Many women, including some doctors, fear mammograms are causing over-treatment and mammogram radiation is resulting in more cases of cancer.
According to a study in The New England Journal of Medicine, between 1976 and 2008, 1.3 million U.S. women received unnecessary and invasive cancer treatments, including surgery, radiobiology, hormone therapy, and chemotherapy.
This is in large part due to routine mammograms detecting harmless tumors.
Other studies conducted in European countries have concluded that mammograms reduce the risk of death from cancer by less than 10% or not at all.
But when combined with anatomical testing, breast thermography can reduce the number of false positives and over-treatment of breast cancer by demonstrating whether a tumor is metabolically active or not.
Mammogram Radiation Puts Young Women at Risk
More than 20,000 cases of breast cancer have been reported annually in U.S. women under the age of 40.
Unfortunately, when cancer strikes a younger woman, it is typically a more aggressive form and is less likely to respond to treatment.
But despite this greater risk, younger women have been consistently neglected by traditional breast cancer screenings, and besides mammography, there is currently no other routine screening test for women under the age of 40.
Thermography, on the other hand, offers an ideal test for this age group, especially considering that it’s radiation-free.
If you’d like to learn more about the dangers of mammogram radiation, check out the video below from NutritionFacts.org.
Offering Breast, Upper Body, and Full Body Exams
Contact me to book your thermography appointment today.
A few weeks ago, I sat down with author and host of the A Quest for Well-Being podcast, Valeria T. Koopman, to talk about what you can do to ensure you have healthy breasts.
We had an amazing conversation, which covered many aspects of breast health, including:
Your relationship with your breasts
The benefits of breast thermography
The harmful effects of environmental estrogens
How your oral health can affect your breast health
Nutrition and supplementation for healthy breasts
So, if you’re looking to learn more about what you can do to have healthy breasts, including how radiation-free thermography can help you detect potential breast health issues as early as possible, then this is a video you cannot afford to miss.
With summer not too far away, you may think your vitamin D will soon be back to optimal levels.
But if that’s what you think, you can think again.
Functional medicine guru Dr. Mark Hyman says, “Unless you live 20 minutes south of Atlanta, and you are outside totally naked for 15 minutes a day in the sun, you need vitamin D.”
African Americans and other dark-skinned people, along with those living in northern latitudes, make significantly less vitamin D than other groups. The darker your skin is, the less likely it is you will produce adequate vitamin D levels from sun exposure alone.
That being said, it is important to get vitamin D3 through diet, sunlight, or supplements every day.
This is because when vitamin D is sent directly to the body’s tissues it is only active for 24 hours. So, to boost our immune system and ward off cancer we need new input every day.
Vitamin D impacts our bones, regulates calcium and strengthens our immune system. What’s more, researchers have found that vitamin D directly affects the cells in the breast.
Vitamin D influences virtually every cell in your body and is one of nature’s most potent cancer fighters.
Inside almost every cell in the body is a vitamin D receptor (VDR). A VDR is a protein that controls the expression of genes. The vitamin D in our blood enters breast cells, binds to the VDRs, and triggers positive change. Vitamin D is also able to enter cancer cells and trigger natural cell death, preventing, slowing, or even stopping cancer growth.
There have been many studies on vitamin D and breast cancer that demonstrate a 50-80% lower risk of breast cancer diagnosis for women with serum levels of >40 ng/ml versus levels of 25 ng/ml or lower.
According to Dr. Cedric F. Garland, a professor of family and preventive medicine, “As long as vitamin D receptors are present, tumor growth is prevented and kept from expanding its blood supply. Vitamin D receptors are not lost until a tumor is very advanced. This is the reason for better survival in patients whose vitamin D blood levels are high.”
Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington D.C. discovered a connection between high vitamin D intake and a reduced risk of breast cancer.
These findings, which were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research, revealed that increased dosage of the sunshine vitamin was linked to a 75% reduction in overall cancer growth and a 50% reduction in tumor cases among those already having the disease.
Vitamin D supplementation helped control the development and growth of breast cancer, especially with estrogen-sensitive breast cancer.
Rochester Medical Center examined vitamin D levels in 155 breast cancer patients in the months before and after surgery. They found suboptimal levels to be highly predictive of the biological markers associated with more aggressive tumors.
