This statistic is always seen when anyone talks about breast cancer risk. This is based on a math formula that states that one in every nine women now living in the United States will develop breast cancer between birth and age 85.   It says nothing about a particular person's risk. A woman's risk for developing breast cancer depends on many factors:

• present age
• family history
• menopause status
• the age you had your first period
• whether you have children or not.

According to a report published last year:

• a woman entering her 30s has a one in 250 chance of developing breast cancer before her fortieth birthday.
• Her chances increase to one in 77 between age 40 and 50 because risk increases with age.
• But her odds are never worse than one in 34 after that because the longer she lives without getting this disease, the more the increased risk associated with aging is offset by increasing odds that if she hasn't developed it yet, she probably won't.

Estrogen Therapy & Breast Cancer
Is there a link?
by Sue Spataro, RN, BSN
In June 1999, the Journal of the American Medical Association published the results of a study supporting that taking hormones after menopause does not increase the risk of breast cancer, except for some uncommon forms of the disease that are slow growing and highly treatable Find out more.

What is YOUR risk
for breast cancer

Take our Risk Quiz

Dr. Jerri Nielsen's South Pole Survival Battle
Serving as doctor to the Americans "wintering over" at the South Pole in 1999, Jerri Nielsen made headlines when she discovered a lump in her breast that a self-administered biopsy revealed to be an aggressive, fast-growing cancer. See more about how she treated her own cancer while she was forced to stay in the Antarctic as well as a video clip from the Oprah show. We also have resources to help you calculate your risk of breast cancer, how to do a breast self exam and more.

• Health-Bytes Library
• Health-Byte-of-the-Week
• Breast Cancer
  • Assess Your risk
• What does the 1 in 9 statistic for getting breast cancer really mean for me?
• Estrogen Therapy & Breast Cancer Is there a link?
• Breast Cancer Facts: separating fact from fiction
• Breast Cancer Risk and Drinking
• Double Checking Mammograms

Breast self exam
The instructions are simple and come with illustrations. Please take a look and print out a copy for yourself. You are worth it. Make a copy for your best friend, your mom and your sister. Put it into a card and tell them how much you care about them. Do it, before it’s too late.

Estrogen & Breast Cancer
Stephanie Bender, MA, the author of Power of Perimenopause says about the risk of breast cancer in women taking estrogen, "We consider how the woman is feeling and what her risk of developing long term disease is- like osteoporosis and heart disease. There are many estrogen products and they can be used in very small doses to give women good results."
Estrogen & Cancer?

Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book
by Susan M. Love, Karen Lindsey, Marcia Williams

This fully revised edition of Dr. Love's important book reflects every major new development in breast care, screening, diagnosis, treatment, and research. Every chapter has been brought up to date to include the newest information on silicone implants, the reliability of mammograms, genetic risk factors, environmental hazards, diet, hormone use, and more.

newly revised for 2000!
Could It Be...Perimenopause?
by Steven R. Goldstein, Laurie Ashner

see the interview with Dr Goldstein
In clear, supportive prose, Goldstein offers no-baloney advice. "Today's perimenopausal women has neither the time nor the patience to go through four to fifteen years of symptoms without relief," he says. He fully delineates the roles of various hormones, how to determine if you're in perimenopause or not, as well as how to treat the various symptoms to gain control over your life.