Posted By Dr. Mercola
A group of researchers who track breast cancer rates have proposed the controversial notion that some tumors found with mammograms might naturally disappear on their own if left undetected.Dr. Per-Henrik Zahl and his colleagues examined invasive breast cancer rates among nearly 120,000 women age 50 to 64 who had a mammogram over a six-year period. They compared the number of breast cancers detected with another group of about 110,000 women of the same age who were screened just once at the end of the six-year period.
The researchers said they expected to find no differences in breast cancer rates -- but instead, they found 22 percent more invasive breast tumors in the group who had mammograms every two years. This raises the possibility that some cancers somehow disappear naturally.
Mammography and breast self-examination for tumors are standard methods used for early detection of breast cancer.
Source: New York Times November 24, 2008
Related Links:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/12/18/some-cancers-may-just-go-away.aspx
Note: Sodium bicarbonate is most commonly known as baking soda.
In reality, your body has a remarkable capacity to heal, and that ability is fueled largely by your lifestyle. If you eat well, exercise, get enough sleep and sun exposure and address your emotional stress, your body should be able to maintain a healthy balance.
The problem with cancer often lies not only with ignoring these health principles but also with the invasive and highly risky treatments that conventional medicine relies on to treat it -- surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. The alarming rates of cancer deaths across the world -- cancer has a mortality rate of 90 percent, according to Italian oncologist Dr. Tullio Simoncini -- speak volumes about the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of these treatments, yet they are still regarded as the gold standard of cancer care.
Chemotherapy is a classic example of a cure that is worse than the disease. In fact, many experts now say that cancer patients are more likely to die from cancer treatments than the cancer itself.
It is indeed exciting that researchers are now pointing to the possibility that cancer may be better off left alone, especially if the patient commits to leading a healthy, restorative lifestyle. But there could also be another culprit in this study.
Did Mammograms Fuel the Cancer Rates?
In the study Dr. Robert M. Kaplan, the chairman of the department of health services at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues found 22 percent more invasive breast tumors in the group who had mammograms every two years, compared to the group who had just one mammogram over a six-year period.
Because they had expected cancer rates between the two groups to be very similar, this is what led them to believe that some cancers disappear naturally.
Could it be, perhaps, that the mammograms themselves also contributed to the skewed results?
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends women get a mammogram every year or two after age 40.
But I strongly disagree.
There is no solid evidence that mammograms save lives. In fact, research demonstrates that adding an annual mammogram to a careful physical examination of the breasts does not improve breast cancer survival rates over getting the examination alone.
Meanwhile, the technology carries a first-time false positive rate of up to 6 percent. False positives can lead to expensive repeat screenings and can sometimes result in unnecessary invasive procedures including biopsies and surgeries.
Just thinking you may have breast cancer, when you really do not, focuses your mind on fear and disease, and is actually enough to trigger an illness in your body. So a false positive on a mammogram, or an unnecessary biopsy, can really be damaging.
Not to mention that women have unnecessarily undergone mastectomies, radiation and chemotherapy after receiving false positives on a mammogram. But perhaps the biggest danger of mammograms comes from the screening itself.
Mammograms expose your body to radiation that can be 1,000 times greater than that from a chest x-ray, which poses risks of cancer. Mammography also compresses your breasts tightly, and often painfully, which could lead to a lethal spread of cancerous cells, should they exist.
Dr. Epstein, M.D., professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, and chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition, has been speaking out about the risks of mammography since at least 1992. As for how these misguided mammography guidelines came about, Epstein says:
A Safer Screening Option for Women
The option for breast screening that I most highly recommend is called thermography.
Thermographic breast screening is brilliantly simple. It measures the radiation of infrared heat from your body and translates this information into anatomical images. Your normal blood circulation is under the control of your autonomic nervous system, which governs your body functions.
Thermography uses no mechanical pressure or ionizing radiation, and 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 (the formation of a direct supply of blood to cancer cells, which is a necessary step before they can grow into tumors of size).
To find out everything you need to know about the risks of conventional breast cancer screening (mammograms) and the benefits of thermography, please read the free report on the topic in Breast Cancer Prevention’s Dirty Little Secret.
Safer Options for Treating Cancer
Many people turn to conventional cancer treatments like chemotherapy because they think they are the ONLY option. Well, there are other safer options to consider, including one that you may have in your kitchen pantry: baking soda.
Sodium bicarbonate delivers a natural form of chemotherapy in a way that effectively kills cancer cells -- without the side effects and costs of standard chemotherapy treatments. The only problem with the treatment, according to Dr. Mark Sircus, is that it’s too cheap. Since no one is going to make money from it, no one will promote it.
Dr. Simoncini’s quite amazing experience has shown that 99 percent of breast- and bladder cancer can heal in just six days, entirely without the use of surgery, chemo or radiation, using just a local infiltration device (such as a catheter) to deliver the sodium bicarbonate directly to the infected site in your breast tissue or bladder. You can watch actual before and after footage of the treatment working in this video.
Another such approach is Dr. Hamer’s German New Medicine (GNM), which operates under the premise that every disease, including cancer, originates from an unexpected shock experience, and that all disease can be cured by resolving these underlying emotional traumas.
Despite a 95 percent success rate, Dr. Hamer has spent time in prison for refusing to disavow his medical findings and stop treating his patients with his unorthodox techniques, and is currently living in exile, seeking asylum from persecution.
It is also very important for cancer patients to optimize their vitamin D levels into a high range, and you can find out the correct levels by watching my one-hour vitamin D lecture.
Of course, even better than a safe treatment is preventing cancer in the first place. I’ve outlined my top tips for cancer prevention in this past article, and I highly suggest you look them over and begin to implement these natural strategies in your life.