Mammograms Are Evil (and A Little Bit About Osteoporosis)

I want to begin with, being a man, I’ll leave it to women to decide the best methods for preventive health care. That being said, let me point out my thoughts on breast exams – not the fun kind but mammograms, and osteoporosis.

Would you rather knowingly expose myself to a higher cancer risk for the purpose of detecting cancer than have a lower cancer risk and not know if the cancer exists? Looking at what is being done, I’d say women would rather give themselves cancer so they know that have it rather than not knowing if they have it.

Did you know that the countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis also have the largest intake of calcium and protein?¹ Sounds counter-intuitive, doesn't it? Truth is too much protein causes a change in the body's pH level and thus has to be balanced by absorbing calcium from the bones. What's more, the more calcium you ingest, osteoblasts have to convert it into bone – but the osteoblasts die during this process. If you bombard your body with too much calcium, the body cannot properly replenish itself with new osteoblasts. Isn’t that like bombarding one's body with X-rays which can cause more damaged cell DNA than the body can handle.

There is a growing number of doctors who believe that exposing a person’s body to very low levels of radiation triggers the body's immune system to seek and repair genetic damage already existing in the body (not to mention the same genetic damage caused by that radiation event.) If your body already has cancer and its immune system is fighting the cancer, they why purposely subject a body to more cancer-causing radiology (e.g. X-rays)? Talk about keeping yourself in business!

Yes, your body has thousands of cancer cells at any given time. Now call into question from that cancer cell population those cancer cells residing in the breasts. Mammograms may be leading to the over-diagnosis of breast cancer² – where it detects cancer cells in the breast that may otherwise be destroyed by the body's immune system, but at a doctor's advice leads to the surgical removal of those cells or painful, often negative, biopsies. Quite a racket them doctors have – using a technique that causes cancer (radiation) they make money looking for and finding cancer cells, then make money on removing them. Unnecessary surgery? You be the judge. Superfluous surgery isn't a new concept. Look at all those wisdom teeth being removed, often unnecessarily.³ “It's best to remove them now before they cause you problems,” has often been an orthodontist's advice. On that rationality, maybe we should remove the breasts of women at a young age before they cause problems in the future?

Studies point out the number of cases where the mammograms detect cancers, but not the number of those they create. Would you look for weaknesses in a glass window by tapping it with a hammer? The notion of X-rays leading to cancer is a growing concern and is being studied more. In April 2012 Reuters reported a link between dental X-rays and brain cancer.⁴ Additionally, more specific to this article's topic, the American Medical Association published a scientific study involving a group of Norwegian women who had never received mammograms.⁵ Over the course of six years the women received three mammograms. Afterwards the study found that the screened women had a 22% higher occurrence of breast cancer over the control group who hadn't received mammograms. That’s like a 7% increase in cancer risk with each mammogram! As the mammogram myth article states (linked below), self-examination cannot replace mammograms. If you don't like doing it yourself, give your significant other a job he/she won't mind and task them with your breast examination.

I'd like to see a study of the relationship between estrogen therapy and breast cancer incidences – for estrogen often feeds a breast tumor and promotes osteoporosis (by depleting the body of magnesium.) Wouldn’t you know it, there HAVE been studies proving hormone therapy promotes breast and uterine cancers⁶. Maybe menopause is the woman’s body's way of cancer and osteoporosis prevention and we should not try to fight it. One has to wonder about the profit motive of estrogen therapy – the drug companies make pills, such as estrogen, to fight a woman's menopause then make more pills to fight the complications (for osteoporosis, cancer) caused by the estrogen pills.

I think women are scared into doing something that they know is harmful to themselves. An image comes into mind thinking about it. Picture a man who everyday must drive his car near a cliff and is scared he'll someday drive off the cliff. So the scared man has a solution to his fear: “I'm scared that if I close my eyes, even for a moment, I might drive over the cliff, so I’m going to open my eyes and drive over the cliff on purpose so that can brace for the impact.”

Endnote

I picture pharmaceutical executives in the board room. Exec A: “Let's convince doctors to prescribe women estrogen to fend off the effects of menopause.” Exec B: “But estrogen feeds breast cancer and promotes osteoporosis...” Exec. A: “Then we'll make pills for that too.” Exec. C: “And sell them at a huge mark-up!” (Everyone claps except Exec. B). Exec B: “We could advise women it’s safer to just accept menopause and its effects. It’s natural for our bodies to age.” Exec A: “You're fired.”

Calculate your risk of getting cancer from X-rays here: http://www.xrayrisk.com/calculator/calculator.php

Busted! 8 mammogram truths every woman must know. http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-204_162-10005216.html

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¹ Milk Information Website. Got Osteoperosis from Milk? http://milk.elehost.com/html/osteoporosis.html

² CBS News Staff. (2012, April 3). Mammograms may lead to breast cancer "overdiagnosis" for some women. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57408605-10391704/mammograms-may-lead-to-breast-cancer-overdiagnosis-for-some-women/

³ Daniel DeNoon at WebMD Health News. (2005, May 5). Wisdom Teeth Removal Often Unnecessary Study: Taking Out Symptom-Free Wisdom Teeth Neither Helps nor Hurts Health. http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/news/20050505/wisdom-teeth-removal-often-unnecessary

⁴ Reuters Health. (2012, April 10). Dental X-rays linked to common brain tumor

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/10/us-dental-X-rays-idUSBRE8390GM20120410

⁵ Archives of Internal Medicine. (November 24, 2008, Vol 168, No. 21). The Natural History of Invasive Breast Cancers Detected by Screening Mammography

⁶ American Cancer Society. (2012, March 6). Menopausal Hormone Therapy and Cancer Risk. http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/medicaltreatments/menopausal-hormone-replacement-therapy-and-cancer-risk