The average level in patients with breast cancer in the United States is 17 ng/ml.
At any rate, having an optimal vitamin D serum level helps to prevent a wide variety of diseases and other health issues. Vitamin D levels need to be between 50 and 70 ng/ml year round. According to recent findings from the D*action study, adults need about 8,000 IUs of D3 per day to get serum levels above 40 ng/ml.
If you take high doses of oral vitamin D3 supplements, you may also need to increase your vitamin K2 intake, as vitamin D increases the need for K2 so your body can absorb calcium.
There is new evidence that vitamin K2 directs the calcium to your skeleton, while preventing it from being deposited where you don’t want it.
The tricky thing about vitamin D deficiency is that there aren’t any symptoms until you are really depleted. Only a blood test can check vitamin D levels.
Insurance pays for D testing. But if you’re without insurance, there are independent labs online that will do the test.
Conventional health experts tell us that a level of 20 ng/ml to 50 ng/ml is considered adequate for healthy people and anything below 12 ng/ml is a deficiency.
But the truth is those are reckless, risky numbers. Optimal ranges are 50-70 ng/ml. Again, it is best to monitor your Vitamin D levels through a blood test.
When in doubt, always choose optimal over normal or adequate.
In any case, whenever you can, try to get out and enjoy the sun, and if you use sunscreen, make sure it’s natural.
You should also make a point of doing regular breast cancer screening via thermography and/or ultrasound and don’t forget to take your vitamin D!
Offering Breast, Upper Body and Full Body Exams
Contact me to book your thermography appointment today.
As a thermographer, I have imaged thousands of women, and one of the most common things I find is lymphatic backup, which can be caused by wearing a bra.
Every time I see this, it provides a poignant reminder of the fact that wearing a bra can put your breasts at risk of breast disease and even breast cancer.
It’s these kinds of findings that make me even more grateful for the research of experts like Sydney Ross Singer.
His findings are crucial for women who want to take control of their breast health, and he was nice enough to let me publish another one of his articles, which you can read below:
Have you or someone you know been harmed by wearing bras?
If so, then you could become a co-plaintiff in a future class action lawsuit against the bra and cancer industries.
Product liability applies to garments, as well as other consumer products, and bras are known to cause health problems, including everything from headaches and back pain to nerve compression and tingling in the hands.
Bras have been shown to affect digestion, breathing, and even menstruation since they also interfere with the sympathetic nervous system.
Bras can also constrict the lymphatic system, which is the circulatory pathway of the immune system.
This causes reduced lymph and blood circulation, toxin accumulation, and reduced immune function, which can lead to breast pain, cysts, and even cancer.
The degree of damage that a bra can cause depends on the bra’s material, its toxic chemical content, how tightly it’s worn, the length of time it’s worn daily, and the number of years it has been worn.
According to the 1991-93 US Bra and Breast Cancer Study, documented in Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras, bra-free women have about the same risk of breast cancer as men, and the tighter and longer a bra is worn the higher the risk rises, to over 100 times higher for a 24/7 bra user compared to a bra-free woman.
Since that groundbreaking study, numerous other studies worldwide have confirmed a bra-cancer link.
The Lymph Connection
The lymphatic system consists of microscopic vessels that originate in the tissue space and lead to larger, but still tiny vessels that ultimately enter a lymph node. These nodes are bean-sized filters lined by white blood cells. This is the front line of the immune system.
Most of a breast’s lymph nodes are in the armpit. If the nodes detect a virus, cancer cell, or other foreign or hazardous substance in the tissue fluid, they begin an immune response by producing white blood cells to combat the problem.
Once through the lymph node, the fluid works its way through larger lymphatic vessels back to the heart and the bloodstream.
One important fact about the lymphatic system is that it is a passive drainage system. While the bloodstream delivers fluid under the pumping pressure of the heart, the lymphatic system has no pressure. Its flow is influenced by gravity, breathing, exercise, movement, and massage, and it is kept moving toward the lymph nodes by one-way valves.
The slightest constriction or compression of the tissue can close down the tiny lymphatic vessels, inhibiting lymph flow and leading to fluid accumulation, cysts, pain, and tenderness.
This fluid congestion within the tissue is called lymphedema.
