LifeCare Chiropractic

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mammography

EARLY SUN EXPOSURE REDUCES BREAST CANCER RISK – (11-05-07)

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Vitamin D and Reduced Risk of Breast Cancer: A Population-Based Case-Control Study

I just spent this past weekend volunteering at the Breast Cancer 3-day in the medical tent providing injury care to the walkers. Invariably, in conversation with patients, the question of why they were walking came up. I will always remember the response of an 18 yr old girl who’s mom died of breast cancer 5 yrs ago. I asked her what SHE was doing to prevent breast cancer for herself. She replied with some degree of frustration that “they” won’t do anything because she was too young. Of course she was referring to mammography. But how twisted has our society become that we, at it’s most important moment, confuse prevention with early detection?

This study is a perfect example of how much can be done to intervene in the process. But given our aversion to preventing cancer, and that this study found that early exposure (10-19 years of age) to the sun cut risk by 35%, how many generations will it be before we pass knowledge of prevention from the adults that “get it” to the youth that “need it??”

Read entire article here

JUST HOW EFFECTIVE IS PSA SCREENING?

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It seems like all cancer screenings are coming under fire recently.  Rational, scientific attemps have been made to knock mammography off its pedastal, but emotions run very high on this topic and few see through this to the real story.  Interestingly, the mammography “debate” is not new and may have been started some 22 years ago in the medical literature, when well known researchers began to question whether we should be putting all of our hopes into mammography.

PSA testing is no different.  Not only are there questions about its effectiveness, but we really need to face the reality that some serious harms can come from overdiagnosis.  Again, this is not new news.  I had reviewed an article over 6 years ago looking at just how ineffective PSA screening was at saving lives.

This particular review article puts a more specific number on the effectiveness of PSA screening.  Overall, researchers found that, to prevent a single death from prostate cancer over the course of 11 years, 1055  men would have to be screened.  That’s basically a thousand-to-one odds.  If this is what we hang our hats on when it comes to cancer “prevention” in this country, we truly are sunk.

In this country, we continue to rely on early detection as a sick sort of prevention, despite the literally thousands of research studies finding lifestyle factors that promote and poor lifestyle factors that prevent many types of cancers.  It’s pretty clear cut.  Lifestyle prevents cancer in the first place so that we do not have to rely on screening to “prevent” cancer.

I have provided a more in-depth review of a variety of ways to lower your risk of prostate cancer in the past and will not go into it again here.  Just take this information and understand that cancer early detection tests (let’s not call them “prevention” tests) are a crap shoot at best, with massive levels of harm being done with false positives and detections of cancers that will likely never progress.  Go into your screening as well educated as you can be.

BREAST CANCERS DETECTED BY SCREENING MAMMOGRAPHY (08-17-09)

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The Natural History of Invasive Breast Cancers Detected by Screening Mammography

When most of the population is asked about “prevention” of breast cancer, mammography comes to mind. Few things get me as frustrated as this reply.

I remember volunteering at a national 3-day event. I was treating an 18 yr old walker and asked why she was walking. Her mother had passed away from breast cancer at a very young ago, so I naturally asked her what she was doing from a preventative standpoint to lower her risk. She replied “They won’t let me do anything until I’m at least 40.” It was all I could do to keep from screaming in frustration. So, we put all our eggs in the “early detection” basket and call it prevention. Well, unfortunately for this approach, there is much controversy about whether it actually does any good.

Here we see a study finding that there are significant harms, suggesting that up to 22% of the cancers found on mammography may have spontaneous remitted, leading to aggressive, damaging treatments that were never needed.

Read entire article here

DO MAMMOGRAPHIES REALLY HELP SAVES LIVES?

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DO MAMMOGRAPHIES REALLY HELP SAVES LIVES?  As difficult as this may be to believe, this is not the first study to come to this conclusion.  We weigh our “cancer prevention” so heavily on early detection that the idea that this is not effective is literally unfathomable.  If we had a true focus on prevention with lifestyle, we would just shrug our shoulders at studies like this and move on to eating our cruciferous veggies.  This attitude creates problems.

To start with, studies have shown that up to 22% of the cancers found on mammography would’ve spontaneously remitted.  The creates several more problems.  First, harsh treatments for a cancer that the body would’ve resolved on it’s own.  Second, with get artificial numbers on how well we are doing with treating cancers, which, ironically then goes back into believing that screening mammography is effective.

There are other ways like thermography that never seemed to have taken off despite the ease and thoroughness of the procedure.  Of course, to me, this means that prevention is even more important because the screening tools we are using are of questionable utility.

DOES MAMMOGRAPHY SAVE LIVES?

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Ok.  Not ANOTHER post beating up mammography.  Close, but not quite.  Another post pointing out just how weak mammography really is at saving lives.

You see, mammography is raised on a pedestal by stories of women who claimed their lives were saved by mammography.  Recent studies found that 57% of breast cancers are NOT detected by mammography.  But many of these women still had mammography done, but then the mammography is mistakenly credited with finding the cancer early.  Breast self exam is still a major route by which the process of cancer detection starts and should be done on a regular basis.

This particular study looked at the likelihood that mammography actually saved the life of a statistical 50 year old woman and found that, after some serious number crunching, that the likelihood that mammography saved this woman’s life is 13% on the generous side, 3% at the realistic side.  Not terribly dramatic.

THERE’S A DOWNSIDE TO MAMMOGRAPHY?

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Despite the update to the United States Preventative Task Force recommendations for women to not get screening mammography until  age 50, organizations such as the American Cancer Society have thumbed their noses at the recommendation changes and are still promoting mammography at 40.

