The measurement was simple for this research: a woman's waistline. A recent study has found that the bigger women get around their waist as they age, the greater was the risk for breast cancer.

This was the conclusion of a team of researchers in the United Kingdom led by Evangelia-Ourania Fourkala, Ph.D. of the Department of Women's Cancer, Institute for Women's Health, University College London. They examined a group of 92,000 women over age 50 from 2005-10.

The researchers found that waist size is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, and this was independent of body mass index. An increase in skirt size every 10 years for woman between the ages of 25 and postmenopausal age was associated with a 33 percent increase in postmenopausal risk of breast cancer.

Obesity has long been known to be associated with an increased risk for breast cancer. In 2007, about 50,500 (7 percent) new cases of cancer in U.S. women were due to obesity.

The deposition of fat around the middle as an increased risk for cancers has been recognized for quite some time. That risk becomes easy to understand when identified as a change to a larger waist size.

Change in weight is one factor in breast cancer risk and may be part of a complex interaction of lifestyle, eating habits and weight gain.

One of the largest studies of sleep behavior in a diverse, healthy sample of adults found that restrictions on sleep resulted in weight gain. In a laboratory setting, 200 adults were chronically sleep-restricted with late bedtimes, and they became more susceptible to greater caloric intake and consuming these calories late at night.

The implications of sleep patterns on breast cancer risk are great.

Johnni Hansen, Ph.D., from the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology, Danish Cancer Society and colleagues compared the shift work of Danish nurses. They found that night-shift work may increase the risk of breast cancer, and those working the most schedule-disrupted shifts had the greatest risk.

How we gain weight and where we gain weight can impact risk for serious disease. Knowing that the extra tug of a zipper on a too-tight skirt is a warning sign for breast cancer may be the graphic warning to take action.