1 in 70 women suffer from ovarian cancer at some point in their lives, and many women who have not been diagnosed with the disease want to know what their loved ones can do to reduce the risk of getting the disease. The good news is that there are important changes you can make in your life to reduce your ovarian cancer risk. We spoke to Dr. Jonathon Berek, Director of Stanford Women’s Cancer Center, about some of these changes.
Risk Factors for Ovarian Cancer
Read MoreAccording to Dr. Berek, there are two primary ways to reduce your risk of developing ovarian cancer:
- Having children – Having children, particularly two or more children, can significantly reduce your risk of ovarian cancer. More specifically, one study out of Oxford University found that women with one child had about a 20% reduced risk compared to women without children. After that, the chance of contracting the disease decreased a further 8% for each additional child after the first.
- Oral contraceptives – Sustained birth control, particularly birth control pills, has been shown to reduce your risk of developing ovarian cancer. This effect also, as shown recently, extends to women with fatal disease. “A recent study, conducted by the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, focused on the most aggressive forms of ovarian cancer and found that women with any history of taking birth control pills had a 46% lower risk of dying of ovarian cancer within 12 months of an ovarian cancer diagnosis. It also found that for every five years of pill use, women had a 32% less chance of developing one of the more deadly forms of ovarian cancer.
Linking the two together, Berek says that women who have taken oral contraceptives for more than five years and have had two children can reduce their risk of ovarian cancer by 70%.
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