OCTOBER IS National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, designed to raise awareness about the most common cancer among women in the United States.

According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), an estimated 192,370 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed among women in the United States this year. About 40,170 women will die from the disease in 2009.

These heartbreaking statistics are personal to me: My mother is a 10-year breast-cancer survivor.

I vividly recall the anxiety and fear I felt when my mother gave us the devastating news. I can also recall the 10-hour surgery she had and her difficult recovery from chemo, hair loss and depression.

From where I sit, the statistics are real. Besides my mother, many friends and loved ones have also been stricken with this deadly disease.

Though before my mother, we'd had no family history of the disease, I remain concerned about my mother's, as well as my own breast health.

Some might say my mother's lifestyle habits made her a prime target for the disease. She had a distain for rigorous physical exercise and loved rich foods, and she also had jumped on the HRT (hormone replacement therapy) bandwagon when it was touted as the new wonder drug for menopausal women.

She now says, "I would have made lifestyle changes had I been seriously counseled about the risks involved with HRT."

We believe HRT was the biggest contributing factor in her getting the disease. Had she known then what we now know, she would have never taken the drugs.

Did you know that the long-term HRT use may increase your risk of breast cancer? Do you remember the results from the 2002 Women's Health Care Initiative (WHI) trials that shocked the nation, when study participants on HRT were found to have increased risks of breast cancer?

The study also determined that HRT increased the risk of heart attack a whopping 29 percent, and stroke 41 percent. So, if you're taking hormone replacement therapy to manage your menopausal symptoms, you might want to think again.

In retrospect, my mother believes the benefits were not worth the risks. If she had to do it again, she wouldn't. If you want to decrease your risk of getting breast cancer, then you may want to follow some, if not all, of the lifestyle prevention steps outlined here.

Get and stay physical

 

Not to beat a dead horse, but do exercise regularly. By regularly, I mean a minimum of 30 minutes most days of the week. You don't even have to do 30 consecutive minutes. Three 10-minute or two 15-minute exercise sessions add up to the same.

Remember to mix it up with cardiovascular, strength and flexibility work. It's all good. Make exercise a daily priority and just do it. It could reduce your risk of breast cancer.

Keep it low-fat, baby

 

Decreasing your fat intake doesn't only reduce your risk of breast cancer but also for diabetes, stroke and cardiovascular disease. It's recommended that you consume 30 percent of daily calories from fat. Translation: Based on a 2,000-calorie diet, that's a generous 600 calories.

But most of us are exceeding this - doubling or tripling it in some cases. Consider that two level tablespoons of mayonnaise or two pats of butter total 200 calories of pure fat. You can see where I'm going with this. Many people use significantly more of these dense fats to make a sandwich or butter their morning toast.