She says: "Breast cancer mortality rates show two peaks: one occurs three years after diagnosis, the other at nine years ... Increasingly, some researchers speculate that something associated with biopsy or surgery in some women stimulates growth factors, which for women with micrometastases ends up stimulating them and then they die." And this was seen in women of all ages, not just those in their 40s.
"Read This Before You Have a Mammogram," HealthFacts, October 2002
"To promote mammography to women under the age of 50 is absolutely unethical."
Michael Baum, MD, emeritus professor of surgery, believes that screening mammograms increase breast cancer deaths. He supports Judah Folkman's suggestion that we rename in situ cancer as "latent cancer." He warns: "If you identify these latent cancers [with mammograms] and biopsy them, you have traumatized the area. You immediately trigger the natural healing mechanisms ... [which] involve angiogenesis ... [A latent cancer] ceases to be latent. A latent disease becomes an aggressive disease." This is not limited to breast cancer. "If you find a symptomless renal tumor by chance and operate, in no time the patient is riddled with metastasis."
(See report on green tea countering this, below.)
"Surgeon Who Headed a U. K. Mammography Program Becomes One of Its Strongest Critics," HealthFacts, October 2002.
Veronica James, a bio-physicist at the Australian National University has found a way to screen women for breast cancer - by looking at one pubic hair. A special molecular structure is present in the hair of those who have breast cancer, and absent in those who don't have it.
"Good-bye to Mammograms," Discover, June, 1999.
DIETARY LINKS & LIFESTYLE
Exercise lowers everyone's risk of breast cancer, and even a little helps a lot. In a recent study, ten hours of exercise a week lowered the risk of breast cancer by 37%. But walking for an hour and a quarter a week - that's just a bit more than ten minutes a day - lowered risk by 30%.
"A Brisk Walk for Breasts," Nutrition Action Healthletter, December 2003.
"... inhibiting angiogenesis can arrest the growth of advanced tumors, even when they have become resistant to all other available therapy."
Green tea not only helps prevent cancer but actively represses it and stops its metastatic spread. Anti-angiogenetic factors in green tea, such as epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) reduce new blood vessel growth to tumors by up to 70% with as little as 3 cups of green tea a day.