Bras + Toxins = Cancer
The toxins that are within the breast tissue include some biochemical products of tissue edema, such as free radicals, which are known to cause cancer.
In addition, there are toxins in our air, food, and water, including pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, plastics, and other products of our petrochemically polluted world. Many of these are known to cause cancer, and we deliver these toxins to all our tissues each day through the bloodstream.
It is the job of the lymphatic system to remove these toxins, but bras can inhibit this process by compressing and constricting the breasts.
This is how bras cause breast cancer.
Cancer-causing toxins are delivered to the breast tissue by the bloodstream and are kept there by the bra. The toxins are the bullets, and the bra holds them in place, pointed directly at the breasts.
In addition, cancer cells that spontaneously develop in germ cells of the breast tissue cannot be properly removed from the breasts when the lymphatics are impaired. This means the body cannot effectively kill these seeds of cancer, allowing cancers to develop.
The breasts are the most clothing-constricted of any organ, and this explains why women have more cancer in the breast than anywhere else in their bodies.
It also explains why women have more breast cancer than men, and why breast cancer is only a problem in cultures in which bras are worn.
Where there are no bras, there is virtually no breast cancer.
If you feel you have been harmed by wearing a bra, please reach out to Sydney Ross Singer at sydsinger@gmail.com.
When you get home, after you take off your shoes, what’s the next thing you take off? Probably your bra.
But if society didn’t dictate wearing a bra, would you? Are you at a loss to find a comfortable bra? And if your breasts could talk, what do you think they would say?
He has studied the health impact of wearing bras around the world. Please enjoy this article, which he has given me permission to share:
Of all the body parts, the breasts would probably have the most to say, if they only could. But even if breasts could talk, would women listen?
In modern Western culture, breasts have taken on more than their biological role as mammary glands to feed babies. Breasts are cultural icons, sexualized and fetishized through the use of a special garment constructed to alter the shape and position of the breasts on the chest wall, to limit breast movement, and to hide the nipples. The garment, of course, is the brassiere, or bra.
How Do the Breasts Feel in a Bra?
Are they comfortable being compressed, constricted, and reshaped? When a bra leaves marks on the skin, it is from compression. This interferes with circulation in the breasts of blood and lymph. The result is pain, cysts, and ultimately, breast cancer.
This woman has not been wearing a bra for 15 minutes prior to her thermography exam. The red in her upper torso is lymphatic backup.
Of course, most women are introduced to bra usage when they reach puberty, as a rite of passage into womanhood and a future of needing to manage their breast appearance.
The “training bra” breaks the girls in, as they get used to the discomfort of having a tight band around the chest. After that, girls don’t think about the discomfort so much, or at least they learn to subordinate their breast discomfort to the mandates of fashion and society.
In other words, girls become desensitized to the feeling of their breasts through the use of bras. The chronic constriction of daily bra usage, however, does take a toll on breast health, leading to lymphatic stagnation, or lymph-stasis, with associated tissue toxification and eventual deterioration.
You can’t have healthy breasts if you have poor circulation from wearing tight bras daily. Circulate or deteriorate. The choice is each woman’s, although the fashion industry would like to make that choice for all women, turning breasts into fashion accessories.
Meanwhile, the breasts are crying for help, but are told to just shut up and put up with it.
Culture Has Usurped the Breasts for Fashion
Women are culturally compelled to wear bras to be socially accepted.
A fetish garment for the breasts that serves no biological purpose, and can also cause harm, is the standard of dress for women, even for professional women whose work has no relevance to a breast fetish.
The cultural programming needed to achieve this remarkable commitment to breast obsession has resulted in a cultural blind spot to the hazards of wearing tight bras.
As a result, the bra has become the leading cause of breast disease. Circulation of blood and lymph is essential for health, and any tight garment interferes with circulation. Women wear bras daily, often for 12 or more hours and sometimes 24/7. Over time, the constriction takes its toll.
And since bra use is universal throughout the culture, it’s hard to find bra-free women with whom to compare breast health with those who use bras. In order to see the problems caused by wearing bras, you need to have a comparison with bra-free breasts.
How Can You Tell if a Bra Is Causing Harm?
Bras are known to cause health problems, from headaches and back pain to nerve compression and tingling in the hands.
