Break It Down

A study done by Michael Simon, Jeannette Korczak, and others states that there were 211,240 diagnoses of breast cancer and 40,410 women who didn't survive it in 2005 alone. Sometimes numbers seem more real when you compare them to something close to you. On that note, if you filled Ohio Stadium then doubled it, that's roughly how many women were told they had breast cancer in one year alone. If the entire city of Dublin, Ohio died, that's about how many women died in 2005, alone, from breast cancer (Simon). 

Simon and Korczak's article also mentions that the risk of someone developing breast cancer in their life is 12.6%. That's a very high percentage for such a life-threatening disease. Unfortunately, this percentage only goes up with family history of the disease. In fact, having more than one family member with breast cancer, the percentage of your own risk goes up to 25.2%. However, it's interesting to see that this percentage is only for white women. For African American women, this percentage is only 16.9% (Simon). More on these differences later...

The chances of a younger girl developing breast cancer compared to an older woman are in the younger girl's favor. However, younger girls have a good portion of their lives ahead of them. The study says that there are many factors to look into when wondering about your chances of developing such a disease. According to the study, "when counseling an unaffected woman regarding her future risk of breast cancer, the clinician should consider her family history as well as the fact that she has lived to her current age without developing breast cancer."This statement not only applies to breast cancer but many other diseases as well. It is helpful to use many resources and factors of your personal life when it comes to your health. This is why spreading awareness is so important for everybody, not just breast cancer potentials (Simon).