Age. There is a saying, “if you live long enough, you’ll get cancer.” Breast cancer risk significantly increases with age. About 78 percent of women are diagnosed with breast cancer after the age of fifty.
Genetics. Two genetic mutations, BRCA1 and BRCA2, greatly increase the risk of getting breast cancer. However, these mutations are very rare in the population and account for about 5 to 10 percent of all breast cancers. Other inherited genetic mutations play a role in breast cancer, and in many cancers, but none are as clearly defined as these two.
Family history. If you have a first-degree relative (mother, sister, or daughter) who has breast cancer, you have about double the risk of developing it yourself. The more relatives you have with breast cancer and the earlier the age at which they were diagnosed increases risk. In addition, your own history of breast cancer or benign breast condition increases your chance of getting breast cancer.
Previous chest radiation. Radiation can be a good thing when treating a cancer, but also has some negative long-term effects. Women who as children or young adults had radiation therapy to the chest area as treatment for another cancer (such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma) are at significantly increased risk for breast cancer.
Kids. Remember the Sex and the City episode where Samantha is diagnosed with breast cancer? Her doctor tells her not having children has put her at risk, an idea she balks at before storming out of the exam room to find a new physician. Contrary to what our high school advisors told us, having multiple kids at a young age is actually a good thing, for our breasts at least. Again, it all comes back to hormones: levels of estrogen drop after a first full-term birth and during pregnancy and lactation. Women who never have children or who have their first child after the age of thirty-five have a higher risk of breast cancer than a woman who had her first kid before age twenty. The more children a woman has and the longer she breast-feeds reduces her breast cancer risk. (Note: I am putting kids in the unmodifiable risk factors section. Yes, you can decide when to have kids, how many to have, and how long to breast feed, but some of us—the thirty-somethings whose clocks are ticking with no husband or virile penis in sight—cannot.)
