Read This BEFORE You Get that Mammogram…

The Problem With Breast Self-Exams

Diagnostically, breast self-exams (BSE) have long been recommended as a simple way for women to keep track of anything unusual in their breasts.

It’s fairly self explanatory, as you simply palpate your breasts on a regular basis, looking for any suspicious lumps. The problem with breast self-exams is that it typically forces women into a conventional, and potentially dangerous, diagnostic model.

If you do find something unusual, you will typically be brought in for a conventional diagnostic strategy involving the use of a mammogram.

Unfortunately, a mammogram uses ionizing radiation at a relatively high dose, which in and of itself can contribute to the development of breast cancer. Mammograms expose your body to radiation that can be 1,000 times greater than that from a chest x-ray, which we know poses a cancer risk. Mammography also compresses your breasts tightly, which could lead to a dangerous spread of cancerous cells, should they exist.

And, should you end up getting a breast biopsy, then that too can have detrimental consequences.

If I was a woman, I wouldn’t get one as there are much safer options available.

My favorite is thermography, which measures the radiation of infrared heat emanating from your body and translates this information into anatomical images. I have numerous articles on the topic of thermography on my site that you can easily find by using the site’s search engine. I offer thermography at my clinic. If you would like more information or would like to schedule your thermogram, you cancall Ela at our Thermography Diagnostics Center in Chicago at (847) 252-4311.

Prevention is the Best Cure, and is Easier Than You Think!

It can be incredibly useful to focus on the factors that actually contribute to breast cancer in the first place.

One of the most important ones was a completely unknown factor when I first started this newsletter. As little as ten years ago, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was believed to be safe, but has since been proven to drastically increase your risk of breast cancer.

One study made the startling discovery that HRT with either estrogen alone or estrogen-plus-progestin was associated with a 70 percent increase in breast cancer risk when the therapy was taken for five years within the six years preceding the cancer diagnosis!

This is also true for birth control pills. They’re synthetic hormones which may even be worse than Premarin, so I strongly advise women to avoid birth control pills as well as traditional approaches to HRT.

Bioidentical hormones, which are a safer alternative, do not appear to contribute to breast cancer like its synthetic counterparts.

Two other important components for breast cancer prevention include:

Your vitamin D levels -- We now know that if you can get your vitamin D levels up to about 60-80 ng/ml, it will virtually eliminate your risk of breast cancer. Breast cancer is particularly sensitive to vitamin D, so it’s very important you regularly monitor your vitamin D status with a 25(OH)D test (also called 25-hydroxyvitamin D).

There are many variables that may prevent your body from optimizing vitamin D from sun exposure, and there’s no other way to determine your levels other than through lab testing, using a reputable lab (I recommend LabCorp in the U.S.)

Your fasting insulin levels – It’s also important to know what your fasting insulin level is (taken after 8-12 hrs of fasting). Ideally you’ll want your insulin to be around 2 or 3. The higher your level, the worse it is.

Breast cancer patients with high levels of insulin in their blood appear more likely to die from the disease, and researchers have even found that insulin levels may predict whether a woman's breast cancer is likely to recur after therapy.

We’re in the process of making these two tests available in the U.S. to anyone who would like them without a doctor’s prescription. This service is not available yet, but stay tuned as it will become available shortly.

Eating and Sleeping Your Way to a Cancer-Free Life

Other preventive components include eating and sleeping right. In particular, you’ll want to pay careful attention to your fats. Nearly everyone needs to increase their intake of healthy omega-3 fats. I recommend using a high quality animal-based omega-3 supplement like krill oil.

Additionally, you’ll want to eliminate all the trans fats (heated, processed fats), because the combination of omega-3 deficiency along with an excess of poor quality omega-6 fats is a disaster when it comes to the production of vitamin D-sensitive breast cancer.

Lastly, you need to optimize you melatonin production. Ideally you should allow your body to do it the natural way, which is far easier than you might think.

Optimizing your melatonin production is a simple, two-part process.

First, make sure you sleep in absolute pitch-black darkness.

If you need light to get to the bathroom at night, use a RED penlight. The red has a wavelength of about 600 nanometers that will not stimulate your pineal gland and disturb its production of melatonin.

