Our healthcare system focuses primarily on early detection and the destruction and elimination of cancer cells. This is important yet is not it just common sense to prevent breast cancer in the first place? <!–More–>
Our federal government spends roughly $900 million annually on breast cancer research and programs. Additionally, there are many outreach community programs like the Susan G. Koman Breast Cancer Foundation that has spent roughly $1 billion since its inception 25 years ago.
But what about focusing on actual prevention as opposed to on more technology for earlier detection?
Are we any closer to finding effective way of preventing breast cancer? In accordance with our media which compels sensational news and is financially supported by the world’s wealthiest sector, the pharmaceutical companies, there are hardly any specific preventatives that western medicine can endorse. Learn more about the mission of breast cancer awareness foundation, just check out breast cancer funding to read more information.
BUT we do have medical research which DOES prove viable options for prevention. I will cover only one of them.
1 risk of breast cancer is thyroid disorder. This comes from several research articles. The first to make this connection was one from Pisa, Italy where they demonstrated that 50 percent of the 103 women with ductal cell carcinoma (breast cancer) had thyroid conditions. These included thyroid goiter (most often brought on by low iodine), Hashimoto’s (thyroid autoimmune disease ) and sub-acute thyroiditis (inflammation).
This proportion of those participants with thyroid disorder could have been even higher if both subclinical and sub-optimal hypothyroidism was included. The conclusion of the research suggested that doctors should screen their breast cancer patients for thyroid issues.
Yet here is this a normal case of the way in which a decision can be too narrow because it doesn’t connect itself with other relevant research.
There are various studies from around the world that have made the link between the reduced incidence of breast cancer.
In 1976 the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, published a study focusing on the incidence of cancers in a variety of countries around the world. At the time this research shook the entire world because it exposed the higher rate of breast cancer in U.S. girls as compared with Japanese girls. Their conclusion discovered the only variable between the two cultures was that the high consumption of iodine rich foods located in Japan.
How are the two studies, the one from Italy and the one from The Lancet, maybe related?
They indicate a few important points.
The first is that women with breast cancer have a higher incidence of thyroid difficulties. We all know that such problems, thyroid goiter, low thyroid hormones and Hashimoto’s have their source in inadequate intake of iodine and iodide.
Your doctor might not agree with this last statement regarding Hashimoto’s but that is simply as they’re not knowledgeable about the latest research.
So, might an iodine deficiency cause a woman to develop an enlarged thyroidgland? Most definitely.
Could an iodine deficiency cause a woman to come up with Hashimoto’s? Certainly.
Could an iodine deficiency predispose a woman to develop breast cancer? Yes and this study along with roughly another 20 content should be persuasive enough to incite us to do it.
Medicine always turns to research to prove its purpose and to establish guidelines and protocols for their doctors to follow.
However, our system, when it comes to breast cancer, is one sided, focusing on operation, radiation and prescriptions. Our system doesn’t focus on prevention but sides with therapy from a narrower perspective.
I suggest that any girl with a family history of breast cancer or thyroid disease should be completely screened for any thyroid problem. And from the term’fully’ I mean a more in-depth screening than what’s being recommended nowadays. This subject of diagnosing thyroid problems requires considerably more explanation.
The point here is that we have the study. We know a whole lot about the prevention of breast cancer. We simply have to implement it.
Can it reach mainstream daily? Maybe.
But I suspect it won’t ever happen until girls become educated and educated. It is, after all, our bodies, our lives that we have so trustingly put into the hands of professionals that are looking at us through their particular pair of lenses.