A Safer Alternative to Mammograms

You may be someone who is not comfortable with mammograms and if that is true, you are not alone! I have just recently heard of a technology called "Thermography." Here is a bit of information on thermography along with a few more facts about the risks of mammograms from one of my favorite people, Dr. Mercola.

"In September, a large-sample, long-term Canadian study proved that an annual mammogram was no more effective in preventing deaths from breast cancer than periodic physical examinations for women in their 50s. The study was co-authored by Cornelia Baines, a professor of public health sciences at the University of Toronto and appeared in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. In the study of almost 40,000 women ages 50 to 59, half received periodic breast examinations alone and half received breast examinations plus mammograms. All learned to examine their own breasts as well. By 1993, 13 years after the study began, there were 610 cases of invasive breast cancer and 105 deaths in the women who received only breast examinations, compared with 622 invasive breast cancers and 107 deaths in those who received breast examinations and mammograms. "They found smaller cancers, but ultimately the mortality rate was the same,¹¹ said Suzanne Fletcher, a professor of preventive medicine at Harvard Medical School. She added that cancer screening programs are built on the assumption that "finding it earlier is finding it better. . . . This study questions that assumption." In fact, truly early detection would be better, but by the time a tumor has grown to a sufficient size to be detectable by either a mammogram or a physical examination, it has been growing for several years, and achieved more than 25 doublings of the malignant cell colony.

As Alternative Medicine has maintained for years, mammograms do far more harm than good. Their ionizing radiation mutates cells, and the mechanical pressure can spread cells that are already malignant (as can biopsies). In 1995 the British medical journal The Lancet reported that, since mammographic screening was introduced in 1983, the incidence of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), which represents 12% of all breast cancer cases, has increased by 328%, and 200% of this increase is due to the use of mammography. This increase is for all women: Since the inception of widespread mammographic screening, the increase for women under the age of 40 has gone up over 3000%.

Also, according to the 1998 edition of the Merck Manual, for every case of breast cancer diagnosed each year, from 5 to 10 women will needlessly undergo a painful breast biopsy. Statistically, this means that any woman who has annual mammograms for 10 years has at least a 50% chance of having at least one biopsy -- even if she never develops breast cancer.

Why, then, does mainstream medicine keep recommending mammograms? Do the math: a $100 mammogram for all 62 million U.S. women over 40, and a $1,000+ biopsy for 1-to 2-million women, is an $8 billion per year industry.

There is a superior alternative: advanced thermography, which does not use mechanical pressure or ionizing radiation, and which can detect signs of breast cancer years earlier than either mammography or a physical exam. Mammography cannot detect a tumor until after it has been growing for years and reaches a certain size. Thermography is able to detect the possibility of breast cancer much earlier, because it can image the early stages of angiogenesis. Angiogenesis is the formation of a direct supply of blood to cancer cells, which is a necessary step before they can grow into tumors of size. Thermographic breast screening is brilliantly simple. Thermography measures the radiation of infrared heat from our body and translates this information into anatomical images. Our normal blood circulation is under the control of our autonomic nervous system, which governs our body functions without our conscious will. To screen for breast cancer, a thermographer blows cool air over a woman's breasts. In response, our autonomic nervous system reduces the amount of blood going to the breast, as a temperature-regulating measure. However, the pool of blood and primitive blood vessels that cancer cells create is not under autonomic control and is unaffected by the cool air. It will therefore stand out clearly on the thermographic image as a "hot spot."
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Dr. Mercola's Comment:
Earlier this month I reviewed a study from the National Cancer Institute, which showed that mammograms don't work to reduce the risk of death from breast cancer. Their analysis confirms what we have suspected for some time: that mammograms are not a good idea. Most physicians recommend them for fear of being sued by a woman who develops breast cancer after which he did not advise her to get one. Now natural medicine physicians can rest comfortably and encourage women to get a thorough breast examination for abnormalities, as well as perform frequent self-examinations.

Thermography, along with regular breast self-exams, does seem to be a reasonable alternative to screen for this prevalent form of cancer among women.