Ladies, better think twice before downing that fifth shot of tequila, as the heavier you drink prior to motherhood, the more at risk you are for breast cancer.
In a study featured on Science Daily, researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis analyzed the medical history of 91,005 mothers from a previous Nurses’ Health Study.
They found that for every bottle or shot of alcohol that a young woman drank daily, the risk of proliferative benign breast diseases increased by 15 percent. Although this condition is not cancerous, it does increase the chances of breast cancer by a whopping 500 percent.
Breast tissue cells are vulnerable to compounds that could cause the Big C during adolescence, but other factors such as the time between the first menstrual period and first pregnancy may also add to the risk.
Study co-author Graham Colditz, MD, DrPH, believes that this is enough reason for adolescents to take it easy on alcohol"Reducing drinking to less than one drink per day, especially during this time period, is a key strategy to reducing lifetime risk of breast cancer," he says.
(Photo by gabia party via Flickr Creative Commons)
