Archive for the 'Obesity' Category

Many women don’t know that obesity increases their risk of several types of cancer, according to a new survey.

Women’s lack of knowledge about excess weight and the most common gynecologic malignancy, endometrial cancer, is particularly worrying, Dr. Pamela T. Soliman of M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and her colleagues say.

“We need to be doing a better job of educating our patients,” Soliman said.

Women who were overweight were four times more likely to develop cancer of the uterine lining, Soliman and her team note in their report, while obesity boosts the risk by six-fold.

Obese women also are at greater risk of breast and colon cancer. Excess weight also increases mortality from many cancers, with the strongest association seen for endometrial cancer; heavy women are 6.25 times more likely to die from the disease.

To investigate awareness of the obesity-cancer link, Soliman and her colleagues surveyed 1,545 women, 28 percent of whom were normal weight.

Another 24 percent were overweight, while 45 percent were obese. Ninety-one percent of the study participants had health insurance.

Read more at MSNBC

A higher body mass index (BMI) is associated with lower survival rates in women with breast cancer, according to a report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

BMI is the ratio of weight to height, which is often used to see if a patient’s weight is outside normal parameters.

“We have found strong evidence that high BMI and a recent pregnancy are associated with a poorer prognosis after a diagnosis of breast cancer,” Dr. Gillian C. Barnett told Reuters Health. “Our study suggests that advice on weight loss should be given to all obese patients with breast cancer.”

Dr. Barnett from Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, UK and colleagues investigated the impact of established risk factors for incident breast cancer on overall survival after a diagnosis of breast cancer, using data from the Studies of Epidemiology and Risk Factors in Cancer Heredity.

Women with the highest BMIs were 52 percent more likely to die than women with the lowest BMIs, the investigators report.

“The Women’s Interventional Nutritional Study reported improved event-free survival in women randomly assigned to a reduced fat diet (associated with weight loss),” Barnett pointed out. “Further definitive clinical weight loss intervention trials in breast cancer populations are required to further clarify the relationship between breast cancer mortality and BMI.”

An international team of researchers reported that obese women who carry most of their extra weight around the stomach are 70 percent more likely to develop pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer death worldwide. It accounts for only about 2 percent of the cancers diagnosed each year but the first-year survival rate is less than 5 percent, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Until now, smoking and chronic pancreatitis were the most well established risk factors for the disease in men and women, with much of the evidence also pointing to a stronger obesity link for men.

The findings suggest that the link between obesity and pancreatic cancer is as strong in women as in men, Juhua Luo of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and colleagues reported in the British Journal of Cancer.

“We found that the risk of developing pancreatic cancer was significantly raised in obese postmenopausal women who carry most of their excess weight around the stomach,” she said in a statement.

“Obesity is a growing and largely preventable problem, so it’s important that women are aware of this major increase in risk.”

Obesity or too much body fat is a very serious problem that affects woman’s health at every stage of her life.

There are more than 30 effects of obesity that a woman can affect with. In US, obesity is the second largest cause which leads to death.

Various effects of obesity on your health:

Breast cancer:

According to the research, women who gain weight after the age of 18 are more likely to get breast cancer after menopause.

Obese women with breast cancer tend to fare worse than thin women. Obesity leads to higher estrogen levels, which again linked to breast cancer.

Study found that obese women with BMI of 30 or greater had estrogen concentrations between 60% and 219% greater when compared to thin women. The risk of breast cancer also increases at a rate of 18% for an increase of 5 points in your BMI.

Endometrial cancer:

Endometrial cancer is the fourth most leading cancer in US women. 95% of endometrial cancers come in women of age 40 or more.

Birth defects:

Obesity causes a great incidence of reproductive related disorders, breast cancer, cervical cancer, uterus cancer and ovarian cancer, infertility and reproductive endocrinologic problems.

Obesity lowers the chances of fertility. It even lowers the chances of successfully conceiving a child by using in vitro fertilization.

Even though your embryos are fertilized in a laboratory, you are more likely to suffer from fertility problems when the embryo is implanted in your womb.

Obese women have difficulty in becoming pregnant naturally. Even if you use the fertility techniques, you are less likely to become pregnant. If you want to seek any fertility treatment, your BMI should be in natural range.

According to the researchers, an obese woman with BMI more than 35 has lower success rates when compared with overweight, normal and underweight woman. For obese women, it is very difficult to implant the embryo successfully.

Effects of obesity on fertility and pregnancy:

• Preeclampsia is a problem associated with increased blood pressure during your pregnancy. This is four to five times more likely to occur in an obese pregnant woman.
• Stillbirths are also two to three times more likely to occur in an obese pregnant woman.