Most women are conscious of keeping an eye on their weight, and menopause is certainly a time when some weight gain is to be expected.  As the body’s natural production of estrogen falls away we compensate by producing it in the fat cells so some extra pounds are normal and what nature intended.

The key here of course is ’some extra pounds’ and in fact keeping an eye on your weight from as early as age 20 can help protect you against breast cancer. This finding comes from a National Cancer Institute (NCI) study in the USA of 72,007 postmenopausal women who were enrolled in the NCI’s Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial.

Their conclusions are startling. When they analysed all the data they concluded that a 30-pound gain over the period from age 20 to menopause for a five-foot, four-inch woman nearly doubled the risk of developing breast cancer after menopause had begun.

Of course other factors such as family history, whether menstruation commenced early (another high risk factor) and if a woman has had children or not were taken into consideration.   However, a simple weight gain of only 2 pounds a year over the period were found to be as significant as any of the traditional risk factors.

This extra weight was revealed to be as significant as family history of the disease, the age at which a woman begins to menstruate (the earlier, the higher the risk), or whether or not she has had children and the age at which she gave birth.

However, you have to keep a sense of proportion because double the risk means that instead of one in a hundred women it could be two, but of course none of us wants to be that second woman.  Keeping a healthy eye on your weight from your twenties onwards obviously makes sense and the two key factors are a good diet that includes plenty of omega-3 fatty acids and regular exercise.