What does breast cancer feel like?
Cουld уου tеll mе whеrе іn thе breast thе lumps occur, whаt thеу feel lіkе, etc.?
Whаt аrе ѕοmе οthеr symptoms οf breast cancer? Arе hair loss аnd tremors ѕοmе symptoms?
At whаt age саn уου gеt breast cancer?
Anу οthеr info I ѕhουld know?
Thanks.
There are MANY different kinds of cancer with different symptoms.
Breast cancer is uncommon below the age of 30.
Hair loss occurs if chemo/radiation treatment is used.
Click on the red terms.
http://www.breastcancer.org/
“Teenage girls who smoke increase their risk of developing breast cancer before they reach menopause, according to a crash in the Oct. 5 issue of the journal The Lancet (Vol. 360: 1044-1049).
The authors said the risk is nearly double if young women start smoking within five years of their initially menstrual cycle.
Pierre R. Band, MD, and a team of Canadian scientists found that the opportunity of breast cancer in women by age 50 was 80% higher than if they hadn’t started smoking at a young age.” quote
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/NWS/content/NWS_1_1x_Teenage_Smoking_Linked_To_Breast_Cancer.asp
I’m a ten year survivor of breast cancer. Here goes.
Tumours can occur in any part of the breast. Generally they are not painful at the outset. The one form of breast cancer that is painful from the start is a grave small beast known as Inflammatory breast cancer. All women’s breasts are somewhat lumpy and nodular to the touch. This is why monthly breast self examination after age twenty is recommended. The woman becomes familiar with the normal look and feel of her breasts, and any changes become at once obvious ( lumps, orange peel skin, thickening etc.) Mine felt like a large kidney bean that was not too mobile. Cancer ordinarily anchors itself to the blood stream somewhere. Hair loss is not a symptom of breast cancer. It ‘s a side look of chemotherapy. Tremors are not a sign of breast cancer either.
Breast cancer in women below thirty is rare. 1% of all cases in the US occur in women below thirty. I was 43 and considered young for breast cancer.
A excellent allusion is found here.
Risk Factors
When you’re told that you have breast cancer, it’s natural to wonder what may have caused the disease. But no one knows the exact causes of breast cancer. Doctors seldom know why one woman develops breast cancer and another doesn’t.
Doctors do know that bumping, bruising, or touching the breast does not produce cancer. And breast cancer is not contagious. You can’t catch it from another person.
Doctors also know that women with certain risk factors are more likely than others to develop breast cancer. A risk factor is something that may increase the opportunity of being paid a disease.
Some risk factors (such as drinking alcohol) can be avoided. But most risk factors (such as having a family history of breast cancer) can’t be avoided.
Studies have found the following risk factors for breast cancer:
* Age: The opportunity of being paid breast cancer increases as you get older. Most women are over 60 years ancient when they are diagnosed.
* Personal health history: Having breast cancer in one breast increases your risk of being paid cancer in your other breast. Also, having certain types of abnormal breast cells (atypical hyperplasia, lobular carcinoma in situ [LCIS], or ductal carcinoma in situ [DCIS]) increases the risk of invasive breast cancer. These conditions are found with a breast biopsy.
* Family health history: Your risk of breast cancer is higher if your mother, father, sister, or daughter had breast cancer. The risk is even higher if your family member had breast cancer before age 50. Having other relatives (in either your mother’s or father’s family) with breast cancer or ovarian cancer may also increase your risk.
* Certain genome changes: Changes in certain genes, such as BRCA1 or BRCA2, substantially increase the risk of breast cancer. Tests can sometimes show the incidence of these rare, specific gene changes in families with many women who have had breast cancer, and health care providers may suggest ways to try to reduce the risk of breast cancer or to improve the detection of this disease in women who have these genetic changes.
Also, researchers have found specific regions on certain chromosomes that are linked to the risk of breast cancer. If a woman has a genetic change in one or more of these regions, the risk of breast cancer may be vaguely increased. The risk increases with the digit of genetic changes that are found. Although these genetic changes are more common among women than BRCA1 or BRCA2, the risk of breast cancer is far lower.
* Radiation therapy to the chest: Women who had radiation therapy to the chest (including the breasts) before age 30 are at an increased risk of breast cancer. This includes women treated with radiation for Hodgkin lymphoma. Studies show that the younger a woman was when she received radiation treatment, the higher her risk of breast cancer later in life.
* Reproductive and menstrual history:
o The older a woman is when she has her initially child, the greater her opportunity of breast cancer.
o Women who by no means had children are at an increased risk of breast cancer.
o Women who had their initially menstrual period before age 12 are at an increased risk of breast cancer.
o Women who went through menopause after age 55 are at an increased risk of breast cancer.
o Women who take menopausal hormone therapy for many years have an increased risk of breast cancer.
* Race: In the United States, breast cancer is diagnosed more often in colorless women than in African American/black, Hispanic/Latina, Asian/Pacific Islander, or American Indian/Alaska Native women.
* Breast density: Breasts appear on a mammogram (breast x-ray) as having areas of dense and full of stout (not dense) tissue. Women whose mammograms show a larger area of dense tissue than the mammograms of women of the same age are at increased risk of breast cancer.
* History of taking DES: DES was given
Firstly, your Q&A shows that you’re 17. As such, your chances of breast cancer are as close to zero as makes nearly no difference.
There is no need for you to be checking your breasts, and doing so may worry you unnecessarily. The American Cancer Society and other cancer organisations recommend that women start breast self examination at no younger than 20, if then. Before that it’s pointless; firstly because there are so many hormonal changes that there is no ‘normal’ – and self examination is about a woman knowing what’s normal for her and reporting any changes. And secondly because the opportunity of breast cancer is nearly nil.
Breast cancer is nearly unheard of in below 25s (let alone young adulthood) and fewer than 0.1% of all those diagnosed are below 30. Only 5% are below 40 and most (80%) are over 50.
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer I was classed as ‘young’ and allocated to the breast care nurse whose unique interest was ‘breast cancer in younger women’; I was 50.
Most breast lumps, even in women over 50, aren’t cancerous. At your age any changes you notice in your breasts are nearly certainly normal hormonal development.
No, hair loss and tremors are by no means symptoms of breast cancer.