RightHealth Daily Dose » left handed http://dailydose.righthealth.com We feature the one health item you simply cannot afford to miss. Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:18:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Left-Handedness, Breast Cancer, and Presidents http://dailydose.righthealth.com/medical-curiosities/left-handedness-breast-cancer-and-presidents/ http://dailydose.righthealth.com/medical-curiosities/left-handedness-breast-cancer-and-presidents/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:06:42 +0000 Steven http://dailydose.kosmix.com/?p=728 Did you know that of the past six US presidents, four were left-handed? Make that five out of seven – Barack Obama is also left-handed. (Perhaps Al Gore would have won in 2000 if he publicized that he, too, is a lefty.) So do left-handers have some sort of presidential edge over the rest of us? Perhaps. For nearly all right-handers, language abilities reside exclusively on one side of the brain – usually the left, which controls the right hand. But one in seven lefties process language on both sides of the brain, which some think enhances their language abilities (think Ronald Regan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama). Read more.

Left-handedness was also suggested to be a risk factor for breast cancer in women. A Dutch study that examined over 12,000 women found that lefties were more than twice as likely to develop premenopausal breast cancer. Researchers believe that exposure to high levels of sex hormones during fetal development may induce left-handedness and can trigger changes in breast tissue that predispose to cancer growth later in life. However, scientists are quick to remind us that breast cancer is an extremely complex disease with various potential causes, and simply being left-handed will not single-handedly (no pun intended) cause breast cancer.

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