Breast Cancer? Breast Health!
The Wise Woman Way
by Susun S. Weed
Paperback - 380 pages
ISBN: 0961462078
Published by Ash Tree Publishing
Chapter 5.
Mammograms -Who Needs Them?Excerpt from Breast Cancer? Breast Health! By Susun S. Weed
Mammograms don't find cancer before it metastasizes
Breast cancers generally don't begin to metastasize until they contain at least one million cells. It takes an ordinary breast cancer-one that doubles every 100 days-about six years to grow that large.17 (Some very slow breast cancers take 20 years to accumulate a million cells. A very fast breast cancer can get there in a year.) But a million cells is still only as big as the dot at the end of this sentence. And that's undetectable by either touch or mammogram. (But not by intuition. I've met several women who "felt" their cancers at this tiny size but couldn't convince anyone they had cancer because the medical diagnostic equipment, though technologically advanced, wasn't as perceptive as their inner wisdom.)
By the time a cancer is big enough to be seen on a mammogram, it's usually 8 years old, has 500 million cells, and is approximately one-quarter inch (half a centimeter) long.18 It has been large enough to metastasize, if it is going to, for a year or more. (Some breast cancers never metastasize, no matter how large they get.)
Read the rest of Chapter 5 (click on any section below)
Mammograms - Who needs them?
All mammograms are x-rays.
Mammograms are inaccurate.
Mammograms can't tell if there's cancer.
Mammograms don't replace breast self-exams.
Mammographic screening increases risk of breast cancer mortality in premenopausal women.
Why I haven't had a baseline mammogram.
Mammograms aren't safe.
Screening mammograms lead to overtreatment.
Screening mammograms don't increase your chances of being cured . . . or of surviving longer.
Mammograms don't find cancer before it metastasizes.
Aren't mammograms life saving for women over 55?
Yearly screening mammograms aren't cost effective to society nor are they safe environmentally.
Is there a less risky way to participate in screening mam-mography?
Mammograms distract us from the need for societal commitment to true prevention.
Are there other ways to find early-stage breast cancers?
Mammograms don't promote breast health.
If You Decide to Have a Mammogram.
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