New Guidelines for Mammography

"If you don't like the answer - wait and they will change"

If you do or you don't like mammography - the guidelines will vary over time.  Science and medical information is always changing and so will the recommendations.  So what is important to take away from the 'new' recommendations?  Basically, not much.  If you're under 50 -- they are 'giving you permission' to miss your annual mammogram.  If you over 50 - nothing has changed. Why?  As medical studies are completed new information supports practice guidelines.  The new guidelines are acknowledging what has always been known. Younger women have dense breast tissue and dense breast tissue is difficult to image. Therefore more false positives are generated and more biopsies are done.  Older women have fatty breast tissue that is easier to image and the test has greater validity. Should you stop mammography? NO. You need a structural baseline to follow. We can hope for kinder and better testing methods to be authorized by medicine, but don't hold your breath. Money and politics control the availability and types of tests that are done -- always has and always will.  Newer exams are available (but not in the ; Head to or for laser tomography). Or save your money for an MRI with contrast -- if you can get your physician to order one.

So -- all in all the most important thing will be ' what do you want to do and what can you do?' to monitor breast health. Notice I said BREAST HEALTH.  Mammography looks for the existing disease of breast cancer.  If you truly want to monitor breast health --- you need to adapt a new attitude.  Staying healthy will be your best defense against disease. Any disease. Especially cancers.

As I noted in my previous blogs --- all disease is a state of imbalance. Inflammatory markers begin to "get out of whack" and you are now more prone to disease.

Infrared Imaging will help identify women (and men) AT RISK for breast cancer; at-risk, because the influence of hormones on the breast blood flow indicate an inflammatory state.  Any woman of any age can monitor their breast health and hormone and dietary influence on the breast with thermal imaging. This is a non-contact, non-invasive test that monitors breast blood flow information.  The best way to use your thermogram is as a test of balance. You're in balance or you're not.  If not -- it's time to get serious and take control of your health. If you are in balance, then your current program is working --- for now.  Year to year you will monitor the changes as you mature and your body changes under the stress of life. 

Mammography watches for the structural changes that indicate disease is already present and needs to be acted on.  I recommend baseline mammography in your 40's with more frequent imaging as you age. If you're monitoring your breast health with thermography --- you'll know if there are changes that are detrimental to your breast health.  Mammography, or other structural tests watch for the actual presence of cancer by 'seeing' the suspicious cells or suspicious tissue changes. Thermography monitors the physiology - or chemical activities taking place - caused by hormones. Together they can catch greater than 95% of breast cancers early.

So -- get active, better yet -- get PROACTIVE and monitor your breast health with thermography, no matter what your beliefs around mammograms. DO SOMETHING and "keep a-breast".