A study of 439 women aged between 50 and 75 provided new evidence showing that losing excessive body-fat through diet and exercise may decrease the levels of hormones estrogen and testosterone.
According to the findings appeared in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the hormones dropped by between 10 and 20 percent among overweight or obese women who lost weight.
The benefits of losing weight applied to those breast cancers that are estrogen receptive which include about 70 percent of all cases, the report highlighted.
Even if an overweight woman lost only 5 percent of her body weight, she would be between a quarter and a half less likely to develop the most common form of breast cancer, said Lead author Anne McTiernan of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle.
“The biggest effect was through diet plus exercise, exercise by itself didn’t produce much of a change in weight or estrogen,” she emphasized.
“I recommend women both diet and exercise, because in the long run that should help keep weight down and therefore keep estrogens down.”
While many studies have linked obesity to breast cancer, the new trail is the first showing that how weight loss measures can drop the risk.
But, the researcher note that losing weight may just work as a safe additional help and it cannot replace other lifestyle measures necessary for lowering the breast cancer risk.