The Sydney Morning Herald ran an article reporting the results of  The Million Women Study run by senior scientists at Oxford University in England. A total of 1.3 million British women, most aged in their 50s, were recruited to provide information about their life-styles, habits and health.  In terms of menopause the study results tell us:

Avoid hormone replacement therapy  Women run twice their normal risk of breast cancer while taking the combined form of oestrogen and progestogen (though the extra risk goes away once they stop). Oestrogen alone is not so risky. Both forms of HRT increase the risk of ovarian cancer, although not by as much as they do breast cancer. Oestrogen alone increases the risk of endometrial cancer, which affects the lining of the womb.

Do not smoke

Don’t let yourself get overweight  But you shouldn’t be too thin either. A body mass index (your weight in kilograms divided by the square of your height in metres) of about 24 is good.

Ideally don’t drink.  At all

Don’t worry about taking the pill when you are young It protects against ovarian cancer.

Exercise It helps you to avoid heart disease, but it doesn’t need to be too strenuous.

Breastfeed for as long as possible Doing what the breasts were intended for protects against breast cancer. In an ideal, risk-avoiding world, women would also start having babies young and have many more of them, both of which protect against breast cancer.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Health & Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.