If you use an electric alarm clock, beware that blue LED lights are probably the worst as they stimulate your pineal gland and disrupt melatonin production.

Secondly, expose yourself to bright sunshine in the daytime.

It’s the combination of these two strategies that will optimize your body’s natural production of melatonin, which can clearly reduce your risk of developing breast cancer.

The Emotional Component of Breast Cancer

Therapeutically, another component to remember is that if you or someone you know has breast cancer, you’ll want to pay careful attention to the emotional factors as emotions almost always seem to be a factor in cancer.

One of the best tools I know to address the emotional roots of illness was developed in Germany by Dr. Hamer. He called it German New Medicine (GNM). A revised version, developed in the U.S., is called Recall Healing. The therapy addresses emotional components that seem to be really strong triggers for developing this type of cancer.

The leader in that area is Dr. David Holt, whom I’ve interviewed for my Inner Circle expert series, who operates in Reno, Nevada. I hope to be making Recall Healing available shortly, in my Chicago clinic.

Combining all of the measures mentioned above can be a very powerful way to prevent breast cancer, which of course is the most effective way. Like Kennedy said,

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”

But even if you already have cancer, you can still use these strategies as additional therapies, especially vitamin D.

And remember, if you have other insights into this topic, please share them in our free forum below. By participating you can help create the body of knowledge that will help us all find effective alternatives to the current disease-based paradigm.

What If You Went through a Mastectomy, Only to Discover Your Diagnosis Was False?

In 2006, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, an influential breast cancer survivors' organization, released a study, which estimated that in 90,000 cases, women who received a diagnosis of ductal carcinoma in situ (D.C.I.S.) or invasive breast cancer either did not have the disease or received incorrect treatment.

Advances in imaging technology over the past 30 years have meant that pathologists must render opinions on ever smaller breast lesions. Discerning the difference between benign lesions and early stage breast cancer is a particularly challenging area of pathology.

Diagnoses of D.C.I.S. have a history of confusion, differences of opinion, undertreatment, and overtreatment.

According to the New York Times:

"There is an increasing recognition of the problems, and the federal government is now financing a nationwide study of variations in breast pathology, based on concerns that 17percent of D.C.I.S. cases identified by a commonly used needle biopsy may be misdiagnosed.

Despite this, there are no mandated diagnostic standards or requirements that pathologists performing the work have any specialized expertise, meaning that the chances of getting an accurate diagnosis vary from hospital to hospital."

Upon receiving a breast cancer diagnosis, most women are afraid and even frantic to do whatever it takes to fight and remove the cancer. In the conventional medical arena, typically this means full or partial mastectomy, drugs and radiation.

Imagine going through a surgery, having one or both of your breasts removed along with receiving debilitating radiation treatments and toxic drugs, only to be told that you never had cancer.

The diagnosis was a mistake.

In the New York Times article above, you can read the stories of several women who had this very scenario happen to them … and they are far from alone.

Mammograms Often Lead to Unnecessary Biopsies and False Positives

In the conventional medical community the long-held advice was for women to get a mammogram every year or two after age 40. This was recently updated by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to starting at age 50, which caused an uproar among many women who feared a decrease in mammograms would put their lives at risk from breast cancer, or that insurance companies would stop covering the procedure until a woman reaches age 50.

What was overlooked, however, was the reason WHY the Task Force decided to trim their mammogram recommendation. The prior advice was given in 2002, before a host of new research came out showing the problems of overdiagnosis, including false positives.

If a mammogram detects an abnormal spot in a woman's breast, the next step is typically a biopsy. This involves taking a small amount of tissue from the breast, which is then looked at by a pathologist under a microscope to determine if cancer is present.

The problem is that early stage cancer like ductal carcinoma in situ, or D.C.I.S., can be very hard to diagnose, and pathologists have a wide range of experience and expertise. There are no diagnostic standards for D.C.I.S., and there are no requirements that the pathologists doing the readings have specialized expertise.

Dr. Shahla Masood, the head of pathology at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville, told the New York Times:

"There are studies that show that diagnosing these borderline breast lesions occasionally comes down to the flip of a coin."

