Breast reduction for men is the fastest growing part of the cosmetic surgery industry for the second year running, plastic surgeons have said.

The number of such operation rose from 323 in 2008 to 581 last year – an 80% increase – the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons said.

Pressure created by men’s magazines was partly to blame, one surgeon said.

Cosmetic surgery appears to be defying the recession, with an overall increase in the number of procedures.

Nine out of 10 cosmetic procedures carried out by members of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (Baaps) in 2009 were performed on women, with breast enlargement the most popular operation.

But the most dramatic rises were seen in the world of male surgery – an overall increase of more than a fifth over the year.

Surgeons carried out 581 breast reductions, compared to 323 the previous year.

The top two operations for men were rhinoplasty – or “nose-job”, and blepharoplasty – surgery on the skin around the eyes.

Consultant plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover said that while the problem of so-called “man-boobs” – or “gynaecomastia”, in official language, was not a new one, it had been thrust into prominence by media coverage.

He said: “Many men are feeling the pressure from men’s magazines that weren’t even being published five or six years ago.

“In addition, they are just realising that they can get something done about it.”

Lifestyle not scalpel

However, he said that in many cases, surgery could be avoided by simple changes to lifestyle.

“Quite a few cases are caused by obesity, and we often say to men to look at their lifestyles before thinking about the scalpel.”

A total of more than 36,000 surgical procedures were carried out by Baaps members, a 6.7% increase over last year. Women had 5.4% more procedures than in 2008.

Baaps president Nigel Mercer said: “The public’s interest in aesthetic surgery appears to remain strong and indeed growing quite considerably among UK males despite the the economic downturn.”

An April 2009 study by Jessica Dolle et al. of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center examining the relationship between oral contraceptives (OCs) and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) in women under age 45 contained an admission from U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) researcher Louise Brinton and her colleagues (including Janet Daling) that abortion raises breast cancer risk by 40%. [1]

Additionally, Dolle’s team showed that women who start OCs before age 18 multiply their risk of TNBC by 3.7 times and recent users of OCs within the last one to five years multiply their risk by 4.2 times. TNBC is an aggressive form of breast cancer associated with high mortality.

“Although the study was published nine months ago,” observed Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, “the NCI, the American Cancer Society, Susan G. Komen for the Cure and other cancer fundraising businesses have made no efforts to reduce breast cancer rates by issuing nationwide warnings to women.”

Brinton was the chief organizer of the 2003 NCI workshop on the abortion-breast cancer link, which falsely assured women that the non-existence of the link was “well established.” [2]

Dolle’s team reported in Table 1 a statistically significant 40% risk increase for women who have had abortions. They listed abortion among “known and suspected risk factors.”

Brinton and Daling had previously studied this population from the Seattle-Puget Sound area in the 1990s and reported risk increases between 20% and 50% among women with abortions. [3,4] In the 2009 study, they and their co-authors wrote that their findings concerning induced abortion, OC use and certain other risk factors, “were consistent with the effects observed in previous studies on younger women.”

“Obviously, more women will die of breast cancer if the NCI fails in its duty to warn about the risks of OCs and abortion and if government funds are used to pay for both as a part of any healthcare bill,” said Mrs. Malec.

A brief analysis of the study (click here) , Dolle et al. 2009, was provided by Dr. Joel Brind, professor of biology and endocrinology and deputy chair for biology at Baruch College, City University of New York.

Last year, studies from Turkey and China also reported statistically significant risk increases for women who had abortions. [5,6]

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is an international women’s organization founded to protect the health and save the lives of women by educating and providing information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer.

Ewertz and colleagues examined the influence of obesity on the risk of breast cancer recurrence and mortality in relation to adjuvant treatment. She presented study results at the CTRC-AACR Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 9-13.

Using the Danish Breast Cancer Cooperative Group database, they evaluated health information — such as status at diagnosis, tumor size, malignancy grade, number of lymph nodes removed, estrogen receptor status, treatment regimen, etc. — from almost 54,000 women. Ewertz and colleagues were able to calculate BMI for 35 percent of the women, whose information about height and weight was available. A healthy, normal BMI score is between 20 and 25; a score below the normal range indicates underweight and a score above indicates overweight.

After 30 years of follow-up (from 1977 through 2006), the researchers found that women with higher BMIs were older and had more advanced disease at diagnosis compared with those who had a BMI within the normal range. The risk of distant metastases increased the higher the BMI. However, BMI played no role in loco-regional recurrence.

Women with a high BMI had an increased risk of dying from breast cancer, a finding that remained constant over the study period. Further, adjuvant treatment seemed to lose its effect more rapidly in obese patients, according to Ewertz.

“More research is needed into the mechanisms behind the poorer response to adjuvant treatment among obese women with breast cancer,” she said.

Researchers with the University of Rochester Medical Center followed 166 women undergoing treatment for breast cancer and found that nearly 70 percent had low levels of vitamin D in their blood. The insufficient levels could contribute to decreased bone mass and increased risk of bone fractures.

