Study: Women early risers may have lower breast cancer risk

Most women who get breast cancer develop these tumors after age 50, and they may be more prone to these tumors with a family history, certain genetic mutations, dense breast tissue, early puberty or late menopause, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While women can't control any of those risk factors, there are other risk factors related to lifestyle that can be altered, according to the CDC. These include being physically inactive, overweight, drinking alcohol, having a first pregnancy after age 30, not breastfeeding, and taking some forms of hormonal birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy for menopause symptoms.

Sleep might also increase the risk, along with smoking, exposure to certain chemicals, and hormone changes caused by night shift work, according to the CDC. The current analysis wasn't a controlled experiment designed to prove that specific sleep habits might directly cause breast cancer.

It's also not clear from the study whether women's preferred early or late wake-up time (confirmed) with their work hours, said Dr. Eva Schernhammer, author of an accompanying editorial and a researcher at the Medical University of Vienna and Harvard Medical School in Boston. Being an early riser might make women's wake up time better match a typical 9 to 5 workday that is common for many jobs.

"The majority of women are neither morning or evening types, but somewhere in between on that spectrum, hence, any potential risks are likely to affect a relatively small proportion of women," Schernhammer said by email. "However, sleep and work timing might be more important than previously thought."

Source: news18.com

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