Just How Often are Early Breast Cancer Diagnoses Wrong?

A federal government study is now trying to determine just that, but estimates suggest that 17 percent of D.C.I.S. cases found through needle biopsy are misdiagnosed. The New York Times also reported on several other concerning findings about the frequency of misdiagnosis:

• A 2006 study by Susan G. Komen for the Cure estimated that in 90,000 cases when women were diagnosed with D.C.I.S. or invasive breast cancer, they either did not have the disease or they got incorrect treatment due to a pathologist error.
• A 2002 study at Northwestern University Medical Center found that nearly 8 percent of 340 breast cancer cases " had errors serious enough to change plans for surgery."
• Dr. Lagios, a pathologist at St. Mary's Medical Center in San Francisco, reviewed nearly 600 breast cases in 2007 and 2008 and found discrepancies in 141 of them.

The Times states, "Dr. Lagios says that based on his experience, microscopic core needle biopsies of low-grade D.C.I.S. and benign lesions, called atypical ductal hyperplasia, or A.D.H., may be misread 20 percent of the time."

That so many women have unnecessarily undergone mastectomies, radiation and chemotherapy after receiving false positives on a mammogram or biopsy is a sad testimony to the state of cancer diagnosis and treatment in conventional medicine today.

More Reasons Why You Might Think Twice About Mammography and Biopsies

False positives aside, a mammogram uses ionizing radiation at a relatively high dose, which in and of itself can contribute to the development of breast cancer. Mammograms expose your body to radiation that can be 1,000 times greater than that from a chest x-ray, which we know poses a cancer risk. Mammography also compresses your breasts tightly, which could lead to a dangerous spread of cancerous cells, should they exist.

And, should you end up getting a breast biopsy, that too can have detrimental consequences.

Needle biopsies, which are widely used, may accidentally cause malignant cells to break away from a tumor, allowing it to spread to other areas of your body. And according to a study from the John Wayne Cancer Institute, it appears that a needle biopsy may increase the spread of cancer by 50 percent compared to patients who received excisional biopsies, also known as lumpectomies.

Mammograms also carry a first-time false positive rate of up to 6 percent. False positives can lead to expensive repeat screenings, exposing you to even more radiation, and, as discussed earlier, can sometimes result in unnecessary invasive procedures including biopsies, unnecessary surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and more.

Just thinking you may have breast cancer, when you really do not, focuses your mind on fear and disease, and the extreme stress is actually enough to trigger an illness in your body. So a false positive on a mammogram, or worse, a false diagnosis, can really be damaging.

A Safer, More Reliable Option

Most physicians continue to recommend mammograms for fear of being sued by a woman who develops breast cancer after he did not advise her to get one. But I encourage you to think for yourself and consider safer, more effective alternatives to mammograms.

The option for breast screening that I firmly believe makes the most sense and should not only radically reduce misdiagnosis but find cancers earlier is called thermographic breast screening.

Thermographic screening measures the radiation of infrared heat from your body and translates this information into anatomical images. Your normal blood circulation is under the control of your autonomic nervous system, which governs your body functions.

Thermography uses no mechanical pressure or ionizing radiation, and can detect signs of breast cancer as much as 10 years earlier than either mammography or a physical exam.

Whereas mammography cannot detect a tumor until after it has been growing for years and reaches a certain size, thermography is able to detect the possibility of breast cancer much earlier.

It can even detect the potential for cancer before any tumors have formed because it can image the early stages of angiogenesis -- the formation of a direct supply of blood to cancer cells, which is a necessary step before they can grow into tumors of size.

If you are a woman, breast cancer is the type of cancer you are most likely to get, which is why you need to take your breast health seriously.

However, rather than subjecting yourself to mammograms for unreliable, and dangerous breast screening, thermography offers you the opportunity of earlier detection of breast disease than has been possible through breast self-examination, doctor examination, or mammography alone.

Annual thermograms allow you to map changes in your body's heat patterns over time. They can alert you to any deviations from your norm. Mapping your health annually helps you detect changes, often before disease develops.

Thermograms benefit all women. They may be particularly useful for young women who want to monitor their breast health before the recommended age of 40 or 50. Actually, your breast cancer prevention should start as early as possible, which is why I recommend making thermography part of your annual health prevention regimen.

