A Conversation about Breast Health and Breast Cancer

Three Generations of Women Share Their Perspectives

On October 10, Dr. Marisa Weiss will host a candid discussion with her mother, 67-year-old Ellen Weiss, a breast cancer survivor and co-author of Living Beyond Breast Cancer, and her teenage daughter, Isabel, 16, a high school junior. These three generations of Weiss women have come together during Breast Cancer Awareness Month to share their personal experiences with breast cancer, and to encourage women everywhere to engage the girls and women in their lives in a dialogue about breast health.

All women are at risk for getting breast cancer. And, as we get older, our risk increases. On average, 1 in 8 women will get breast cancer if they live to be 90 years old, and most women will know at least one person who has the disease. So it's important to talk about breast cancer with every woman in your life, regardless of her age. To start this important dialogue, we've included some places on the Breastcancer.org site you can visit to get more information.

First, there's a lot of misinformation about breast cancer. It's important to understand and to communicate exactly how breast cancer develops and what breast cancer looks like.

It is also important to understand the risk of getting breast cancer. There are some risk factors that you can control and there are risk factors that you cannot control.

The risk factors you can control include:

• maintaining a healthy weight
• exercising
• eating a healthy diet
• getting support

There are also a lot of myths out there about what causes breast cancer. Know fact from fiction—for example, antiperspirant does NOT cause breast cancer.

The most effective way to detect breast cancer early, when it's most treatable, is to become proactive with screening and testing. Women of all ages should perform monthly breast self-examinations. Starting at age 40, it's important to have annual mammograms.

When having this conversation with the women in your life and particularly in your family, perhaps most relevant is the relationship between breast cancer and genetics. Your family history may change how you need to be screened for breast cancer.

This Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Breastcancer.org encourages you to start a conversation about breast health and breast cancer with the women in your life. As mothers and daughters, sisters and grandmothers, nieces and cousins, it is our shared responsibility to spread life-saving breast cancer information.