Bras have been shown to affect digestion, breathing, and even menstruation since bras also interfere with the sympathetic nervous system.
Bras constrict the lymphatic system, which is the circulatory pathway of the immune system. This causes reduced lymph and blood circulation, toxin accumulation, and reduced immune function, which leads to breast pain, cysts, and cancer.
The degree of damage from bras depends on the bra material and its toxic chemical content, its tightness, the length of time it is worn daily, and the number of years it has been worn.
Stop wearing a bra and see how it makes you feel. If bras have been harming you in some way, you will feel better when you stop wearing them.
If you feel you have been harmed by wearing a bra, please reach out to Sydney Ross Singer at sydsinger@gmail.com.
According to the 1991-93 US Bra and Breast Cancer Study, documented in Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras, bra-free women have about the same risk of breast cancer as men, while the tighter and longer the bra is worn the higher the risk rises, to over 100 times higher for a 24/7 bra user compared to a bra-free woman. Since that groundbreaking study, numerous other studies worldwide have confirmed a bra-cancer link.
Bras are also used as medical devices, worn tightly to stop lactation. And while a tight bra can cause breast lymphedema, bras are also used as a compression garment to manage lymphedema. Clearly, bras have an impact on breast function and circulation.
Despite the fact that bras affect the health of the breasts, bras are sold without any wearing instructions or warning labels. While manufacturers provide sizing charts, these do not mention the problems with wearing ill-fitting bras. In addition, many styles of bras are constrictive and tight by design, such as push-up and strapless bras, even if worn at the recommended size. There is also no mention of the maximum recommended wearing time for these garments.
Some bra manufacturers have responded to the consumer demand for more comfortable and healthy clothing, developing less toxic materials and more comfortable, less constrictive designs.
However, the lingerie industry may still be found liable for the harm caused by its products, and bras may eventually be required to have instructions about tightness and limiting the time that they’re worn.
The complicated issues women often face with their breasts, from oversexualized belief systems and femininity to the range of emotions they face following breast surgeries like biopsies, lumpectomies, and mastectomies, remind us of the need to address this vital organ in a healthy and comfortable way.
Luckily, breast massage can help you to do this, and by instituting breast massage as a regular health practice, you can prioritize preventative breast care and encourage a healthy and open connection to your breasts – free of shame, innuendo, or societal taboos.
At any rate, breast massage is an incredibly useful tool for maintaining the health of your breasts.
According to the Texas Institute of Functional Medicine, breast massage is the act of slowly kneading and stroking the breasts, using varying amounts of mild to moderate pressure through gentle lifting and compressive movements.
With that said, you can perform a breast massage on yourself or with the help of your partner.
Its primary purpose is to rid your body of the harmful toxins that interfere with your health; however, there are many cosmetic and therapeutic breast massage benefits, as well.
For example, breast massage can help you to maintain the shape of your breasts and make your breasts firmer and less likely to sag, with the result being a more attractive bust line.
According to Ayurvedic wisdom, the practice of breast massage aligns with centuries-old healing practices, which teach that in order to maintain a state of balance, the whole person must be addressed, and that includes the breasts.
Unfortunately, in many healing practices, the breast area is often overlooked. Breast massage addresses this gap in treatment to meet the needs of all women – healthy women, women who have been diagnosed with or are survivors of breast cancer, women who have fibrocystic breasts, and women who are recovering from breast augmentation, reduction, or cardiac abnormalities.
Preventative Benefits of Breast Massage
As nice as it is to have a healthy, attractive bust line, there are much more serious issues to consider, aside from how your breasts look and feel.
That being said, it’s important that you familiarize yourself with the shape and feel of your breasts in order to detect any abnormalities. Early detection could be the key to saving your life.
With breast cancer still being one of the most common cancers among women in the United States, it is crucial that you do not neglect this important aspect of your health.
Fortunately, regular breast massage, coupled with monthly self-examinations, is a good way to check your breasts for changes or irregularities.
Couple this with yearly thermography, an ultrasound, and a healthy lifestyle, and you will be promoting healthy breasts.
Health Benefits of Breast Massage
As you can see, there are many health benefits associated with massaging your breasts.