We continue to look at this from an emotional standpoint and have not been willing to step back and look at the actual data.  The problem is Norway.  This darn country was late implementing routine use of mammography.  What this has done is created a perfect before and after picture.  And it’s not as rosy as we’ve been led to believe.

 We already know that a big problem is that a large chunk (maybe 1/3) of the “issues” found on mammography would spontaneously go away.  Yes–believe it or not the body can and will rise up and get rid of cancers in the early stages.

In addition, many masses are actually found on breast self-exam which are then later confirmed by mammography, but the mammography did not actually “find” the mass.

Ok..so we know that there is a lot of psychological downsides to a false positive mammography that is later found to not be a tumor.

But this study sheds more light on this issue.  In Norway, when mammography was introduced, breast surgery rates went up a massive 70%!  This is great for the surgeons, but not so much for the poor patients.  Keep in mind that this is NOT accompanied for a comparable lowered risk of breast cancer deaths.  So, more surgeries but not necessarily better outcomes.

The bottom line is that this will remain a controversial and highly emotional topic.  I’m only trying to educate that mammography has serious drawbacks as a means of cancer PREVENTION. 

It is not, and will never be, a preventative measure for breast cancer.  Healthy lifestyle changes are the only means of prevention.  Mammography is merely finding problems early, but does, in no way, shape or form, prevent them.  Until society stops teaching that mammography = prevention, we’re going to have problems.

ANOTHER NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF MAMMOGRAPHY?

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Talk about an emotionally charged topic.  I’ve certainly addressed this in recent posts, but I’m going to add further evidence supporting the idea that mammography has little effect on breast cancer outcomes. 

This particular study found no evidence to suggest that mammography lowers breast cancer mortality.  Read that again.  Considering that, in this country mammography = “cancer prevention” we are really screwed.

 How is this even possible?  We are drilled again and again and again in this country that screening saves lives.  PSA.  Mammography.  Colonoscopy.  We rely so heavily on it that these procedures fall under the classification of “prevention.”  Let’s get this straight–these procedures are in NO way, shape or form “prevention.”  They are all early detection and do nothing to prevent the conversion of normal cells to cancerous cells.

So..back to mammography.  A few things to consider so you can put everything in perspective.  Many breast masses are originally identified via breast self exams.  This remains the simplest way to detect many masses.

Next, based on research out of Denmark, about 22% of cancers found on mammography would’ve gone away on their own.  This is all kinds of scary when you think about the 22% of women who had aggressive, life-changing radiation and chemo for a mass that would have resolved on its own.  This also skews the “benefits” of mammography when 22% of the cases are going to get better no matter what you do.

Then throw in the stress and anxiety and decreased quality of life that goes along with a false positive mammography.

Of course, this is all in the context of the fact that mammography utilizes ionizing radiation and by itself will increase the risk of breast cancer.  Compare this to thermography, which uses no radiation and can instantly differentiate cysts from tumors.  Unfortunately, the money never went into thermography research to support its use.

Overall, the problem in Westernized medicine is that we use screening tools as prevention.  Instead of educating the public about the well known ways to prevent breast cancer, we promote screenings.  I’m going to get shot leaving the office on this one, but if we shifted all the money being used for initial screening mammography (as opposed to mammography following a lump detected on BSE) into an aggressive campaign to educate on refined carbs, exercise, soy intake, BPA from plastics and cruciferous vegetable intake, we would see far greater drops in cancer deaths (and incidence) than we currently see with mammography in the forefront.

Read more…

 

SHOULD A WOMAN IN HER 40’S GET A MAMMOGRAM?

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There was quite a bit of controversy when the US Preventative Services Task Force released new recommendations in 2009 for mammography.  These recommendations did not include mammography for women under 50.  Man did the fecal matter hit the fan.  This was a taste of Obamacare to come.  This was rationing of health care.  The national organizations like the American Cancer Society and radiology societies across the country were in an uproar.  The news channels had a heyday.

No one seemed to want to take a step back and evaluate how much of this reaction was emotional and how much rational.  A few things to consider rationally.

There is no doubt that there is a high degree of false positives with mammography.  The psychological damage (which leads to a lowered perceived quality of life), additional cost and additional harms associated with radiation exposure and biopsy procedures (such as fine needle aspirations) are not to be ignored.  Remember that mammography itself is a risk factor for cancer because of the radiation exposure.

Far worse is the finding in several research studies that 22% of cancers found on mammography would be taken care of by our own immune system.  Imagine the numbers of women exposed to surgery, chemotherapy and radiation for a cancer that would never have grown.  THIS is the true problem with mammography being recommended too early.

Somehow the facts like this get glazed over in the emotional debate and the benefits of mammography get blown up larger than life, making the recommendation to wait to get mammography an emotionally scary process for women. 

This particular study asked women aged 39-49 to evaluate their own personal risk for getting breast cancer and their desire to get a mammogram before aged 50.  Common sense and data be damned–88% of the women overestimated their risk of breast cancer and 89% want to be screened before age 50.

In addition, just under half of breast cancers (around 41-43%) are NOT detected initially via mammography, but rather through accident or deliberate self examination.

And nowhere are we using this opportunity to discuss prevention.  Many women mistakenly believe that breast cancer is genetic and their is little they can do to avoid it other than “prevention” via early mammography.  As a society we have done an astronomically poor job of educating the public on prevention.  Heck–the general public does not even realize you CAN prevent it, let alone HOW despite millions upon millions of dollars raised in the name of awareness.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002937811004510