False-Positive Mammograms Cause Long-Term Psychological Damage
False-positive mammograms take emotional toll
I don’t know too many women who enjoyed turning 40 — but trust me when I tell you that when you do mainstream medicine starts licking its chops.
I bet the candles were still smoldering on your birthday cake when the folks from the mainstream came calling, telling you it was time for your annual mammograms to begin. They probably told you it was a rite of passage for women over 40 — they probably even told you it could save your life.
But here’s something I bet they didn’t tell you — mammograms may ruin as many lives as they save. That’s because these screenings are notoriously inaccurate, and put countless women each year through needless and emotionally crippling cancer scares.
In fact, new research from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark shows that the psychological damage from a false-positive mammogram result can stay with you for years. The study, published in the Annals of Family Medicine, looked at 454 women whose mammograms produced an abnormal finding that could signal cancer.
Of those 454 women, guess how many actually had breast cancer? Just 174. In other words, these “positive” mammogram results were wrong more than 60 percent of the time!
And whether these women ultimately had cancer or not, they had to spend anxious weeks enduring MRIs, biopsies, and constant worrying that they were in for the fight of their lives.
Who wouldn’t be permanently scarred from that kind of stress?
Researchers had women answer psychological questionnaires up to three years after their false positives, and they were still carrying around a heavy load of emotional baggage including anxiety, stress, and a lack of optimism about the future.
Mammograms only detect about 25 percent of breast cancers, but they expose you to deadly radiation that could shorten your life. In fact, each mammogram actually increases your risk of developing breast cancer by 1 percent.
That’s right — it’s a cancer diagnostic test that actually can give you cancer.
That’s why Dr. Wright recommends thermography instead of mammograms. It only misses 5-10 percent of cancers, it rarely produces false positives, and it’s radiation-free. Those are the kind of results that modern mammography can only dream of.
Many doctors still push these tests for women once they hit 40, even though the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommends that they hold off on mammograms until they’re 50. If you’re under 50 and your doctor is recommending a mammogram, ask him what he knows that the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force doesn’t.
Even better, ask if you could benefit from a safer, more effective test like thermography. If he hasn’t heard of it, bring him this article — it just may open his eyes.
And for more details on thermography, subscribers to Nutrition & Healing should take a look at the November 2008 issue in the online archives for free. If you’re not already a subscriber, that’s easy to fix. Just click here to learn how to become one and get access to all of Dr. Wright’s past issues.
Sources:
False-Positive Mammograms and Long-Term Distress: (women.webmd.com)
- See more at: http://wrightnewsletter.com/2013/04/01/false-positive-mammograms/#sthash.2KxbpKTz.dpuf
I don’t know too many women who enjoyed turning 40 — but trust me when I tell you that when you do mainstream medicine starts licking its chops.
I bet the candles were still smoldering on your birthday cake when the folks from the mainstream came calling, telling you it was time for your annual mammograms to begin. They probably told you it was a rite of passage for women over 40 — they probably even told you it could save your life.
But here’s something I bet they didn’t tell you — mammograms may ruin as many lives as they save. That’s because these screenings are notoriously inaccurate, and put countless women each year through needless and emotionally crippling cancer scares.
In fact, new research from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark shows that the psychological damage from a false-positive mammogram result can stay with you for years. The study, published in the Annals of Family Medicine, looked at 454 women whose mammograms produced an abnormal finding that could signal cancer.
Of those 454 women, guess how many actually had breast cancer? Just 174. In other words, these “positive” mammogram results were wrong more than 60 percent of the time!
And whether these women ultimately had cancer or not, they had to spend anxious weeks enduring MRIs, biopsies, and constant worrying that they were in for the fight of their lives.
Who wouldn’t be permanently scarred from that kind of stress?
Researchers had women answer psychological questionnaires up to three years after their false positives, and they were still carrying around a heavy load of emotional baggage including anxiety, stress, and a lack of optimism about the future.
Mammograms only detect about 25 percent of breast cancers, but they expose you to deadly radiation that could shorten your life. In fact, each mammogram actually increases your risk of developing breast cancer by 1 percent.
That’s right — it’s a cancer diagnostic test that actually can give you cancer.
That’s why Dr. Wright recommends thermography instead of mammograms. It only misses 5-10 percent of cancers, it rarely produces false positives, and it’s radiation-free. Those are the kind of results that modern mammography can only dream of.
Many doctors still push these tests for women once they hit 40, even though the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommends that they hold off on mammograms until they’re 50. If you’re under 50 and your doctor is recommending a mammogram, ask him what he knows that the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force doesn’t.
Even better, ask if you could benefit from a safer, more effective test like thermography. If he hasn’t heard of it, bring him this article — it just may open his eyes.
And for more details on thermography, subscribers to Nutrition & Healing should take a look at the November 2008 issue in the online archives for free. If you’re not already a subscriber, that’s easy to fix. Just click here to learn how to become one and get access to all of Dr. Wright’s past issues.
Sources:
False-Positive Mammograms and Long-Term Distress: (women.webmd.com)
- See more at: http://wrightnewsletter.com/2013/04/01/false-positive-mammograms/#sthash.2KxbpKTz.dpuf