Breast cancer rates under age 50 record high

Interesting article.  A couple of things caught my eye.

First, 

"But the rise isn’t necessarily as bad as it sounds. For example it could reflect better breast awareness and improved diagnosis and screening, which in turn might lead to early treatment and improved chances of survival.

The good news is that – despite the increase in breast cancer diagnoses – breast cancer deaths are actually falling. An increasing number of women are now survivors of breast cancer."

Second,

"Alcohol is an established risk factor for breast cancer. Cancer Research UK reports that the combined results of two large systematic reviews of the published evidence, in addition to findings from the UK Million Women Study, suggest that each additional unit of alcohol per day can increase a woman’s risk of the disease by between 7% and 12%. The research suggests that by the age of 80, roughly the following number of women will have developed breast cancer:

• 9 out of 100 if they don’t drink at all
• 10 out of 100 if they have two drinks a day
• 13 out of 100 if they have six drinks a day"

.

This is saying that if I have 2 drinks a day, over the course of my entire life to the age of 80, I will increase my breast cancer risk from 9% to 10%.  That's an 11% relative increase in risk, but in absolute terms it's only a 1 percentage point increase. I appreciate that the medical community is concerned about alcohol consumption because for the population as a whole, 1% of women is a lot of women.  So this can represent many more cases of breast cancer.  But for an individual, a 10% risk up to age 80 vs. a 9% risk up to age 80 isn't much of an increase.  Even for me, being higher risk than average because I've already been diagnosed with BC one time, the absolute risk increase conferred by 2 drinks a day is going to be pretty small.  It's the first time I've seen the numbers presented this way, and I think it's very helpful in putting the risk in perspective.  It's further confirmation that I'm not going to worry about my glass of wine with dinner each night. 

From these numbers, I do think that women who have 6 drinks a day probably should consider cutting back, however. 

Beesie - you are so good at reading through the data and pulling the important items out. I'm always amazed at your analytics ability. Thank you!

Beesie, we too are so happy you are part of our community! Your posts and analyses are spot-on, and enormously helpful!!! Thank you!

Great point on the drinking.  I beat myself up a lot the first year after diagnosis for every chocolate bar and glass of wine.  That is a form of stress in my world, and I don't need it.  I think that cancels out whatever small increase I'm willing to take to love this life.  Drinking wines in all the wonderful countries I travel to is worth it as a QOL issue.

On another note, I'm still so confused by the studies that suggest mammography doesn't save lives, yet cancer survival is increasing, and that seems directly related to the increase in cases caught proverbially "early".  Though I don't subscribe to that idea--I think cancer survival is more than that--it does seem to stand to reason with these findings.