Less Radiation IS Better for Your Health

UPDATE: 12/29/10
The Radiation Boom: A Pinpoint Beam Strays Invisibly, Harming Instead of Healing

By WALT BOGDANICH and KRISTINA REBELO  Published: December 28, 2010

The initial accident report offered few details, except to say that an unidentified hospital had administered radiation overdoses to three patients during identical medical procedures. Complete article

I was most fortunate to have known and worked with John Gofman.  He was early on, at the beginning of the mammogram scam, boldly outspoken against exposing breast tissue to ionizing radiation on a routine basis.

He said:

"Ionizing radiation may well be the most important single cause of cancer, birth defects and genetic disorders... The stakes for human health are very, very high in radiation matters. It is essential that people take no chance that conflict-of-interest is producing radiation databases which cannot be trusted." 

For many years he had the X-Rays and Health program to campaign for reduction in all x-ray exposure and to achieve lowering dose rates used in all forms or medical x-ray.

John was also the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award. Much of his work remains on ratical.org


Of course today x-ray exposure is increased with the forced exposure tied to flying and airport screening.


Now at last we learn that Heath care providers are pledging to stop the overuse of radiation on patients during medical exams.

Well done my friend!

"The Hopi believe this is the Fourth World. There were seven worlds created at the beginning. The first three were each destroyed in turn because the humans inhabiting them had diverged too far from their original sacred path of connectedness with and respect for all life on Mother Earth. Their prophecies (see "Book of the Hopi" by Frank Waters) describe the possibility of such a destruction of the Fourth World (in the forms of uranium mining, the existence of powerlines, and the atomic bomb):

If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.
Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs
spun back and forth in the sky.
A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky,
which could burn the land and boil the oceans.


KOYAANISQATSI
ko.yan.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language)   n.   1. crazy life.   2. life
in turmoil.   3. life out of balance.   4. life disintegrating.
5. a state of life that calls for another way of living."

Americans Getting Too Much X-Ray Exposure

UPDATE: 2 August -
After Stroke Scans, Patients Face Serious Health Risks

By WALT BOGDANICH, Published: July 31, 2010

When Alain Reyes’s hair suddenly fell out in a freakish band circling his head, he was not the only one worried about his health. His co-workers at a shipping company avoided him, and his boss sent him home, fearing he had a contagious disease.

Only later would Mr. Reyes learn what had caused him so much physical and emotional grief: he had received a radiation overdose during a test for a stroke at a hospital in Glendale, Calif.

Other patients getting the procedure, called a CT brain perfusion scan, were being overdosed, too — 37 of them just up the freeway at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, 269 more at the renowned Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and dozens more at a hospital in Huntsville, Ala. Continue Reading

From a post dated 14 June -
Ionizing radiation is a known cause of cancer. This article actually - at last - does admit to what my organization has been educating about for a couple of decades.

Americans Most Over treated with Cancer Causing Radiation

Americans get the most medical radiation in the world, even more than folks in other rich countries. The U.S. accounts for half of the most advanced procedures that use radiation, and the average American's dose has grown sixfold over the last couple of decades.

Too much radiation raises the risk of cancer. That risk is growing because people in everyday situations are getting imaging tests far too often. Like the New Hampshire teen who was about to get a CT scan to check for kidney stones until a radiologist, Dr. Steven Birnbaum, discovered he'd already had 14 of these powerful X-rays for previous episodes. Adding up the total dose, "I was horrified" at the cancer risk it posed, Birnbaum said.

Kudos to Dr. Birnbaum for taking up the cause, following the great works of John Gofman, PhD, MD.

It is very important - even though this article downplays the risk - that you also realize that EMF exposure DOES add to your cumulative exposure risk.

We have a range of radiation protecting products to readers of Natural Health News.  See also the new brown rice article regarding IP6.

DANGERS OF SCREENING MAMMOGRAPHY

UPDATE: 18 March

Thermography
A new resource if you are in So. California -
IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE, BUT...
* Breast Cancer is the most common form of cancer among American women.
* Nearly 41,000 women die of Breast Cancer every year in the U.S. and and every year more and more young women are being diagnosed.
* Over 2,000 men are also affected by Breast Cancer.
* Out of some 800,000 biopsies that are done every year, over 180,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer... the rest are benign lumps.
* There is more than one type of breast cancer; you DO NOT need a lump to have breast cancer (IBC).
* Although rare, implants have been known to rupture during mammography.
* Women with dense breast tissue (usually younger women) is harder to detect breast cancers on mammograms.
* "...since mammographic screening was introduced in 1983, the incidence of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), which represents 12% of all breast cancer cases, has increased by 328%, and 200% of this increase is due to the use of mammography. This increase is for all women: Since the inception of widespread mammographic screening, the increase for women under the age of 40 has gone up over 3000%."
* Once a tumor has grown to a sufficient size, detectable by either a mammogram or physicial examination, it has been growing for several years and achieved more than 25 doubles of the malignant cell colony.
* You have the right to investigate other safe screening methods, such as Thermography.

-------------------------
According to the Cancer Prevention Coalition, since passage of the 1971 National Cancer Act, the overall incidence of cancer in the U.S. has escalated to epidemic proportions, now striking 1.3 million, and killing about 550,000 annually. The median age for the diagnosis of cancer is 67 in adults, and six in children.

Samuel Epstein, MD is a distinguished physician based in the Chicago area, who is a founder of the Cancer Prevention Coalition. Chicago is also the base of Harpo Studios, Oprah's production company.

Dr. Epstein is professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, and Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition. He is an internationally recognized authority on avoidable causes of cancer, particularly unknowing exposures to industrial carcinogens in air, water, the workplace, and consumer products--food, cosmetics and toiletries, and household products including pesticides--besides carcinogenic prescription drugs.

Dr. Epstein worked closely with a wonderful doctor and colleague of mine, John Gofman, PhD, MD, on the issues surrounding screening mammogram and the increase in the incidence of breast cancer related to this disease.

According to Dr. Epstein,

"no nation other than the United States routinely screens premenopausal women by mammography. In this context, it may be noted that the January 1997 National Institutes of Health Consensus Conference recommended against premenopausal screening (24), a decision that the NCI, but not the ACS, accepted (4). However, under pressure from Congress and the ACS, the NCI reversed its decision some three months later in favor of premenopausal screening. The U.S. overkill extends to the standard practice of taking two or more mammograms per breast annually in postmenopausal women. This contrasts with the more restrained European practice of a single view every two to three years (4)."

It would be very beneficial to women's health and "Best Life" if Oprah would move from the closed thinking on this issue and be more proactive in the effort to prevent and cure breast cancer by interviewing Dr. Epstein on her program. Inviting Dr. Sherry Tenpenny to join in the discussion would disseminate more information about the benefits of thermography over mammogram.

Allowing Dr. Oz to promote annual screening mammogram only brings more suffering to women, especially when there are much more effective screening methods available that do not promote the increased incidence of breast cancer and the associated risk of thyroid and heart problems, secondary to cumulative exposure to radiation.

In March we will be posting more information such as we posted last fall during the "Race for the Cure" frenzy.

In the interim, should you wish more information about the well known hazards of screening mammogram, please order the Creating Health Institute's Healthy Handout© on this topic.