How Gaining Weight NOW Can Impact Your Breast Cancer Risk LATER in Life

How Gaining Weight NOW Can Impact Your Breast Cancer Risk LATER in Life

If you've gone up a skirt size (or three), you need to read this.

Carrying extra body weight is a known risk factor for breast cancer. But a new study suggests that where that extra weight is accumulated might be even more important than the number on the scale. U.K. researchers writing in The British Medical Journal found that the most important factor boosting a woman's postmenopausal breast cancer odds is if (and how much) her skirt size had gone up since she was in her 20s.

Previous research has shown a link between waist circumference and breast cancer while another recent study found that putting on pounds in middle age was a risk factor. But this new research was the first to look at specific, incremental weight gain around your midsection and how that relates to breast cancer after menopause.

They enrolled about 93,000 women—all were at least 50, and none had been diagnosed with breast cancer. They asked the women about their skirt size when they were 25, then asked them about their health and skirt size for the next five years. After the study ended, researchers determined that the participants’ risk of the disease surged 77 percent if skirt size increased two sizes every 10 years until menopause. Women who went up one skirt size every decade in that same time span had a 33 percent higher likelihood of developing breast cancer.

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Using skirt size as a stand-in, the researchers found that an uptick in waist circumference was a better indicator of breast cancer risk than BMI alone. And though it was only an observational study which doesn’t prove that belly fat changes cause breast cancer, it does point to a striking correlation—especially in light of other studies showing that abdominal fat can be associated with even greater health risks, regardless of BMI.

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Still, the study authors stress that skirt sizes have changed a lot over the years thanks to vanity sizing (you know, the way your were an 8 in high school but are now mysteriously a 4), and that could have skewed the numbers. Until more research reveals a stronger link, don’t panic every time you hit the dressing room to try on a new mini. Instead, get schooled on proven breast cancer risk factors and strategies that lower your risk.

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