We are all familiar with breast cancer walks, races, fund-raisers, luncheons, etc., raising millions if not billions of dollars for research for "the cure". Why then, in 1940 only 1 in 22 women got breast cancer, yet today it is 1 in 8? Shouldn't we be focusing on prevention, rather than wait until we are diagnosed to do something about it? Most of us are less familiar with the tools of prevention. Mammography, MRI, ultrasounds, are all words most have heard but thermography is much less familiar.

With over 97% accuracy, thermography has the ability to warn women 8-10 years before any other imaging method, that a cancer may be forming, alerting women early enough to begin the process of actually reversing this abnormal development before it even becomes a tumor. Thermography uses NO compression and NO radiation, so it is safe, non-invasive and painless.

Thermography is designed to detect and reveal abnormal heat and vascular development in the breast tissue, which is attributed to early tumor growth. Every physician knows that a tumor, whether malignant or benign, needs its own blood supply to nourish itself to grow. These vascularities grow in very abnormal patterns, creating the heat and inflammation that a thermal imaging camera detects.

An abnormal thermogram is the single most important marker of high risk for developing future breast cancer, ten times more significant than a family history of the disease. In other words, if someone gets a suspicious thermogram indicating that something is wrong, something usually is.

Did you know that the single greatest risk factor for development of breast cancer is a woman's lifetime breast exposure to estrogen? A woman can have up to fifty times more estrogen in her breast tissue than her blood levels indicate. With the help of a natural practitioner or qualified nutritionist, a woman can make changes to affect her hormone levels and lower her risk. Throughout this time, a woman can monitor her breast tissue changes with thermography and actually see that the changes made to correct the imbalance are working. This is where breast thermography plays an unprecedented role in breast cancer prevention.

Along with over 800 published peer-reviewed studies on the effectiveness of thermography, a study published in the January 2003 publication of the American Journal of Radiology showed thermography to be a "safe, non-invasive and valuable adjunct to (not replacement for) mammography in determining whether a lesion was benign or malignant, with over 97% sensitivity".

Unfortunately, until thermography is considered the "standard of care," most women won't even hear of this life-saving technology. Every woman should have access and be aware of this valuable screening tool. It is the earliest detection available, and provides hope in the prevention of this epidemic disease.