About Mammograms

October is winding up and I am drawn to share something about breast cancer not just because this is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but also because I have struggled in the past about whether or not to do mammograms and it may also be something you have struggled with too. The first mammogram I received was 15 years ago and I haven't received another one since. Not because it was particularly painful... I just wasn't comfortable. Something deep inside of me just wasn't ok with it.

If you are a woman that wouldn't even dream of NOT getting a mammogram, this is not meant to change anything about your decision. It works for you, and that is wonderful! I respect your decision. I would never try to tell a woman to not get one. However, if you struggle with this decision or find yourself (like me) not feeling -in your gut- comfortable with mammograms, this may be something you would be interested in reading. It's lengthy but oh.... so informative. (Taken from NewsTarget.com)

"Researchers at the Nordic Cochrane Center in Denmark studied 500,000 women to determine the results of breast cancer screening programs. They found that for every one woman helped by breast cancer screening, ten were harmed through false diagnosis or unnecessary treatments that devastated their health."What seems like good and obvious advice in everyday life is not always scientifically or medically sound", said Peter Gotzsche, MD, director of the center. "So we might say there is a benefit of one but a harm of 10 from screening for breast cancer." In other words, breast cancer screening is surprisingly harmful to women. That's partly because the procedure itself irradiates the breast tissue and actually causes cancer, but also because practically any screening result producing a questionable blur on the final image may result in a woman being manipulated through fear into undergoing aggressive, toxic cancer treatments even when they never had breast cancer in the first place. (False positives are extremely common in breast cancer screening, and in some cases, the machinery is incorrectly calibrated and doesn't even meet radiology standards.)

And yet breast cancer screening is the only form of "prevention" offered by the cancer industry. But it isn't prevention, it's detection. Breast cancer screening does nothing to educate women how to really prevent breast cancer, nor does it teach women how to change their diets and lifestyles so that breast cancer never develops in the first place. In fact, the strategy of the cancer industry today can be best described as waiting for women to get cancer, then treating it with toxic drugs that just happen to generate huge profits for pharmaceutical companies. While tens of millions of women are developing undetectable, early-stage breast cancer right now, the cancer industry does nothing. They will not tell these women how to halt the growth of cancer tumors; they will only wait until the cancer becomes large enough to see on a screening test, and then they will scare the women to death with harmful, authoritative medical demands and toss them into chemotherapy -- a treatment that causes permanent, irreversible harm to the brain, heart, liver, kidneys and other organs.Yet even the World Health Organization admits that 70 percent of all cancers can be prevented through simple changes in food and lifestyle. That number is probably conservative, though. No one in the cancer industry seems interested in teaching any of these strategies to women. In the cancer industry, there is no incentive to teach women how to avoid breast cancer, because to do so would eliminate a future customer!

Here, for the benefit of women everywhere, is a partial list of the things that cause cancer and things that don't. You're not going to find full descriptions and citations here, as that would require an entire book all by itself, but this is a very useful reference list that tells the truth about what causes or prevents cancer in the human body."

Smoking cigarettes
Mammography radiation - see articles on mammograms
Chemotherapy and radiation
Perfumes and fragrance products
Cosmetics and personal care products - see articles on personal care products
Home cleaning products, including laundry detergent, dryer sheets, etc.
Drinking non-organic milk or eating non-organic dairy products
Hydrogenated oils and trans fatty acids - See Poison In the Food or articles on hydrogenated oils
Plastic food containers - includes plastic lining inside food cans
Sodium nitrite - found in most processed meats, see articles on sodium nitrite
Pesticides, PCBs, chlorine and other chemicals
Acrylamides (formed during high-heat food processing such as frying)
Watching television / lack of exercise
Severe emotional distress or relationship stress
Refined sugars / refined grains
Dry cleaning chemicals
Hair color chemicals
Nail polish remover

22 things that PREVENT cancer:
Vitamin D and sunshine - see the Healing Power of Sunlight and Vitamin D
Anti-cancer foods - see articles about anti-cancer foods
Medicinal mushrooms - reishi, shiitake, agaricus blazei, etc. See www.MushroomScience.com or www.DragonHerbs.com
Green tea - see articles about green tea
Broccoli and cruciferous vegetables - see articles about broccoli
Lycopene and tomatoes
Infra-red saunas and sweat lodges - because sweating expels toxins
Chlorella - see articles on chlorella, or check out a recommended chlorella product: Rejuvenate! From IntegratedHealth.com (product to be launched soon)
Pomegranate seeds - see artiles on pomegranate or http://www.ats.org/news.php?id=32
Omega-3 oils / chia seeds - available from GoodCauseWellness.com
Rainforest herbs - There are many anti-cancer rainforest herbs, including graviola and Cat's Claw (Una de Gato). Recommended sources is Terry Pezzi of the high-integrity Amazon Herb Company (also helping to preserve the Amazon rainforest) - Another great source of rainforest herbs is Rain Tree with Leslie Taylor
Juice detoxification - Read books by Dr. Gabriel Cousens or visit his retreat in Southern Arizona
Acupuncture - helps move blood and chi (body's energy)
Sprouts - ALL sprouts are anti-cancer. Best sprouting machine is the EasyGreen Automatic Sprouter (use any search engine to find resellers)
Red clover - Helps cleanse the blood. Find from any supplement maker.
Deep breathing / oxygenation / stress reduction - Best product is called Stress Eraser (highly recommended)
Yoga, Tai Chi or Pilates - These all boost lymph circulation
Cacao - (real chocolate) - Good sources are NavitasNaturals.com or Superfoods.com
Therapeutic massage - helps move lymph, boost circulation
Mint - grow your own (the easiest plant to grow)
Apricot pits / laetrile / vitamin B17 - View this World Without Cancer video featuring G. Edward Griffin
Blackberries - Most berries contain some form of anti-cancer medicine