Optimizing Your Vitamin D: Cancer Fighter #1

Vitamin D, a steroid hormone that influences virtually every cell in your body, is easily one of nature's most potent cancer fighters. Receptors that respond to vitamin D have been found in nearly every type of human cell, from your bones to your brain.

Your liver, kidney and other tissues can convert the vitamin D in your bloodstream into calcitriol, which is the hormonal or activated version of vitamin D. Your organs then use it to repair damage, including that from cancer cells.

Vitamin D is actually able to enter cancer cells and trigger apoptosis or cancer cell death. When JoEllen Welsh, a researcher with the State University of New York at Albany, injected a potent form of vitamin D into human breast cancer cells, half of them shriveled up and died within days!

The vitamin D worked as well at killing cancer cells as the toxic breast cancer drug Tamoxifen, without any of the detrimental side effects and at a tiny fraction of the cost.

It is my impression that it is criminal malpractice not to recommend vitamin D and aggressively monitor a breast cancer patient's vitamin D level to get it between 70 and 100 ng/ml. Vitamin D works synergistically with every cancer treatment I am aware of and has no adverse effects.

According to one landmark study, some 600,000 cases of breast and colorectal cancers could be prevented each year if vitamin D levels among populations worldwide were increased. And that's just counting the death toll for two types of cancer (it actually works against at least 16 different types)!

So please do watch my one-hour free lecture on vitamin D to find out what your optimal vitamin D levels should be … and how to get them there. This is one of the most important steps you can take to protect yourself from cancer.

Breast Cancer Prevention Musts

A healthy diet, regular physical exercise, appropriate sun exposure and an effective way to manage your emotional health are the cornerstones of just about any cancer prevention program, including breast cancer.

But for breast cancer, specifically, you can take it a step further by also watching out for excessive iron levels. This is actually very common once women stop menstruating. The extra iron actually works as a powerful oxidant, increasing free radicals and raising your risk of cancer.

So if you are a post menopausal woman or have breast cancer you will certainly want to have your Ferritin level drawn. Ferritin is the iron transport protein and should not be above 80. So if it is elevated you can simply donate your blood to reduce it.

Further, the following lifestyle strategies will help to further lower your risk:

• Improve Your Insulin Receptor Sensitivity. The best way to do this is make sure you have an optimized exercise program. Most of us need about five to eight hours of exercise every week to optimize our insulin receptors. Make sure you just don't do cardio. You can get some ideas from reviewing my video on exercise.

  Although I did not mention stretching and flexibility work, such as yoga, in the video, it is a very important part of your exercise program. It will not affect insulin receptors but it will help prevent you from getting injured and stopping your other exercise.

• Maintain a healthy body weight. This will come naturally when you begin eating right for your nutritional type and exercising. It's important to lose excess weight because estrogen, a hormone produced in fat tissue, may trigger breast cancer.
• Get plenty of high quality animal-based omega-3 fats, such as those from krill oil. Omega-3 deficiency is a common underlying factor for cancer.
• Avoid drinking alcohol, or limit your drinks to one a day for women.
• Breastfeed exclusively for up to six months. Research shows this will reduce your breast cancer risk.

If You're Diagnosed With Early Stage Breast Cancer …

In the event you do receive a mammogram and a biopsy and are diagnosed with D.C.I.S. or another form of early stage breast cancer, always get a second, and possibly third and fourth, opinion. I cannot stress this enough, as the false positive rates are just too high and the diagnostic criteria too subjective.

Before you make any decision on treatment, and definitely before you decide to have surgery or chemotherapy, make sure your biopsy results have been reviewed by a breast specialist who is knowledgeable and experienced in the field.

"Revolutionary and Safe Diagnostic Tool Detects Hidden Inflammation: Thermography"

You might not realize that cancer is now the disease most likely to lead to your death. It passed heart disease as the #1 killer a number of years ago.

And if you are a woman, breast cancer is the type of cancer you are most likely to get.

There are many approaches you can take to prevent breast cancer (or any cancer), including the dietary changes and lifestyle modifications I recommend on my site.

