Breast Cancer Prevention Pills : Not All Good
There are apparently now two drugs that are used as preventive measures for women who are at exceptionally high risk of getting breast cancer to take. They basically are prescribed if, through screening, you have shown a big predisposition toward getting breast cancer by expressing some of the genes that have been linked to a high likelihood of developing the disease.
Women who are not identified as being at a high risk are not supposed to take these drugs. Why? Because for all the good they may do in preventing breast cancer from happening, they also, like every other drug on the face of the planet, come with side effects. The older I get, the more I notice that there are tradeoffs for almost everything.
Even supplements and vitamins. If you have too much of a vitamin yada yada it can do xyz to your body and stuff like that, I think you catch my drift. But overall, I supposed that the true benefit needs to be weighed and the annoying of even health threatening side effects really have to be put in perspective I suppose, in a sort of order of importance to the individual.
The two drugs that may be used as a preventive breast cancer drug before breast cancer even occurs are the current breast cancer “wonder drug” Tomoxifen, and the other one is Evista. Evista is actually used a lot to help treat and prevent osteoporosis in women, and now it has also been identified as a good preventive medicine for breast cancer as well.
It has also been identified as safer than Tamoxifen, making it the potentially superior choice – unless of course new research proves this wrong, and it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. Tamoxifen, while cutting the chances of developing breast cancer almost in half, also is correlated to a higher risk of uterine cancer, which is also obviously a very serious and life threatening disease and therefore makes this a serious consideration.
Tamoxifen’s primary effect is that it helps to lower the estrogen levels in the body, or at least dull their effect as it applies to breast cancer as I understand it. If you want to know more about the drug, I suggest you look it up on WebMD or some other similar trusted site and see how it works.
