Being a longtime small town dweller, it is my personal belief that just driving through a large city can be dangerous to your health. There is the obvious risk that goes with driving along with a bazillion other cars, but just the stress and anxiety that goes with having to work your life around the craziness has to take a toll.

1-2 hour commutes with nothing but stop and go traffic. People cutting you off, flipping you off, and honking their horn because they believe it makes a difference. The extra hours added to your workday. The stress of figuring out what restaurant to eat at.

And now, a study from the UK that seems to indicate that women in big cities have denser breasts. I still haven’t wrapped my mind around what that means or how that could be true or relevant, but the one fact that did make sense is that the big city women are less likely to have regular screening for breast cancer such as mammograms.

This makes sense since planning time for the extra hours needed to accomplish a visit to a clinic in a life that is already so insanely busy, seems at least much harder than out here in the country where the nearest clinic is no more than a 5 minute drive.

As most studies assert, more study needs to be done, but at the very least it seems that anything that causes women to be less proactive about breast cancer screening, and for that matter, causes men to be less proactive about prostate cancer screening, can’t be good. Regular screening has proven its’ worth in early detection and better survival rates. For those in the big city, it is worth using one of those coveted sick days so that the screening can be done, and done regularly, without adding stress.

Bottom line. The more regular the screening, the earlier the detection, the better the prognosis and, of course, the more likely to obtain reasonable life insurance rates. It’s good for you. It’s good for your family and, big city or not, it’s the right thing to work into that busy schedule.