Breast massage is a way to nourish and maintain healthy breast tissue and musculature before potential issues arise, and to heal physically, emotionally, and spiritually after a life-changing disease, such as breast cancer.
Most breasts are confined to a bra all day, but releasing its constrictive nature around the lymph nodes on the outer quadrants of the breasts can give your breasts a chance to breathe and let the lymph flow.
Massaging your breasts also stimulates circulation, which is necessary for keeping your breast tissue healthy.
Moreover, massage helps break up benign cysts in breast tissue (cysts are rampant in breasts these days and are one of the leading reasons for biopsies), relieves tension in the muscle tissue of the chest, and builds resilience in the ligaments.
Breast massage is also a good healing technique for aching breasts, and because it employs a soft, gentle touch, breast massage can be quite therapeutic. Simply rubbing an area can have a demonstrable analgesic effect.
Among other things, breast massage eases soreness in the tissues, reduces pain and swelling in the breasts, relaxes tightness or tension in the ligaments, and it’s particularly useful in soothing the pain associated with breast scarring.
According to the Texas Institute of Functional Medicine, breast massage is a reliable means of flushing out toxins from the body through the lymphatic system.
Because toxins impede healthy circulation in the breasts, toxic buildup could account for an increased chance of developing cancer. But breast massage stimulates drainage of the breasts and the lymphatic system, which helps to eliminate harmful waste products and encourages nutrient-rich blood to travel to the breast tissue.
How to Massage Your Breasts
Sit in front of a mirror and cup your breast from underneath while you massage with the other hand, working in gentle but firm strokes from the outer breast to the nipple.
Make your thumb and middle fingers into a “V” shape and press from the outside edges to the center, systematically massaging the entire breast.
Lift your arm up toward the ceiling and take the opposite hand to the outer chest where it connects to the arm. Massage the lymphatic area of the upper chest and inner armpit with gentle strokes. Then massage under the neck and on the sides of the throat up to the base of the ear.
Try spending five to ten minutes just gently stroking.
There are also many essential oils and creams that support lymphatic flow and are beneficial for lumpy and dense breasts.
The citrus family of essential oils is notable for its lymphatic effects. These essential oils include sweet orange, lemon, tangerine, and grapefruit, and are popularly thought of as cleansing.
By stimulating the lymphatic system, these oils can help to relieve stagnancy and help the lymph to move.
Additionally, citrus oils are known to have diuretic properties, which can further assist the body in ridding itself of lymphatic waste via the urinary tract.
But if you’re going to use these essential oils, make sure to always mix them with a carrier oil. Start by mixing one ounce of carrier oil with 10-15 drops of a single oil, or five of each for a combination oil.
When it comes to carrier oils, I recommend using organic almond, coconut, jojoba, or olive oil.
One of my favorites comes from Barbara Rogers of Simply Divine Botanicals. She has the most delightful and fragrant breast massage cream infused with 15 botanicals that also encourages lymphatic drainage.
Back in November of 2021, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Health and Vitality Coach and host of Own Your Wellness, Julie Ann Meyer, to talk about breast health.
We had quite an interesting conversation, covering several topics related to breast health, such as:
Breast cancer
Dense breasts
Lymphatic drainage
Breast thermography
Environmental estrogens
So, if you want to learn more about breast health, including why thermography offers the earliest detection of breast health-related issues, factors that are linked to breast health problems, and how to maintain the health of your breasts, then you’ve got to watch this video.
Interested in learning more about breast health and thermography, including the healthcare decisions you can make to improve your chances of keeping your breasts healthy? You should read my book, Thermography and the Fibrocystic and Dense Breast.
Once again, we find ourselves in the pinkwashing month of October.
Known as Breast Cancer Awareness Month, this time of year ushers in a flurry of pink ribbons, and the war-like mantra, “Catch it early, save a life and save a breast.”
Yet we still have no cure in sight. Just treatments.
Fortunately, there are options. Women can also consider using infrared imaging or thermography for their breast cancer screening.
This technology can detect very small differences in temperature and “see” the blood vessels in breast tissue.
Density, size, cysts, and other variables do not make any difference.
Whatever the case may be, seeing blood vessels is important because tumors develop new blood vessels to supply nutrients for new growth, whereas lumps without a blood supply are at a much lower risk of being cancerous.