“Vitamin D is essential to maintaining bone health, and women with breast cancer have accelerated bone loss due to the nature of hormone therapy and chemotherapy. It’s important for women and their doctors to work together to boost their vitamin D intake,” said Dr. Luke Peppone from Rochester’s James P. Wilmot Cancer Center.

Previous studies have shown that nearly half of all men and women are deficient in the nutrient.

Breast milk delivered in the morning gives infants a pick-me-up because it contains natural stimulants.

But the night-time version will help babies sleep thanks to calming chemical compounds, a report claims.

This means mums who express milk for feeding from a bottle should make sure it is given to baby at the same time it came from the breast – otherwise it could disrupt sleeping patterns. The report in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience might explain why some babies sleep or become active at odd times of day or night when working mothers express milk for use later in the day.

They could be giving morning milk in the evening and vice versa.

Spanish researchers discovered the chemical make-up of breast milk changes across a 24-hour period.

A woman’s body adapts the amount it produces of nucleotides – compounds used to regulate a baby’s sleep or promote activity-Breast milk has three different nucleotides – adenosine, guanosine and uridine – and the combination between them decides whether a baby is restless or sleepy or normally active.

The scientists from the University of Extremadura looked at samples of breast milk taken at eight different points of the day from a group of new mothers.

The nucleotide concentrations during the night were at their most sleep-inducing but less so during the day.

Researcher Cristina Sanchez said ‘You wouldn’t give anyone a coffee at night, and the same is true of milk.

‘It has day-specific ingredients that stimulate-activity in the infant, and other nighttime components that help the baby to rest.

‘It is a mistake for the mother to express the milk at a certain time and then store it and feed it to the baby at a different time.’

NHS experts say breastfeeding gives babies all the nutrients they need for the first six months of life.

Research published earlier this year found women who breastfeed are less likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol, and heart disease.

Other studies have shown breastfeeding helps protect mothers against ovarian and breast cancer, and osteoporosis in later life.

They said metformin appeared to target breast cancer stem cells — a kind of master cancer cell that resists conventional treatment and may be the source of many tumors that grow back.

“What’s exciting here is we now have something that is mechanistically a different kind of killer of cancer that can synergize with chemotherapy,” Kevin Struhl of Harvard Medical School, whose study appears in the journal Cancer Research, said in a telephone briefing.

Many teams have been looking for ways to destroy the master cancer cells in the hope of making cancer easier to cure.

Last month, a team at the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that a chemical called salinomycin could kill breast cancer stem cells.

What is different with his study, Struhl said, is that metformin is a widely used drug with a long safety track record. “There are tens of millions of people who take this drug,” he said.

“Although our studies are limited to mice and cells, metformin has a history of anti-cancer effects,” he said.

Metformin has already been shown to reduce the risk of some cancers, including pancreatic and breast cancer, in large studies of people with diabetes.

Struhl said metformin’s affect on cancer stem cells appeared to be separate from its ability to help the body use insulin and lower blood sugar — which also can improve breast cancer survival.

His team studied metformin and the cancer drug doxorubicin in lab dishes and found they killed both human cancer stem cells and non-stem cancer cells.

Mice that had tumors and got metformin and chemotherapy were less likely to have tumors grow back two months after treatment compared with mice that got chemotherapy alone.

“When we had both drugs together, we lost the tumors faster, but more importantly, there was no relapse,” Struhl said.

He said with metformin, it may be possible to reduce the chemotherapy dose and still get the same benefit.

That will need to be studied in people and a study is getting under way. Dr. Jennifer Ligibel, at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard, is organizing a large trial with colleagues in Canada to study metformin in women with early stage breast cancer.

Researchers Say Exercise and Diet May Prevent Some Cases of Breast Cancer

Sept. 3, 2009 — More than 70,000 breast cancer cases a year in the U.S., or 40% of all cases, could be prevented with lifestyle measures like maintaining a healthy weight, eating well, exercising, and limiting alcohol consumption, a new analysis shows.

The joint project from the nonprofit research groups American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund represents the largest review ever of the research examining lifestyle and breast cancer.

Researchers analyzed nearly 1,000 studies, including 81 conducted since the data were last examined in 2007.

“It is now very clear that lifestyle is a strong modifiable risk factor for breast cancer, but I don’t think women have really gotten the message,” says Cancer Institute of New Jersey epidemiology professor Elisa Bandera, MD, PhD, who helped write the report.

“Women tend to overestimate the role of genetics in breast cancer and underestimate lifestyle,” Bandera tells WebMD. “I don’t know how many times I’ve heard a patient say, ‘I can’t have breast cancer. Nobody in my family has it.’ Women are very concerned about breast cancer, and they need to know they can lower their risk with lifestyle.”

