With every October comes the predictable onslaught of pink everything: bracelets, perfume, athleisure, tacky T-shirts, and even $1,750 pumps, all in the name of breast cancer awareness and fundraising. And while broadcasting our support of the one in eight women who will face breast cancer in their lifetimes and the 2,620 new cases of invasive breast cancer that are projected to be diagnosed in men this year is important, we’ve become inured to the narrative that breast cancer is a disease that only affects women in middle age and beyond. The reality is that six percent of breast cancer patients who were diagnosed in 2019 were under 40, and nearly 12,000 women younger than 40 were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in 2019, according to the latest data from the American Cancer Society.

That reality is at odds with what we’ve been taught about breast cancer and what the CDC recommends: while most women are told to conduct breast self-exams from puberty, people don’t need to even start talking with their doctor about getting mammograms until they are 40, and it’s not until age 50 that you need to get them every two years. It’s believed that you’re more likely to have breast cancer if you have a close family history — in fact, breast cancer screening should begin at 25 only if you have the genetic mutation of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, according to the Cleveland Clinic, or 10 years earlier than when the first affected relative in your family was diagnosed.

While all this may be true, it ignores the painful reality that more than 250,000 people living with breast cancer in the US today were diagnosed before age 40, according to Young Survival Coalition. A 2016 article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that women age 40 or younger were 30 percent more likely to die from breast cancer compared to women who were diagnosed between the ages of 51 to 60, and breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women under 40. The incidence of metastatic breast cancer — cancer that has spread to other areas of the body (brain, liver, or bones, for example), resulting in a lower survival rate — is rising in that population. About 800 women younger than 40 are diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer each year compared to about 250 per year in 1976.

Read the full article: You’re Not Too Young to Think About Breast Cancer — 6% of Diagnoses Are Under 40