October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

We see pink apparel start appearing around the end of September. Pink t-shirts, pink hats, pink bracelets and just about anything else that can appear pink. So what is all this pink really about?

Pink is associated with girls. When a newborn girl is brought home from the hospital, she is showered with pink things. We see breast cancer awareness shirts saying “Fight Like a Girl” usually in pink on a black shirt.

One in eight women will get breast cancer at some point in their lives.

I traveled to Urbandale last week to a Thermography Center to interview a specialist in detecting breast cancer using this method that you rarely hear about. I only expected to be there for twenty to thirty minutes. The co-owners of the center and compounding pharmacy spent about an hour and half with me. They gave me a tour of the facility, showed me the room where the thermography scans take place and the camera. What follows is an overview of this interview.

You hear about mammograms detecting breast cancer. But there is another method to detect cancer eight to ten years before a mammogram can detect them. This method is called a Thermogram or Therm. It uses body heat to detect where a tumor might be growing. Tumors need a vascular blood supply in order to grow. As blood vessels build and blood starts flowing, heat is generated around this mass that is growing. The coolest color on the spectrum for this scan is black with white being the hottest. There are 3,000 colors in between.

The room that has the camera in it is temperature controlled. There are no windows and no ventilation system circulating air through the room. There is a small portable air conditioner in the room if it gets to hot but is shut off thirty minutes prior to a scan in order to equalize out the temperature. The temperature of the room is between 18 and 21 degrees Celsius, which is 64.4 and 70.34 deg. Fahrenheit. They measure the room in Celsius because some people would see the higher temps in Fahrenheit and could get hot just seeing that temperature.

Once you are in the room, you are asked to disrobe from the waist up. You are then given fifteen minutes to acclimate to the room temperature. For ten minutes you stand with your arms at your sides and the remaining 5 minutes your arms are up by your head.

A twenty point analysis is then given to each quadrant and there are four quadrants on each breast. There is a scan that is done from the front and then a scan on the left and right sides. Then if necessary, a scan is done with a breast lift. The scan only lasts for a few minutes. The technician isn’t allowed to read the scan for liability reasons.

The scan is then sent to a doctor in California, Dr. William Amalu, for analysis and assigned a TH value. A one TH value is normal, no mass is seen and a TH value of five, we need to pay attention to this and evaluate further. The colors that the doctor is looking for are light blue to white. There are cold mass tumors meaning no blood supply but they are rare. Thermograms can also pick up hormone inbalances.

With mammograms, they miss twenty percent of all cancers. Thermograms only miss ten percent. When you get a mammogram, there is compression of the breast and radiation that is put into a very sensitive area. The radiation that is used by mammograms can be 1,000 times greater than that of a chest x-ray as told by Dr. Joseph Mercola. Each year that you get a mammogram, your chances of getting breast cancer increase by two percent according to Dr. Russell Blaylock. The compression is equal to 20- 2.2 pound bags of sugar being placed on the breast. With foot operated machines, this equivalent goes up to 58 bags of sugar as told by Lynn Mc Taggart's: What Doctors Don't Tell You: The Truth About the Dangers of Modern Medicine.

Mammograms have a hard time seeing through dense or fibrocystic breasts. Thermograms have no problem with these types of breasts as it is looking for hot areas in comparison to the rest of the breast. Whereas mammograms are looking for mass.

Thermograms can also do full body scans which helps with strokes, diabetes and cardiovascular problems detection.

Mammograms and thermograms came out at the same time. Thermograms were approved by the FDA in 1982. A thermogram doesn’t replace a mammogram, they can be used in conjunction with each other. Why expose yourself to radiation if you don’t need to?

Now that we’ve talked about thermography and breast cancer detection. Is there a way to prevent breast cancer? There are thoughts are on this and two different facilities have told me basically the same thing.

One, avoid birth control. Artificial hormones are not good for the body. The breast tissue is under developed until a woman becomes pregnant for the first time. The breast tissue develops during pregnancy in preparation for nursing. The list of side affects for birth control is longer than any other drug on the market says Dr. Mayer Eisenstein of Home First clinics near Chicago.

Two, Take Vitamin D3. The higher the level of D3 you have in your body, the less likely you are to get some types of cancers. (as seen in the chart associated with this article) Ask your doctor to test your Vitamin D3 level. Some insurance companies will cover the cost of this test, others won’t unless it is warranted with some medial conditions.

Three, cut back on your aluminum exposure. The aluminum accumulates in your brain and in your lymph nodes. The most common use for girls with aluminum is antiperspirants. Many vaccines have toxic levels of aluminum also. Many breast cancer patients who have a mastectomy also have their lymph nodes removed near the area where you put your deodorant on.

Four, Soy Milk changes breast tissue. Cut back or avoid on Soy Milk intake. Cutting it out would be a good thing since soy could have GMO products in it which opens up a whole another can of worms.

Five, avoid Mountain Dew & diet pops. These have bromide in them which is an enemy to Iodine. Bromide attaches itself to various parts of your body that are fighting for space with iodine. If you are deficient in Iodine, you have a higher risk of developing breast cancer. Think about this when you hear on the news to cut back on your salt intake but on the same token don’t overdo it.

Six, lose the extra weight. When a woman is carrying extra weight, her body is producing extra estrogen. This can cause estrogen dominance which can lead to health problems like PMS, uterine fibroids & menorrhagia (abnormally heavy menstral bleeding). As we read in the profile of Michelle Tedrow, weight loss helped her find a lump during a self exam.

It’s important to get a baseline so that doctors know when changes occur. With mammograms, this baseline is usually at the age of 35 or 40 depending on the history of your family. With thermograms, this age moves up to the age of 20. The incidence of breast cancer under the age of 40 is on the rise and it’s important to have that first finger print in place before any changes that might take place.

Let this month be the month that we take our first step in becoming healthier.