Mammograms don't find cancer before it metastasizes.
excerpt from Chapter Five of Breast Cancer? Breast Health!
by Susun Weed
Available at www.wisewomanbookshop.com
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.)
Excerpt from
Breast
Cancer? Breast Health the Wise Woman Way
by Susun S. Weed
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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