A Better Breast Test?
The following article is provided by THE THERMOGRAM CENTER and is reprinted with permission.
For my personal experience with thermography, see my blog entry.
A Better Breast Test?
By William Amalu, D.C.
Some experts think a thermogram can detect cancer much sooner than a mammogram can.
Natalie, a 52-year-old marketing executive, was concerned about the small lump she could feel in her breast. She had just ha a mammogram, and there were no signs of a lump on the image. Her doctor told her not to worry, that the lump was undoubtedly benign and would probably go away in time. But she wasn’t comforted. Her mother had died of breast cancer, and she knew that meant she faced a greater-than-average risk. She was also aware that mammography isn’t perfect, and that her test might well have missed something important.
So she decided to do a little research on her own. After cruising the web, she became intrigued with thermography, an imaging technique that uses specialized infrared cameras to take a picture of the breast, and she decided to have the test performed at our center. It’s a good thing she did. The thermogram clearly showed increased heat and blood vessel activity in the area of the lump, which suggested a possible cancerous or precancerous change in the breast.
Sure enough, a lumpectomy confirmed it was cancer. Natalie’s surgeon told her how lucky she was that it was being treated promptly, because the cancer was very small and had not invaded surrounding tissues. What would have happened if she had waited?
This year, over 190,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the
Unfortunately, mammography, the current gold standard of detection, isn’t sensitive enough to catch most cancers in time. Among older women, whose breast tissue is less dense and therefore easier to screen, mammography misses about 20 percent of cancers. When you include younger women, whose breast tissue is firmer, that percentage can go as high as 40.
The problem with mammography is that it’s basically an after-the-fact technology. By the time most cancers are detected, they have already been growing for nearly ten years and have actually cohered into a visually detectable and sometimes palpable mass. To make a real dent in cancer mortality, which hasn’t changed much in the last 40 years, we need a screening test that not only detects existing cancers but can also give us an early indication that the cancerous process has begun.
That’s where thermography comes in. Thermal imaging was first used for observing battlefield troop movements at night. When the technology was declassified in the mid-1050s, Raymond Lawson, a surgeon and tumor metabolism researcher, thought perhaps this technology could be used to detect the increase in heat that cancerous breast tumors produce. In 1959, the first medical thermogram to investigate breast cancer was taken; in 1982, thermography was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as an adjunctive screening procedure, meant to supplement mammography and other traditional tests for disease.
Unlike mammograms and other imaging devices such as MRIs and ultrasound, thermography detects metabolic changes within the breast tissue itself that suggest the beginnings of a possible tumor. When a cancer is forming, it develops its own blood supply in order to feed its accelerated growth, a process known as malignant angiogenesis. And cells can start this process well in advance of when they turn malignant. When they do, the increased blood supply causes abnormal heat activity in the breast, which a specialized infrared camera can pick up. Studies suggest that thermography can detect this activity ten years before any other exam.
Thermograms can also indicate a tumor’s aggressiveness, which we now know has more to do with its cellular biology than with its size. Thus, a very small tumor may have the ability to invade the body and lead to death, while a larger one may not. A thermogram can’t provide an actual tissue analysis, but it can suggest whether the cancer is highly active and may be spreading. The same metabolic activity that doesn’t show u p on a mammogram can be apparent in one, two, three, or all four quadrants of the breast in a thermographic image. The larger the area of the breast that’s involved in this activity, the more likely the cancer is aggressive.
And that’s not all. Breast thermography has the added ability to observe the activity of particular cancer-causing hormones in the breasts. Research suggests that cumulative exposure of the breasts to estrogen—due to delayed childbearing and a host of possible environmental factors—is a major risk factor for breast cancer. In only the last two years, it’s been discovered that levels of estrogen in the breast can measure as much as 50 times those found in the blood. When hormone activity in the breast is dominated by estrogen, a specific type of infrared image is produced.
Finally, from my patients’ point of view, the exam itself is much less stressful than a mammogram. It’s completely harmless, uses no radiation, and doesn’t involve the often painful compression of the breasts that mammography does.
All well and good, you might say, but what’s a woman to do with this information? Suppose you have a thermogram that suggests the possibility of cancer, but all your other tests are negative. There’s no magic bullet for breast cancer prevention, so are we really just creating more worried women than we already have with mammography?
With the advance warning thermography provides, a variety of early treatment options become available, ranging from simple lifestyle changes—exercise has shown great promise—to the use of immune-enhancing and natural anti-angiogenesis agents. Follow-up thermograms can help you monitor your progress in reversing troublesome changes in the breast—and make appropriate changes if necessary. For women whose breast changes appear estrogen-related, many practitioners recommend progesterone creams, which are applied directly to the breasts. The progesterone enters the breast tissue and counteracts the effects of estrogen. Many women who have used these creams have gone on to have normal thermograms.
Thermography is particularly useful for women under 40, in whom the incidence of breast cancer is steadily rising. Fifteen percent of breast cancers show up in this age group, and breast cancers in younger women tend to be more aggressive, resulting in lower survival rates. Any woman with a personal or family history of the disease—particularly if her mother, sister, or daughter was diagnosed before age 50—should consider it as well.
At this time, the sad truth is that no single screening procedure can detect 100 percent of all breast cancers. But thermography can at least up the odds. It’s not designed to replace any other technology, but to be used in addition to a woman’s standard breast health care. Along with regular mammograms starting at age 40, ideally every woman should get a baseline thermogram at age 20, and be retested once every three years until she’s 30, and then be tested once a year after that.
Unfortunately, qualified breast thermography centers can be hard to find. However, with increasing demand for the test, established organizations such as the International Academy of Clinical Thermology (IACT) are actively seeking personnel for training as certified technicians. When looking for a center, make sure the technician who is performing the scan and the doctor who interprets it are board-certified by a reputable organization such as the International Thermographic Society,
I only wish my stepsister Robin had known about thermography. Her doctor had told her not to worry about the lump in her breast, since a recent mammogram had turned up negative. Soon after, however, she noticed suspicious changes in the skin of her breast, so she went for a biopsy. It revealed a cancer, and her breast was removed. Then she went through chemotherapy, suffered greatly, and died five years later, leaving two young daughters and a loving husband.
Robin was 42 when she was diagnosed, and she had been careful to schedule a mammogram each year since turning 40. Yet her surgeon told her that her cancer had already been growing for about eight years. It’s tragic to think a thermogram might have saved her life.
William Amalu is a doctor of chiropractic medicine and a board-certified clinical thermologist. He is currently president of the International Academy of Clinical Thermology and has used thermography in his practice in
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