That being said, this test provides early information about breast cancer risk that also allows ample time for lifestyle changes that can further minimize your risk of developing breast cancer.
So, considering this is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, let’s focus on true breast health awareness by looking at ways to prevent cancer at the cellular level, such as minimizing our exposure to environmental toxins.
True Breast Health Awareness
I know I’ve addressed this in a previous blog, but it bears repeating that detoxing from foreign estrogens and chemicals is a must for maintaining good health in the long term.
When it comes to breast cancer, the greatest concern is exposure to a group of toxins called endocrine disruptors, which are chemicals and byproducts that mimic the effects of estrogen in the body or cause estrogen to act in a way that isn’t normal.
Using these products in combination with hundreds of other chemicals that we come in contact with on a daily basis may increase the risk of several cancers.
The average adult is exposed to 126 chemicals every day just in their personal care products alone. So, if you want to be healthy, being educated on the latest toxins is a must!
At the same time, it’s just as important to point out how we’re being exposed to these toxins.
Much of our exposure comes from chemicals in household and personal care products, along with food, plastics, air, water, synthetic fabrics, such as polyester, and of course, exposure to ionizing radiation from health care procedures.
Whatever it is you’re being exposed to, make sure to keep this stuff in mind so you can work to minimize the toxins you’re being subjected to in your daily life.
The Connection Between Plastics and Breast Cancer
The connection between plastics and breast cancer was first discovered in 1987 at Tufts Medical School in Boston by research scientists Dr. Ana Soto and Dr. Carlos Sonnenschein.
In the midst of their experiments on cancer cell growth, endocrine-disrupting chemicals leached from plastic test tubes into the researcher’s laboratory experiment, causing a rampant proliferation of breast cancer cells.
In addition, Spanish researchers, Fatima and Nicolas Olea, tested metal food cans that were lined with plastic.
Around 50% of the cans tested were found to be leaching hormone-disrupting chemicals, and the levels of contamination were 27 times more than the amount a Stanford team reported was enough to make breast cancer cells proliferate.
Reportedly, 85% of the food cans in the United States are lined with plastic. Both of these findings were published in Environmental Health Perspectives.
So, if you want to reduce your exposure to these chemicals, make sure to do whatever you can to avoid exposing yourself to plastics, like only purchasing cans that say BPA-free.
Whatever you choose to do, these studies show that plastics are simply not good for us, and this is reflected in the increase in breast cancer that has coincided with the proliferation of plastics. Prior to 1940, breast cancer was relatively rare; today it affects one in eight women.
Now, let’s talk about polyester.
This fabric is soft, smooth, and supple, but it is still made from plastic, and this contributes to our body’s burden in ways that we are just beginning to understand.
For example, polyester is highly flammable, and it’s often treated with a flame retardant, which increases its toxic load.
Now, at this point, many of you are probably thinking that there’s no need to worry, as you’ve lived this long being exposed to these chemicals and haven’t had a problem.
But remember, the human body can only withstand a certain amount of toxins, and those endocrine-disrupting chemicals that don’t seem to bother you could end up affecting you years down the road.
What You Can Do to Reduce Your Risk
A healthy lifestyle, coupled with an effort to minimize your exposure to toxins can help protect your breasts and lower your risk.
At the same time, experts say early detection methods are key, and thermography is the earliest and most effective way of detecting breast cancer without radiation, in tandem with an ultrasound.
Thermography can also identify your levels of estrogen dominance and environmental contaminants, such as xenoestrogens and Bisphenol A (BPA), which attach to the receptor sites of breasts and mimic our natural estrogens.
Estrogens affect breast tissue, showing up as distinct heat patterns that can be seen on thermal imaging. The textbook appearance is one of “leopard spots” or hypervascularization.
Routine hormonal panels do not test for these estrogens, which are linked to the alarming and increasingly common issue seen in thermographic screenings known as fibrocystic breast syndrome AKA estrogen dominance.
With that in mind, if you want to maintain the health of your breasts, you need to know what’s going on with them, and only thermography can provide you with a visual image that can assess the severity of this syndrome.
This can be used as a preventative adjunctive screening for identifying signs of abnormal pathology years before conventional anatomical screenings.
