Researchers have found that women who lost weight after 50 years and kept it off had a lower risk of breast cancer than women whose weight remained stable. The reduction in risk increased with the amount of weight lost and was specific to women not using postmenopausal hormones, according to the study published in the JNCI: Journal of the National cancer Institute.
"Even a modest amount of sustained weight loss is associated with lower breast cancer risk for women over 50," said the study's lead author Lauren Teras from Harvard university in the US. In the USA, more than two in three adult women are overweight or obese.
While high the body mass index (BMI) is an established risk factor for postmenopausal breast cancer, there has not been adequate evidence to determine if that risk is reversible by losing excess weight.
