An interesting research study has been completed and published in the British Cancer Journal that I felt was worth sharing with you. Women who have lived through two or more harmful or traumatic events in their lives have a 62 percent higher risk of getting breast cancer. Wow.

The study enrolled 622 women, 255 of whom were breast-cancer survivors and 367 who were healthy women who had never had breast cancer. The age range for all participants was between 25 and 45. Dr. Ronit Peled, one of the authors, was quoted as saying, "The relationship between happiness and health should be examined in future studies and relevant preventative initiatives should be developed." How true!

I strongly agree with Dr. Peled because we simply don't know yet how the events in our lives, both good and bad, can be internalized and affect our immune systems later on. Therefore, I'm excited to see researchers getting interested in this, since such studies might provide a bit more insight into why breast cancer cases sometimes tend to cluster in certain communities. Such studies will help us to more clearly understand if contributing causes are possibly associated with the environment or with personal trauma.