It’s safe, environmentally friendly, radiation-free, and also safe for pregnant or nursing mothers, young dense breasts, fibrocystic breasts, and even implants.
In any case, it’s time for women to take action to reduce their risk, become informed consumers, and make concerted efforts to analyze their environments.
This involves things like reading product labels to avoid purchasing products that could harm you or your family.
You can also work with a holistic healthcare practitioner to detoxify your body.
All things considered, practicing radical self-care is becoming increasingly important, and living in a sea of toxins is not to be ignored. Health is wealth!
That being said, if you want to prioritize the health of your breasts by evaluating and monitoring them on a cellular level, thermographic imaging is your best option.
It seems as though fashion designers forgot to think of practicality or function when designing women’s clothing.
With annoyingly small pants pockets that can’t fit more than a key or a lipstick tube, with some “pockets” that are sewed shut or simply try to give off the appearance of a pocket, women have had to improvise on their own.
Hence, the phone-in-the-bra phenomenon.
Bras were not designed to hold phones and cash, yet females are stashing their accessories in this make-shift pocket for lack of a better option. Whether it’s at the gym, getting drinks downtown, or running errands, this desperate act has become a commonplace trend.
Now, designers—who are finally thinking of female clothing practicality—have even put pockets on bras and sports bras!
However, as much as we understand the necessity of it, holding a cell phone in your bra can be compromising your health.
Cell phones may seem harmless, yet recent research shows there may be a link between non-ionizing cell phone radiation and tumor growth in the breast. This connection has prompted a proliferation in research on cell phone radiation and the discovery of non-intuitive correlations between cell phones and breast cancer.
How Cell Phone Radiation Affects Breasts
In a 2013 University of California study, four women between the ages of 21-39 were found to have multi-focal invasive breast cancer or breast cancer that arose from more than one location on the breast tissue.
These women had no family history of breast cancer and tested negative for BRCA1 and BRCA2 and other known genetic breast cancer risks.
However, these women all regularly carried their smartphones directly against their breasts in their brassieres for up to 10 hours a day for several years. Each developed tumors in the areas of their breasts, immediately underlying their phone placement.
Mammograms show clustered calcification (in white) corresponding to multiple sites of disease for case patient 1. Source: PubMed
Case 1 involved a 21-year-old female, who experienced spontaneous bloody nipple discharge. She kept her cell phone tucked in her bra on the left side for several hours each day.
Case 2 involved another 21-year-old female who discovered a hard mass in the area where her cellular phone was kept in direct contact with her left breast. She had placed her cellular device in her bra for 8+ hours a day for the course of 6 years. Later studies showed that her cancer had spread to the bone.
Case 3 involved a 33-year-old female who discovered two masses in the upper outer quadrant of her right breast, directly underneath where her cellular phone was placed against her bra. She had placed her cell phone in her bra intermittently for 8 years. Routinely, she would place her cell phone in her bra and use the GPS application to determine her location while jogging. Cancer had spread to her lymph node.
Case 4 involved a 39-year-old female with three distinct masses in the area of cellular phone contact with her right breast. She had placed her cell phone in her bra while commuting to work and used Bluetooth to talk for hours each day for the past 10 years. Multiple lymph nodes tested positive for spread of the disease.
In the study, all four cases showed striking similarity. All tumors were hormone-positive, low-intermediate grade, and possessed nearly identical morphology. Lesions were found in the breast tissue. MRI scans lit up and showed dense masses.
Due to the similarity of the disease and cases, the authors strongly emphasize the need for more safety data on the effects of prolonged direct contact with cell phones. They point out that breast cancer is typically uncommon for women in their 20s and 30s, as less than 5% of women in this age range typically get the disease.
Usually, when one has this disease, it is associated with a genetic predisposition, of which, none of these women had. The researchers concluded that there is probable evidence that the non-ionizing cell phone radiation causes breast cancer.
In another meta-analysis conducted in 2014, 16 research reports of case-control studies published between 2000 and 2007 were analyzed to look for the relationship between exposure to cell phone radiation and breast cancer. The researchers found that low-level radiation may increase the risk of breast cancer in women with the relative risk being 1.10 overall, and 1.25 in the non-menopausal group. The relative risk in the menopausal group was not significant (1.04).