However, if you already have breast cancer -- even in the early hidden stages -- you need a radically different strategy, since the cancer could kill you before your dietary and other changes take effect.

Let me say this about mammograms: you may think they are the ideal screening tool to give you a warning stage before the cancer becomes far more difficult to treat. Unfortunately...

Mammograms Can Actually INCREASE Your Risk of Breast Cancer

That's why I don't recommend mammograms, despite what you may hear from other medical sources. They expose your body to radiation that can be 1,000 times greater than that from a chest x-ray -- this makes you vulnerable unnecessarily to further risks of radiation-induced cancer.

Additionally, mammography compresses the breasts tightly (and often painfully), which could lead to a lethal spread of any existing malignant cells.

And there is no solid evidence that mammograms save lives. In fact, research demonstrates that adding an annual mammogram to a careful physical examination of the breasts does not improve breast cancer survival rates over getting the examination alone.

The Newest Safe Cancer Screening Tool

Fortunately, you now have some very effective options based on finding inflammation -- the precursor to many of these types of cancers.

For the longest time, it wasn't well-known that inflammation was the culprit responsible for many chronic diseases. However, many physicians like me now recognize that inflammation is a precursor to many diseases, such as cancer, arthritis, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

And here's some good news: early detection of inflammation may help you prevent many negative health conditions from developing.

And while you can reduce inflammation with dietary changes, nutritional supplements, antioxidants, detoxification, stress reduction, and more...

Here's my diagnostic recommendation:

Find Out If You Have Inflammation Before it Becomes a Major Problem

Although this information is of particular interest to you if you're a woman, men will also find it extremely helpful.

There's a new diagnostic high-tech tool that I've recently welcomed to my clinic, The Natural Health Center, and it specifically measures inflammation.

It's called thermal imaging, or thermography. In a nutshell, this tool creates a digital map of your body that illustrates heat patterns -- patterns that may detect some condition or abnormality. It uses a scanning-type infrared camera that measures your body surface temperature, presenting the information as a digitized image.

These thermal images (called thermograms) are analyzed for abnormalities that may be signs of disease in your body. Additionally, since your body is thermally symmetrical if normal, thermal asymmetries can indicate problems.

I recommend this tool (you'll have to call the Thermography Diagnostics Center at 847-252-4311 to get it) because measuring inflammation through thermal imaging is a proactive, preventative method you can use for detecting disease, which significantly improves your chances for longevity and good health.

Additionally, thermograms provide:

• Reliable and accurate information for diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis...
• Precise and objective data from accurate measurements of thermal information...
• Considerable financial savings over conventional investigations...

In fact...

Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging Offers You a Higher Level of Prevention

And unlike most diagnostic tests, thermal imaging is:

• Not painful...
• Non-invasive...
• Quick – your multi-image exams usually take less than 15 minutes...

Plus, it:

• Makes no contact with your body -- with no body part compression (such as what you experience with mammograms)
• Emits absolutely NO radiation

So that leads you to wonder...

"How Can Thermography Really Help Me?"

If you're wondering how this new diagnostic system will specifically help you better achieve your health goals, let me reassure you:

There are a number of areas in which thermography will help you better understand your body. But it specializes in:

• Breast Imaging
• Pain Diagnostics
• Early-Stage Disease Detection

Yes, it's true. Thermograms provide you with early diagnosis and treatment assistance in such problems as cancer, inflammatory processes, neurological and vascular dysfunction, and musculoskeletal injury

To get into a bit more detail, here's...

How Thermography Assists You
in Breast Cancer Prevention

Thermography can detect irregular patterns in the breast, conditions that occur before a noticeable lump is formed.

In some cases, such as inflammatory cancer, there are no lumps to be detected by self-exam or mammogram. That's why adding thermography to your annual routine can help with early detection.

You'll increase your chances of detecting breast cancer in its earliest stages.

"But How are Thermographs Different From Mammograms?"

Mammograms look at anatomical changes in the breast, as they detect masses or lumps in the breast tissue. On the other hand, thermograms look at vascular changes in the breast, as they detect blood flow patterns, inflammation and asymmetries.

