Why I will probably never get a Mammogram

First of all, I want to say that I really appreciate the fact that I've had a few girl friends recently encourage me to get a mammogram, because I know that they are looking out for my health.

I also realize that mammograms have probably saved a lot of lives.

But I don't necessarily think mammograms are necessary for all women, and I have come to believe that in many cases, the radiation from the machines used today, can make a person's condition even worse.  Supposedly it's written right there on the paper you sign before you get one, that the radiation from the machine can actually increase your risk for cancer. 

Mammograms seem to have become some kind of rite of passage, like going to the store to buy your first box of tampons, or going for your first trip to the gynecologist. But I don't necessarily think it should be a rite of passage for us. How come men aren't encouraged to go get their nether regions radiated on a regular basis, to screen for the most remote signs of testicular or prostate cancer, with machines that are known to cause cancer?

I'm all for breast cancer screening and early detection. I definitely think it's good to know what's going on with your body. I think all women should do regular self-examinations, and I'm all for pap smears. But I don't think the machines that are currently being used to detect cancerous tissue, yet are known to be able to cause more cancerous tissue, are necessarily the answer. I'd rather get a thermogram (see video further down the page).

I know that part of my decision to not get mammograms is based on the fact that my risk factors seem to be low. There isn't a lot of cancer in my family. There are just three people in my family, that I know of, who were diagnosed with cancer. I can't think of a single person on my father's side. And on my mother's side, there are only 3. First was my grandfather, who smoked Camel cigarettes like a chimney, so it wasn't a big shock to anyone when he was diagnosed with lung cancer in his 70's. The other cancer victims were my mom's cousin and her daughter, who actually participated in some kind of clinical trial... and they were both diagnosed with terminal cancer, shortly thereafter. I need to find out what that clinical trial was for (so I can stay away from that drug)!

I will admit that if breast cancer DID run in my family, I cannot say for SURE that I wouldn't get a mammogram. Fear is the ultimate motivator, and I do believe that genetics can play a part.

However, I also know that there is a lot of evidence to show that environment can be a much bigger factor, when it comes to cancer, than genetics. And environment plus lifestyle habits tend to run in families.

Again - I do know that my risk factors are low. I'm vegetarian, and I don't consume a lot of dairy. I'm part Asian. I used to exercise regularly, and although I've stopped for a while, I plan to get back into a regular running schedule.

I'm not saying I won't ever get screened, or I won't do self exams. But I think mammograms, as they are performed today, with the technology that is being used, is not the safest option for most women. And I do believe that for someone at a low risk, a mammogram could very well make their situation worse.

I want to point out that I do respect the women who still want to get mammograms, and commend any woman who is being pro-active about her health. I am pro-active about my health in a lot of ways.... but a standard mammography machine isn't likely to be on my list. If I do end up getting a screening, it will most likely be with a thermogram. This is a really interesting video. Dr. Godfrey mentions the patients' teeth in this video, and if that sounds confusing, please read this post.

This is another really good video about thermography.

We all have cancer cells, and abnormal cells, in our bodies. Sometimes they appear, and then disappear, and no one knows exactly why, but it happens. Please read the article towards the bottom of this page, about 1.3 million women being wrongly treated for breast cancer. It says:


[We] believe many invasive breast cancers detected by repeated mammography screening do not persist to be detected by screening at the end of 6 years, suggesting that the natural course of many of the screen-detected invasive breast cancers is to spontaneously regress.[iii]


When I was a kid, I had two small warts on my knee caps, on identical sides. I have no idea why I got them, but they stuck around for years. They bothered me, and I tried burning them off with Compound W, but it just made them bigger. I finally gave up trying, and stopped thinking about them, and one day I looked down and realized... they were gone.

One day in my 30s, I noticed they had mysteriously re-appeared. By then, I had learned that consuming garlic gets rid of warts (in my early 30's I had a wart that vanished within just a few days, after consuming garlic).  I commented to my roommate that they'd be gone in a day or two after I took a few garlic pills, and sure enough... they disappeared. But I will always wonder what caused those warts to re-appear... was there some kind of blockage in my chi? Was there a particular blood vessel, that was connected to my knee caps, that had some kind of injury that caused those warts to show up in that particular spot?

Sometimes when the body is out of balance, strange things happen, but then when the body is put back into balance, the bad cells often seem to have a way of just going away. God knows how many things could have appeared internally, and then disappeared, without my knowing anything about it, whatsoever, simply because I couldn't see it (and worry about it).

I have also heard that cancer is actually a normal part of your body's own protective mechanism, but we have come to view the tiniest little cancer cell as a threat, people never see it as a normal process, or something that could be temporary, and go away on it's own. You can see an interesting excerpt from an article called "The Wisdom of Cancer," by clicking HERE. But this paragraph is worth considering:

Cancers and all other tissues in the body are larded with cancer-killing white cells, such as T-cells. In the case of kidney cancer and melanomas, for example, white cells make up 50 per cent of the mass of the cancers.

If I were to go and get a mammogram, today, I would not be entirely surprised if they found something that looked unusual.  For the last few years, I've had more than my share of junk food, I stopped exercising on a regular basis, and for the last 12 years I've consumed (and bathed in) a lot of unfiltered water with known carcinogens in it. Although I feel great and have a lot of energy, and I'm drinking a type of water that's shown in some studies to slow the growth of tumor cells, you never know what could be found on an x-ray.

I do plan to get back to exercising, and juicing, and Nutriblasting, on a regular basis. So as long as I'm not finding anything on a mammogram, I plan to stay far, far away from mammography machines. Especially since my Mom had one recently and I got to listen to her rant about how painful and uncomfortable it was.