Lose Weight to Lower Risk of Breast Cancer

Perhaps the biggest single thing a woman can do to lower her risk, especially after menopause, is maintain a healthy weight.

Obesity is now widely recognized as the most important modifiable risk factor for breast cancer among postmenopausal women, and it also increases a postmenopausal woman’s chance of dying from the disease once she has it.

The National Cancer Institute estimates that as many as 18,000 deaths from breast cancer each year in the U.S. could be prevented in women over age 50 by maintaining a healthy weight throughout adulthood.

About three out of four breast cancers in this age group are fueled by the hormone estrogen, which is also produced in fat tissue. Estrogen levels in overweight, postmenopausal women are 50% to 100% higher than among lean women, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Breast cancers also tend to be detected later in overweight women, mainly because tumors are harder to detect with mammography.

The joint report recommends that women stay as lean as possible without being underweight to lower their breast cancer risk.

Other recommendations include:

• Get moving: Women should engage in physical activity for at least 30 minutes a day, every day. According to the National Cancer Institute, women can reduce their risk of dying from breast cancer by 25% if they remain physically active.
• Limit alcohol: Women who drink alcohol should limit their consumption to no more than one drink a day.
• Breastfeed: New mothers should breastfeed their infants exclusively for up to six months and then add other liquids and foods. There is convincing evidence that breastfeeding lowers breast cancer risk.
• Eat healthy foods: The report recommends avoiding junk foods, limiting red meat and salt, and making fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains the mainstays of a healthy diet.

Plant-Based Diet

Nutritionist Colleen Doyle, RD, of the American Cancer Society, tells WebMD that although no single food, food group, or nutrient has been shown to lower breast cancer risk, it is clear that eating a healthy, mostly plant-based diet is protective.

A red meat and processed meat-heavy diet is now known to increase the risk for colorectal cancer, and there is some suggestion that these foods increase breast cancer risk as well.

Doyle says the research attempting to target the role of single foods, food group, or nutrient in breast cancer has largely been a bust.

“Years ago, we recommended limiting all fats and that evolved into limiting saturated fats,” she says. “Now we have moved away from specific food-based recommendations to focusing on an overall dietary pattern stressing a wide variety of mostly plant-based foods.”

The American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) also recommends a mostly plant-based diet to lower cancer risk. To promote the idea, the group has developed what it calls the “new American plate” to replace the more traditional meal that has meat as its main component and refined starches as a mainstay.

AICR nutritionist Alice Bender, RD, tells WebMD that at least two-thirds of the “new” plate should be plant based, including vegetables, fruits, whole grains, or beans; no more than one-third of any meal should come from animal protein.

“This is an easy way to visualize what a healthy diet should look like,” she says. “It’s really pretty simple.”

SOURCES: American Institute for Cancer Research,

The incidence of pregnancy-associated breast cancer rose from 16 in every 100,000 deliveries to 37.4 per 100,000 deliveries between 1963 and 2002, a study has found.

Breast cancer was underdiagnosed in pregnant and breastfeeding women because they and their doctors assumed breast firmness or lumps were a normal part of childbearing, said the chief executive of the National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre, Helen Zorbas.

She urged health professionals to assess all women the same way, regardless of pregnancy. ”While most breast changes won’t be cancer, early detection is vital for improving survival.”

Although pregnancy does not cause breast cancer, hormonal changes can accelerate its growth and tumours in pregnant women are often larger and more advanced by the time they are detected than those in women who are not pregnant.

The disease poses a dilemma for patients and their doctors. Pregnant women can have surgery but not radiotherapy. And chemotherapy is allowed only after the first trimester.

In 2004 Colleen Thompson was having chemotherapy for breast cancer when she discovered she was seven weeks pregnant with her third daughter, Polly.

A lump in her breast had been discovered when she was breastfeeding her second daughter, Demi, then nine months, and after a mastectomy she took a course of anti-cancer drugs. ”It was a big shock. I didn’t think I could fall pregnant while I was having chemo,” Mrs Thompson, now 38, said yesterday.

”My doctor told me that continuing the pregnancy was risking my life as well as the baby’s but I couldn’t come to terms with a termination, so I went ahead with the baby.” She stopped all treatment and, despite being exposed to the toxic drugs as a foetus, Polly, was born healthy.

Mrs Thompson’s mother died of breast cancer at 44 and she and her three sisters and one brother have tested positive to the hereditary BRCA1 gene, which greatly increases the risk. Her sister Julie Knights was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999 when she was five months pregnant, aged 37. She, too, had a mastectomy and chemotherapy and gave birth to Jed, now nine.

The study, published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, reviewed more than 4.1 million deliveries in Sweden between 1963 and 2002. The Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found the largest proportion of pregnancy-related breast cancers was among 25 to 29-year-olds. But because the breast cancer risk rose with age and the average age of mothers had increased to about 30, its incidence during pregnancy was likely to increase, the institute said.