As is necessary to prove any theory, a relationship would need to be confirmed on a much larger scale with more test subjects. Because there is little laboratory or clinical evidence in existence to-date, these studies were only able to show suggestive evidence and are not considered conclusive.
Unfortunately, researchers know very little about cancer to-date and only a small amount of work has thus far been done in this particular area. Scientists are still working on understanding the disease of cancer itself and have only recently elucidated its mechanism of action. Interestingly, the International Agency for Research on Cancer has only classified Radio Frequency (RF) waves of the electromagnetic spectrum, the form that cellular devices emit, as a possible human carcinogen.
Limited Attention to the Issue
Unfortunately, not many people seem to be aware of the health risks of cell phones, and a woman with a cell phone sticking out of her bra or bra strap is a normal—and frequent—occurence.
Efforts, though, have been made to inform the public of the correlation between breast cancer and cell phone contact. Popular television personalities, including medical doctor, Dr. Oz, have even gone so far as to devote entire segments to this issue. Dr. Oz released a segment entitled, “Why You Should Keep Your Cell Phone Out of Your Bra.” Local news segments also aired when the research first came out.
Nonetheless, the general public seems to be largely ignorant of the potential danger or have forgotten the research results, if they were ever informed. A Google search on the keyword “breast cancer and cell phones” yields very few results, most outdated by a year.
Surprisingly, even on the Susan G. Komen website, cell phones are listed as one of the factors that do not increase the risk of breast cancer. Perhaps this is because there has been limited study and experts provide confusing information.
On the American Cancer Society website, they acknowledge that there may be a link of women developing cancer from cell phones placed in their bras, but also that it may all be a coincidence. We just don’t know because there has been such limited study. Yet, the amount of information presented on another page of the American Cancer Society website is so overwhelming, it is hard to decipher the final conclusion on what types of cancers may or may not be caused by cell phones, how many, and what type of studies were done where.
What Women Can Do
Until more data becomes available on cell phone radiation, it is generally recommended by experts to avoid any kind of skin contact with cell phones.
In the fine print, many cell phone manufacturers have actually even placed a warning in their manuals, stating that direct contact with skin should be avoided. For instance: the iPhone user manual advises that the phone be kept 6 inches or 15 cm (5/8 inch) or more away from your body.
More research is clearly needed on cell phone radiation, in order for any kind of regulation to make its way through and be noticed by the public. While consumers are waiting for science and laws to catch up, it is important to do what you can to be safe.
Avoid unnecessary exposure to cell phone radiation. Tell your friends and loved ones about this, too. The risk of breast cancer from cell phone radiation is not worth the convenience of storing your cell phone in your bra.
To understand the process of using thermography for detecting breast cancer, we must first understand physiology. We are not looking for breast cancer itself per say, but physiological changes that may be involved with its formation and growth. Breast cancer can cause inflammation due to tissue disruption, or through the development of new blood vessels that feed the tumor — a process known as angiogenesis.
However, some physiological changes can also make it more difficult to detect breast cancer, such as a symphatic response that causes hypothermia in the tissue around a tumor. This is why following up is so important, as thermography and other anatomical tests can evaluate the body over time and under different physiological states. Physiology is key, and we should be mindful of the signs and obstacles when trying to detect breast cancer as early as possible.
More on ANGIOGENESIS…
by Kimberly Lavoie, ACNP-BC, CCRN, SCRN
As Dr. Piana stated, angiogenesis is the formation of new blood vessels from previously existing blood vessel plexus. This process involves the growth of endothelial cells, which line the inside walls of blood vessels. It is supportive in the healing of wounds and granulation of tissues. Physiological angiogenesis is a normal and vital process in growth and development specifically, during fetal development, female reproductive cycle, and tissue repair. The fine balance between pro-angiogenic growth factor (GF), anti-angiogenic GF, and cytokines tightly regulate angiogenesis.
Whereas, an uncontrolled or inadequate balance of angiogenesis plays a pivotal role in pathological angiogenesis and promotes the formation of neoplasms, retinopathies, coronary artery disease, and other various disease processes. Tumors are dependent on angiogenesis and need vascular growth to transition from a benign to a malignant state. In the absence of vascular growth, tumors are not sustainable. With increased vascular activity generating heat, thermography can aid in early detection.
