Thermography

We must do better with our “knowing” in the medical field!  In detecting, thermography can detect injury and disease-causing inflammation, which has already been applied to thoroughbred racehorses. In 2010 a BioCytonics newsletter expounded that thermography could accurately detect a pregancy from day 1 of conception, a far more advanced pregnancy detection than anything we’ve seen yet. It can also expose some potential birth defects to predict potentially fatal premature delivery, allowing doctors the chance for early treatment, and otherwise ill-fated preemie babies another chance at life. Dr. Alan Smith of the Melbourne School of Engineering, commented, “I continue to be amazed at the scope of this technology and how it is being used. I believe thermography has a role to play in industry, defence and even in medicine.”

Dr. Mercola, the prolific health news authors and veteran osteopathic physician, promotes thermography as a “revolutionary,” non-invasive means of screening for breast cancer. [3Dr. Christiane Northrup, also recommended it on national TV on Oprah. Numerous doctors and studies offer evidence and support of thermography for early detection of breast cancer instead ofmammograms.

The Health Risks of Mammography

Many proponents of thermography and other non- or less invasive methods of breast cancer screenings believe the heat against heat-imaging is very obviously an issue of economics. Dr. Johnnie Ham MD OBGYN and former Lieutenant Colonel of the US Army Medical Corps had no problem making a blanket statement in his recent article Mammography: Are There Pros, or is it Just a Con?

“Breast cancer has become big business, starting with the multi-billion dollar goliath, mammography.”

But it’s not just big business. It turns out the industry-standard poses serious health risks to the women who’ve trusted it.

1. Radiation Increases Cancer Risk

Dr. Mercola has written prolifically about both the inadequacies and the hazards of mammograms, but he’s only one voice joining a worldwide choir calling mammograms a big-business cash cow, and a disease-prevention failure. Earlier this year a Brazilian doctor published the article, The Breast Cancer Prevention – avoid regular mammograms! He warns that the test exposes a woman’s body to “1,000 times greater than a chest x-ray,” and after five years, he continues, “it is as if the woman’s body received radiation such as the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at approximately 1600 meters (one mile) away from the epicenter!”

CNN Health reported in 2011 on a key report, Breast Cancer and the Environment, which named mammograms as an environmental factor that increases the risk of breast cancer.

The Cochrane Database Review (CDR), produced by the Cochrane Collaboration, is represented by more than 100 nations and internationally respected for information integrity, not to mention poking at the industrializing of biomedical research and corruption of scientific literature. A 2009 CDR made a controversial claim concerning mammograms, asserting that women ought to be informed of both “benefits and harms” when offered the option of mammogram screening.Two years later the British Medical Journal (BMJ) confirmed it with their article, Possible net harms of breast cancer screening:

“This analysis supports the [CDR] claim that the introduction of breast cancer screening might have caused net harm for up to 10 years after the start of screening.”

That is, it “might” do more harm than good. Dr. Samuel Epstein, a top cancer expert who is also Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition was quoted,

“the premenopausal breast is highly sensitive to radiation…[resulting in] a cumulative 10 percent increased risk for each breast over a decade’s screening.”

Rather than decreasing risk, there is 20% increased risk of developing the disease by regularly undergoing mammograms, as prescribed. Scratching your head yet?

2. Breast Compression Increases Risk of Spreading Malignant Cells

Further, the mammogram invasively compresses the breast. This trauma to the breast, writes Mercola, may “rupture cysts that can disseminate invasive cancer cells.”=Epstein backs this concern:

Since 1928, physicians have been warned to handle “cancerous breasts with care — for fear of accidentally disseminating cells” and spreading the cancer. Nevertheless, mammography entails tight and often painful breast compression, particularly in pre-menopausal women, which could lead to distant and lethal spread of malignant cells by rupturing small blood vessels in or around small undetected breast cancers.

3. Over-diagnosis Poses Unnecessary Long-Term Risks

80-85% of all breast lumps are benign, ie NON-cancerous, yet the current screening practices have led to 30% over-diagnosis and overtreatment (CDR), including unnecessary “preventive” double mastectomies, considered by not a few cancer experts to be tragic. Science News Magazine has reported that lumpectomies can actually “spur tumor growth,” and most of the time they’re unnecessary.

Perhaps it would be worth it if there were no better way to detect the disease and save lives. But research shows that mammography has had almost no impact on the rate of breast cancer deaths and, despite resistance from the FDA and other interested parties, many say there is a better way.

Thermography & Early Pre-Cancer Treatment

In addition to self and clinical breast exams, ultrasound and MRI as options, a growing number of healthcare professionals are now offering their patients thermographic screening. This form of testing will not only reveal a tumor, but it will expose chronic inflammation in the breast before it develops into cancer. A 2008 study of the method concluded that thermography has a 97% sensitivity in detecting malignant tumors. In the study, thermography detected 58 out of 60 malignancies, a stunning improvement from the reported 20% accuracy of mammograms.