Thermograms benefit all women. They may be particularly useful for young women who want to monitor their breast health before the recommended age of 40. Actually, your breast cancer prevention should start as early as possible.

If you are a woman, you need to take your breast health seriously...

One in Eight Women Will Get Breast Cancer
at Some Point in Their Life

Proper breast self-exams, physician exams, and now thermography together provide you with the earliest detection system available.

The benefit of this new technology -- digital infrared thermal imaging -- is that it offers you the opportunity of earlier detection of breast disease than has been possible through breast self examination, doctor examination, or mammography alone.

Thermal imaging detects the subtle physiologic changes that accompany breast pathology, whether it is cancer, fibrocystic disease, an infection or a vascular disease.

The first session provides the baseline of your "thermal signature".

And annual thermograms allow you to map changes in your body's heat patterns over time. They can alert you to any deviations from your norm. Mapping your health annually helps you detect changes, often before disease develops

Yet breast imaging is only one benefit of thermograms. Another area that can be of benefit to both sexes is pain diagnosis...

Thermography -- the Only Method Available
for "Visualizing" Your Pain

Whether your pain is acute or chronic, thermography can help provide answers to your pain issue.

In fact, thermography:

• Remains the only method available for visualizing your pain and pathology...
• Can assess pain and pathology anywhere in your body....
• Is a very useful adjunctive procedure to other diagnostic tools, such as x-ray, bone scans, and ultrasound...
• Is very cost effective, risk free, and provides you with instant images...
• Fills in the gap in clinical diagnosis...

While x-rays, CT scans, ultrasound, and MRI scans are all tests of "anatomy" that measure structures of your body, thermography is unique in its ability to measure your physiological changes and metabolic processes.

What Else Can Thermography Help Detect in Your Body?

Early stage disease detection is another area in which thermography excels. For instance, let's take heart disease prevention.

Thermography screenings can assess heart function and detect inflammation in the carotid arteries (which may be a precursor to stroke and blood clots). When inflammation and/or occlusion of the carotid is visible, your doctor may do additional testing. Earlier detection of a heart problem may save your life.

And here are some other examples:

Arthritis

Back Pain

Sinus Issues

• Arthritis: Thermography can help you detect early signs of arthritis -- and differentiate between osteoarthritis and more severe forms like rheumatoid. Effective early treatment strategies can then be implemented, before you experience further degeneration.
• Neck and Back Pain: Thermal pain patterns ‘light up' white and red hot on a scan in the involved area. You can get relief faster and begin restorative care that more precisely targets the correct area.
• Dental Issues: If you have TMJ, gum disease, or an infected tooth, this will show up on a thermal scan as white or red hot.
• Sinus Issues & Headaches: Significant heat in your forehead or sinus region revealed on a thermal scan is an indicator that these systems in your body are not functioning properly.
• Immune Dysfunction, Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue: The immune system correlates to the T1 andT2 areas of your spine -- high levels of heat in that region can indicate immune dysfunction. On the other hand, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and aching joints are just a few complaints that correlate to cool patterns seen at this area.
• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS): This condition is often misdiagnosed. For instance, you may think you have CTS, yet the scan shows your neck is referring pain from a different affected area. This will help you get the most appropriate treatment.
• Digestive Disorders: Irritable bowel syndrome, diverticulitis and Crohn's disease are often visible with thermography. If you're able to address these conditions early on, you'll find that health restoration is much more likely.
• Other Conditions: Including bursitis, herniated discs, ligament or muscle tear, lupus, nerve problems, whiplash, stroke screening, cancer, and many, many others.

With all the great benefits of thermography, it may sound complicated -- but it's not!

Here's What Happens When You Get a Thermogram

Here are the simple steps you'll follow when you get a thermogram:

Step 1: You sit in a temperature-controlled room to allow your body to cool from any external conditions. At that time, you'll complete some simple paperwork, including a health survey.

Step 2: You're positioned in front of a Thermal Imaging Camera, and the technician takes digital pictures (5-15 minutes). You will be able to see yourself "live" on the computer screen, which can help give you a better understanding of your body.

Step 3: Your pictures are sent out to a certified physician for analysis of 1) the amount of heat and 2) the symmetry of the heat patterns. Heat patterns may indicate inflammation, infection, or a variance from your body's norm.

