Washington University in St. Louis, told Reuters Health.

Early detection methods are effective, but women should be more aware of prevention treatments that are already out there, argues Colditz and his colleague Dr. Kari Bohlke from Washington University. Prevention techniques have received "far less attention" than improved treatment and early detection approaches, they said.

For instance, certain women can benefit from the breast-cancer-preventing medications tamoxifen and raloxifene, but only a small number of them actually take the drug, researchers note.

According to the scientists, when it comes to lifestyle changes, reducing alcohol intake makes a big difference. Research found that teens who don't drink alcohol at all may reduce their future risk of breast cancer by 20 percent to 30 percent compared to their peers who had at least one drink in the past 30 days.

Eating more fruits, vegetables and whole grains are also prevention tools not only for breast cancer, but other cancers as well.

Maintaining a healthy weight and engaging in daily physical activity has the most breast-cancer-preventing benefit when women sustain it throughout their lifetimes, according to Dr. Colditz, but "it's never too late to start," he said.

"Those strategies are substantially reducing the onset of new cases and even deaths from breast cancer in postmenopausal women as well as premenopausal women," he added.

"We really need to go back and work at breast cancer prevention starting at a young age," Colditz concluded.