Gaea Powell is a Board Certified Medical Thermographer who lost her 49 year old mother to breast cancer in 1991. She explains that thermography can detect the early signs of cancer “8-10 years earlier than a mammography or physical exam.”

Any area in the breast with high inflammation is considered literally and figuratively a “hot spot,” and will need to be monitored. If your doctor notes suspicious activity, such as continually rising temperature/inflammation or increasing areas of inflammation, they can begin early treatment.

Powell clarifies that thermography doesn’t diagnose cancer, but she reports that with pre-cancer detection and early treatment she’s “seen results in three to five months, where [the inflammation] is eliminated…”

So with thermography, we’re no longer looking for a developed or growing cancer, but inflammation. And at this early stage the methods of treatment are no longer radiation therapy, toxic drugs or invasive surgeries but alternative and nutritional therapies such as:

• lymphatic draining by massage,
• optimizing vitamin D and vitamin K2,
• balancing hormone levels,
• getting plenty of omega-3s,
• exercise,
• stress reduction and eliminating chronic stress,
• eating cancer-fighting foods and spices such as curcumin,
• and dramatically reducing intake of fructose, sugar, and refined processed foods, which are known cancer breeders.

Proponents believe that when caught this early, cancer can be stopped in its tracks. And before it gains any stronghold in your cells you can reprogram your body from creating cancer, to promoting vibrant health by empowering your very own, innate, natural defenses.

For more information about thermography technology and availability, or to find a Board Certified Thermographer, check out the non-profit International Academy of Clinical Thermology (IACT).

Ways to stop breast cancer tumors from growing and spreading

1. SEATTLE, March 19, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Scientists at the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) have made a discovery that opens the door to a potentially game-changing way to stop breast cancer tumors from growing and spreading.

The researchers – Emma L. Kuan, PhD, and Steven F. Ziegler, PhD – pinpointed how a protein called thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) helps breast cancer tumors survive and grow. Even more significant, the researchers showed that blocking TSLP in model systems can significantly inhibit the growth of breast tumors and halt metastasis to the lungs. The study was published in the latest issue of Nature Immunology.

“Breast cancer becomes especially dangerous once it spreads to other parts of the body,” Dr. Kuan says, “Our work suggests that blocking TSLP could prevent this from happening and potentially save the lives of women worldwide.”

How TSLP helps tumors

Researchers had previously found elevated TSLP levels in many different types of tumors, but its role in tumor biology was unclear. Drs. Kuan and Ziegler solved this mystery by using preclinical models to investigate what happens to breast cancer tumors when TSLP is taken away.

Their research revealed that the tumors didn’t grow nearly as large – or metastasize nearly as much – when they didn’t have access to TSLP. Breast cancer cells also died at a much higher rate in tumors without TSLP, compared to tumors where TSLP was present.

Hijacking immune cells

Once the researchers determined that TSLP was critical, they set out to uncover how it worked – and became the first to discover that tumors turn immune cells into accomplices that express TSLP.  The tumors do this by expressing another factor, called IL-1a that draws immune cells into the tumor and induces them to produce TSLP.  This TSLP is essential to the survival of the tumor, because it induces the tumor cells to express another protein called BCL-2. This protein protects the tumors from death.

Importantly, the researchers found that the same cells that make TSLP in the models also make TSLP in human breast cancer patients, and human breast tumor cells respond to TSLP in the same way.

“BCL-2 is like a magic potion that keeps cancer cells alive when they’re supposed to die,” Dr. Ziegler says, “To brew up that potion, the tumors need TSLP from an outside source – so they enlist specialized cells, attracted to the tumor by IL-1a, to make it for them.”

Stopping tumor growth

When Drs. Kuan and Ziegler used an antibody to block TSLP, it stopped tumors in their tracks – even when they had already started growing. Within two weeks, the tumors had shrunk significantly, more of their cells were dying and they had stopped spreading to the lungs. This suggests that anti-TSLP therapy could work in human patients with existing tumors.

“Blocking TSLP could potentially contain not just breast cancer, but many other tumors that have elevated TSLP – including pancreatic cancer, cervical cancer and multiple myeloma,” Dr. Kuan says.

Clinical trials of this strategy could be launched for cancer patients in the relatively near future. A drug that blocks TSLP has already been developed, and initial trials have shown that it’s safe in patients with asthma.

“We’re currently working on a better way to block only the TSLP that helps tumors,” Dr. Kuan says, “And we are really hopeful that this could become a viable strategy for containing tumors long-term, without interfering with TSLP in other healthy cells.”

TSLP: From allergic disease to cancer

TSLP is a novel cytokine that the Ziegler Lab first showed is involved in initiating the inflammatory cascade that leads to the development of asthma and other allergic diseases.  It is normally expressed in epithelial cells at barrier surfaces in the lungs, skin and gut.  When it was shown that increased TSLP is found in breast and pancreatic tumors, and that increased levels are correlated with negative patient outcome, the laboratory began investigating TSLP in cancer models.

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/benaroya-research-institute-scientists-uncover-new-strategy-for-stopping-breast-cancer-300615583.html

SOURCE Benaroya Research Institute