Studies show that Black women are at a higher risk for developing breast cancer in general and at younger ages than other ethnicities. Worse yet, they tend to have aggressive forms of the disease that need to be treated quickly. One of the options for treating breast cancer is hormone therapy in which estrogen inhibitors are used to suppress the body’s production of estrogen and progesterone. This treatment is effective because ⅔ of breast cancers are receptive to hormones that encourage the growth of the cancerous tumors. As a result, depriving them of estrogen and progesterone can help to shrink tumors and prevent them from growing back if you’ve had surgery to remove the cancerous cells. However, the speed of treatment can mean that your doctor doesn’t discuss the side effects of hormone therapy as thoroughly as they should.
In this video about hormone suppression, Dr. Alexea Gaffney-Adams discusses how the therapy affected her.
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