Can a healthy diet help prevent breast cancer?

A nutritious, low-fat diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables can help reduce the risk of developing breast cancer. A high-fat diet increases the risk because fat triggers estrogen production that can fuel tumor growth.

About 1 out of every 7 women will get breast cancer over a 90-year life span.

Being female and being older are the greatest risk factors for breast cancer.

Can physical activity reduce the risk of breast cancer?

Exercise pumps up the immune system and lowers estrogen levels. With as little as four hours of exercise per week, a woman can begin to lower her risk of breast cancer.

Typically, breast cancer in its early stages causes no pain. Although that is an advantage, it can be a disadvantage as well. It stands to reason that many more women would be tested for the disease, if they felt pain. Early diagnosis means a much higher chance of a cure.

Having a family history of breast cancer also increases risk. The more members of the immediate family, or first-degree relatives, with breast cancer, the higher the risk. They younger a first-degree relative developed cancer also indicates a higher risk. First-degree relatives include mothers, sisters, daughters, fathers, brothers and sons.

Finding breast cancer early and getting effective treatment can lower the risk of dying from breast cancer. Screening tests can find cancer early, when it's most treatable.

Approximately five to ten percent of breast cancers in the U.S. are due to inherited mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 breast cancer genes (less than 1 percent of the general population).

Recent studies have shown that exercise decreases the risk of breast cancer and lack of exercise has been associated with increased risk.

According to the National Health Interview Survey, mammography rates in women 40 and older in the U.S. decreased from 70.1 percent in 2000 to 66.5 percent in 2005

For all races, the five-year relative survival rate for women with localized breast cancer (cancer that has not spread to lymph nodes or other locations outside the breast) in the U.S. is 98 percent.

In the U.S., breast cancer death rates have steadily decreased since 1990.