Breast Thermography – A “Heated” Discussion About Your Breasts
You may think mammography is the ideal way to screen for breast cancer but guess what? That isn’t true.
Most mammograms detect breast cancer only after they have reached stage 2, or 1 million+ cancerous cells.
That’s not exactly DETECTION or PREVENTION is it?
That’s more of a confirmation. Plus you’ve now added harmful radiation to an already possibly grim diagnosis.
That’s why Bodhi Body physicians don’t recommend mammograms as the preferred method for breast cancer screenings, despite what you may hear from other medical sources. Mammograms compress the breasts tightly which could lead to a lethal spread of any existing malignant cells.
They expose your body to radiation that can be 1,000 times greater than that from a chest x-ray — this makes you vulnerable unnecessarily to further risks of radiation-induced cancer.
What is Breast Thermography? Breast thermography takes thermal images of the breasts and surrounding areas to aid in the early detection of breast cancer.
The principle: Thermography assesses blood flow patterns, inflammation and function. Mammography does not.
How it works: State-of-the-art breast thermography uses ultra-sensitive infrared cameras and sophisticated computers to detect, analyze, and produce high-resolution diagnostic images of these temperature and vascular changes.
Detection: The procedure is both comfortable (no pain!) and safe using no radiation or compression. By carefully examining changes in the temperature and blood vessels of the breasts, signs of possible cancer or pre-cancerous cell growth may be detected years prior to being discovered using any other procedure. This provides for the earliest detection of cancer possible. Because of breast thermography’s extreme sensitivity, these temperature variations and vascular changes may be among the earliest signs of breast cancer and/or a pre-cancerous state of the breast.
Research: Breast thermography has been researched for over 30 years, and over 800 peer-reviewed breast thermography studies exist in the index-medicus. In this database well over 250,000 women have been included as study participants. The numbers of participants in many studies are very large– ranging from 37,000 to 118,000 women. Some of these studies have followed patients up to 12 years. Breast thermography has an average sensitivity and specificity of 90%.
Unique Capability: Just as unique as a fingerprint, each patient has a particular infrared map of their breasts. Breast thermography has the ability to detect a pre-cancerous state of the breast, or signs of cancer at an extremely early stage, and therein lies in its unique capability of monitoring the temperature variations and blood vessel alterations produced by the earliest changes in tissue physiology (function).
The procedure is based on the principle that chemical and blood vessel activity in both pre-cancerous tissue and the area surrounding a developing breast cancer is almost always higher than in the normal breast. Since pre-cancerous and cancerous masses are highly metabolic tissues, they need an abundant supply of nutrients (blood flow) to maintain their growth. In order to do this, they increase circulation to their cells by sending out chemicals to keep existing blood vessels open, recruit dormant vessels, and create new ones (neo-angiogenesis). This process results in an increase in regional surface temperatures of the breast.
About the author
Dr. Garrett Wdowin is co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Bodhi Body Integrative Medical Centers. Dr. Wdowin is a licensed Naturopathic physician who specializes in environmental medicine, specifically chronic disease and its relationship with environmental toxins.
Dr. Wdowin is a member of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, the Oncology Association of Naturopathic Physicians, and the American College for Advancement in Medicine. Dr. Wdowin received his BA from Brown University, his medical degree from the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, and has spent the last few years working in the valley with an integrated team of D.O.'s, N.D.'s, and an M.D.(H).
Learn more at http://www.bodhi-body.com