By Catherine Hume
© 2001 Biomedx Newswire

As you may be aware, incidents of cancer are on the rise, including breast cancer (which is increasingly being seen in younger women), so let's take some time and talk about breast health.

Hold on to your bra straps ladies, we're about to venture into areas seldom discussed in traditional medical circles.

Let's begin by highlighting the top three causes of breast cancer that are directly controllable by women: 

1) Mammograms
2) Tight fitting bras
3) Antiperspirant deodorants

Whoa! You might find this list quite amazing but you will begin to understand as we outline the roles each of these play in breast cancer development.

Let's start with mammograms. The problem here is x-rays. X-rays currently stand as the single item the medical community agrees causes cancer.  Yet, the very test used for breast cancer screening is an x-ray. This presents a problem. Fortunately, the movement of technology and understanding what cancer is and how it develops is presenting some innovative adjunct solutions to the mammogram dilemma. We'll talk more on this in a moment.

But first, about those bras and antiperspirants. To understand what this is about, you need to understand a bit about the toxic environment that better living through chemistry has wreaked upon our society.

Though there are many things in our environment that are suspect, we'll just look at food. Today much of our food supply is grown with pesticides. Some of these contain chemicals called aromatic hydrocarbons and are very similar to human sex hormones. When sprayed on vegetables, they become absorbed into the food. When ingested they accumulate in specific organs that attract this class of chemicals--in women it is the breast.

The body recognizes sex hormones as potent chemicals and once used, they need to be broken down by liver enzymes and then rapidly removed from the body. (You should note that the mammary glands are a primary producer of the female hormone estrogen. Although important, once used, it must be removed from the body quickly.) This removal is managed by the lymphatic system.

The mammary glands are filled with lymphatic vessels that move from the breast, through the axillary lymph nodes under the armpit, over the collar bone, to the thoracic duct. This is how the breast drains toxins and keeps its internal environment clean. If something impedes the cleansing process, an imbalance occurs and the sex hormone by-products become destructive molecules called free radicals that begin cellular damage (called lipid peroxidation) which leads to breast cancer.

Can you possibly see how tight fitting bras and antiperspirants (which close the axillary lymph nodes in the armpit) causes a backup of toxins in the breast?

For most women, throwing out the bra is not an option, but some adjustments can be made (the push-up bra for instance, which makes one look bustier are the worst for women). Certainly the antiperspirants can go. Natural mineral salt deodorants are available as an alternative.

Now get the picture in your mind of the topics just discussed; we have a constricted lymphatic system causing a toxic backup in the mammary glands, which (in some cases) gets presented annually to a clinic to get squished and assaulted with x-rays. Mmm, sounds like a perfect scenario to engender a cancerous situation.  But what might be an alternative, or an adjunct to a mammogram that could greatly stretch the time frame between the need for these dangerous x-rays? The answer comes in part from understanding how tumors develop.

Tumors need a blood supply to exist; they have to be fed. When a tumor develops, it creates vascularization (blood vessels) around itself. This is a physiological process. This physiology can be detected in the earliest developmental stages with new high technology heat sensing imagers.

A clinic with this technology would place the woman in front of the imager and then take an infrared heat scan of her breasts (sometimes referred to as a mammotherm). There is no contact, no x-rays, no pain, it is completely non-invasive. If there is adverse physiology present, (such as increased vascularization involved with tumor development) it will be highlighted by temperature differentials from one breast to the other. 

A mammogram is a screen of anatomy, it looks for the actual evidence of a tumor.  A mammotherm is a screen of function, it looks for the reflection of physiological happenings. When a mammogram identifies a tumor, it likely has been forming for a long time. When a mammotherm detects a breast temperature differential, it is often at the very beginning stages of a potential problem. This means a woman can become proactive in addressing the situation in a natural, non-destructive manner.

Women rejoice! The mammotherm technology is a great leap forward in breast cancer screening. Where mammograms are a humiliating event of having to endure a strangers cold hands manipulating and painfully squishing your breasts between the plates of an x-ray unit to undergo an assault by high energy particle beams, a mammotherm is shear joy by comparison. You can have multiple screens done every year to track even the smallest changes that might occur over time, and you never have to worry about harmful side effects.

The mammotherm is particularly important for younger women. A younger woman has more dense breast tissue and mammograms have a difficult time detecting the smallest tumors. Because of this drawback, ultrasound is often advocated as an alternative. However, tumor mass still needs to be evident. The mammotherm on the other hand is not looking for the tumor itself, it is looking for the smallest change in physiology reflected as heat that then becomes a marker for suspicious activity.