This Month We'll Be Making Breast Cancer Something You Simply Can't Ignore

Every year, 50,000 women in the UK are diagnosed with breast cancer. That's 50,000 mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters and friends. To highlight the importance of breast cancer awareness, The Huffington Post UK is running a month-long project throughout October, showcasing a series of features and videos that offer a new take on a disease which has plagued the human race for years and years. A disease which has taken countless lives, and will continue to do so, until we find a cure.
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Every year, 50,000 women in the UK are diagnosed with breast cancer. That's 50,000 mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters and friends.

It's a lot of women, which is why it surprised me greatly to learn that almost half of women in the UK do not check their breasts regularly, or have never checked them at all.

Needless to say, the number of men who check theirs is also likely to be very low.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK and spotting the symptoms early means a better chance of survival.

Raising awareness of it, then, is surely also a matter of life and death.

To highlight the importance of breast cancer awareness, The Huffington Post UK is running a month-long project throughout October, showcasing a series of features and videos that offer a new take on a disease which has plagued the human race for years and years. A disease which has taken countless lives, and will continue to do so, until we find a cure.

We visited the Medical Detection Dogs centre to check out the pioneering work they do training dogs to sniff out cancer with a 93% success rate.

We have empowering stories from men who have fought - or are still fighting - breast cancer, who talk frankly about how treatment affected their body image.

We also have a round-up of beauty products that give the most money to breast cancer charities, a Facebook live with Look Good Feel Better, who help women with cancer adapt their beauty regimes, and an insightful series about how to reclaim your life post-diagnosis in regards to things like fitness, sex and relationships, diet and wellbeing.

Bloggers will also be sharing their valuable, and often heartbreaking, firsthand accounts of the disease - from the husband who lost his wife to secondary breast cancer and set up a charity as her legacy, to the woman who launched her own mastectomy underwear line.

By putting these incredible charities, people and stories out there, we hope to raise awareness to such a level that you simply can't ignore it.

We want to live in a world where 100% of men and women check their breasts.

And if reading our coverage helps one person detect their cancer sooner, our work here is done.

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