Knowing myself and what a worry-wart I tend to be, I'm pretty sure that if I did get a mammogram, and was told that I had anything that even more remotely looked suspicious, I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about it. I would probably lose a good amount of sleep over it, and I just know that I would obsess over it... until it was gone.

In the past, the only way I would be able to tell if the cancer was gone, for sure, would be to go back and get another mammogram... thereby exposing myself to more radiation. There would definitely be a part of me that would want it to just be cut out and removed so that I could stop thinking about it, but would I just be making the problem worse?

My question is, how much extra stress and worry and anxiety would my body have had to endure, because of a small abnormality that very likely would have gone away on it's own?

When I started drinking electrolyzed reduced water, I was so excited about it, I told my neighbor across the street about it, and offered to share this water with her. I was told that she already knew about it, because her stepmother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and after she started drinking the water, her cancer went away. I have heard many stories like that. I'm not saying that's the only alternative treatment she used, and I'm not saying it's a cure. But the fact is, the tumor disappeared, without chemo or radiation. Go figure.

One of my girl friends was recently diagnosed with a very small spot in her breast, and she is going to have a lumpectomy. She sent me (and many freinds) an email, encouraging us to get mammograms. I didn't know how to respond, and have been on the fence, all week, about telling her about this blog (which ironically I created just days before getting her email). I want to show her all this research, but I know she is as much of a believer in standard medicine, as I am in alternative medicine.

Like me, my friend is pretty set in her ways about things, and I don't see her changing her mind about her decision to have the surgery, no matter what I say. I also don't want to risk her being offended that I could be insinuating in any way that her decision to have a lumpectomy is the wrong one, because I know it's not. There's as much research and evidence to back up her chosen method, as there is research and evidence to back up my chosen method. There is no right or wrong, it all just boils down to personal choice. And I am trying not to be too pushy with my friends and family. The last thing I want to do is try to talk her out of the surgery and for some reason the cancer continues to grow, and I'd have to live with that guilt! So I feel like my only option is to tell wish her the best, and pray that it all goes well and I will continue to have my good friend around for years to come.

Feel free to read the article below. There are many like this, and it's starting to go beyond "just a conspiracy theory" for me.

Here is one good article.

And here is another one, below. There are many, many more like this online, if you just look for them.

30 Years of Breast Screening: 1.3 Million Wrongly Treated

Posted on: 

Thursday, November 22nd 2012 at 8:00 am

Written By: 

Sayer Ji, Founder

The breast cancer industry's holy grail (that mammography is the primary weapon in the war against breast cancer) has been disproved. In fact, mammography appears to have CREATED 1.3 million cases of breast cancer in the U.S. population that were not there.

A disturbing new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine is bringing mainstream attention to the possibility that mammography has caused far more harm than good in the millions of women who have employed it over the past 30 years as their primary strategy in the fight against breast cancer.[i]

Titled "Effect of Three Decades of Screening Mammography on Breast-Cancer Incidence," researchers estimated that among women younger than 40 years of age, breast cancer was overdiagnosed, i.e. "tumors were detected on screening that would never have led to clinical symptoms," in 1.3 million U.S. women over the past 30 years. In 2008, alone, "breast cancer was overdiagnosed in more than 70,000 women; this accounted for 31% of all breast cancers diagnosed."

As we revealed in a previous article,[ii] the primary form of mammography-detected breast cancer is ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), also known as 'stage zero' or 'non-invasive breast cancer.' Unlike truly invasive cancer, which expands outward like the crab after which it was named (Greek:  Cancer = Crab), ductal carcinoma is in situ, i.e. situated, non-moving – an obvious contradiction in terms.

Also, DCIS presents without symptoms in the majority of women within which it is detected, and if left untreated will (usually) not progress to cause harm to women. Indeed, without x-ray diagnostic technologies, many if not most of the women diagnosed with it would never have known they had it in the first place. The journal Lancet Oncology, in fact, published a cohort study last year finding that even clinically verified "invasive" cancers appear to regress with time if left untreated:

[We] believe many invasive breast cancers detected by repeated mammography screening do not persist to be detected by screening at the end of 6 years, suggesting that the natural course of many of the screen-detected invasive breast cancers is to spontaneously regress.[iii]

The new study authors point out "The introduction of screening mammography in the United States has been associated with a doubling in the number of cases of early-stage breast cancer that are detected each year." And yet, they noted, only 6.5% of these early-stage breast cancer cases were expected to progress to advanced disease. DCIS and related 'abnormal breast findings,' in other words, may represent natural, benign variations in breast morphology. Preemptive treatment strategies, however, are still employed today as the standard of care, with mastectomy rates actually increasing since 2004.[iv]

The adverse health effects associated with overdiagnosis and overtreatment with lumpectomy, radiation, chemotherapy and hormone-suppressive treatments cannot be underestimated, especially when one considers the profound psychological trauma that follows each stage of diagnosis and treatment, and the additional physiological burdens such psychic injuries lead to, including up-regulation of multidrug resistance genes within cancer as a result of the increased adrenaline associated with the 'flight-or-fight' stress response.[v]

Also, it is now coming to light that chemotherapy and radiation actually increase the proportion of the highly malignant cancer stem cells to the relatively non-malignant daughter cells within the tumor colony. Much in the same way that conventional antibiotic agents will drive multidrug resistance within the subpopulation of surviving post-antibiotic bacteria, ensuring recurrence, conventional treatments also drive the surviving stem-cell enriched tumor populations into greater resistance and metastatic potential when it does inevitably recur. Or worse, radiation therapy may actually increase the 'stemness' of breast cancer cells making them 30 times more malignant (capable of forming new tumors).