Step 4: You'll receive a report of findings in your mail shortly thereafter. This will help you and your doctor determine any next steps. We also provide recommendations for ways to reduce inflammation, if present, and provide personal health coaching programs if desired.

Step 5: We recommend you return for thermograms annually to monitor your health and watch for changes. Since everybody's body is different, the best way to detect problems is to measure changes from your own body's norm.

Not Just Some Experimental Tool

If you've never heard of thermography, you may wonder how credible it is. Let me assure you that the manufacturer of the Meditherm Med2000® is well established as the market leader in clinical thermography -- with the largest network of thermography systems installed in the world.

Your scans are actually analyzed and reviewed by certified physicians who've specialized in thermography.
And the machine used at the Thermography Diagnostics Center delivers a higher degree of sensitivity and specificity than other thermography systems on the market.

Plus, when it comes to credibility, Meditherm sponsors major research programs at Duke University. Other research institutions using Meditherm equipment in clinical trials include UCLA, VA Hospital Durham, and a number of other institutions internationally.

So you can rest assured this is a legitimate tool for helping you gain your best health possible.

Take Your Next Step to Prevent
Disease from Gaining a Foothold

!

Please avoid the following on the day of your thermogram: heavy exercise, deodorant, spicy foods, hot beverages, body creams and lotions, gum chewing, and tight-fitting clothing.

It's been my nature not to over-prescribe too many diagnostic tools, tests, and procedures, because many of them do nothing to help you prevent disease and enhance your health.

So you know that when I endorse thermography, I've looked long and hard at the benefits to you -- and found them significant. Even if you're feeling OK today, it's good to have a baseline thermogram done now, so you'll have something to compare to if anything ever pops up down the road.

And if you're female, please don't go the mammogram route. Consider thermography part of your annual health prevention regimen.

"I Recommend You STOP Using Your Shampoo and Conditioner Until You Read This"

Despite the potentially toxic ingredients in your shampoo and conditioner, the FDA doesn’t have the resources to stop them from flooding the market...

eep reading to discover:

• 5 Potentially Toxic Ingredients Found in Most Shampoos and Conditioners
  Do you get a dose of them every time you wash your hair?
• Why the FDA is Allowing Shampoo Manufacturers to Get Away With What I Consider To Be Open Fraud

In trying to formulate a safe, non-toxic shampoo and conditioner, my team learned a lot about what’s been going on in the hair care industry for more than the last decade. It’s a sad situation that could be robbing you and your family of better health

And if you are using shampoo and conditioner right now, you need to hear everything I am about to share with you.

Don’t just take my word for it. Consider what a prominent Senator said at a Senate Hearing on the FDA Reform on September 10, 1997...

“The Cosmetics Industry Has Borrowed a Page from the Playbook of the
Tobacco Industry by Putting Profits Ahead of Public Health”

And while the bigwigs in the hair care industry don’t want you to know this, every time you put shampoo or conditioner into your hair, you may be putting yourself in harm’s way. Just take a look at your shampoo and conditioner the next time you shower and ask yourself...

“Does my Shampoo or Conditioner Contain Any of These 5 Potentially Toxic Ingredients?”

Is Your Shampoo and Conditioner Interfering
With Your Hormones and Making You Fat?

The EPA has found synthetic hormone-disrupting chemicals in shampoo preservatives and many of them can be found in products that claim to be ‘natural’ and ‘organic.’

The most disturbing of these is antimicrobial preservatives called parabens which have proven to disrupt your endocrine system.

So what is an endocrine disruptor and why should it concern you?

It all boils down to this: they mimic, disrupt or block the actions of your hormones and interfere with your body’s hormonal pathways.

And when you consider the fact the endocrine system regulates every function of your body and provides instructions to your body that tell your cells what to do, this can have disastrous consequences.

For instance, one messenger hormone, estrogen, is secreted by ovaries and plays a big part in regulation of fertility, pregnancy, menstruation and fat cell activity.

And too much estrogen can cause big problems including weight gain, fluid retention, and depression.

So what can you do to avoid these parabens?

Check your product labels for these terms:

• Propylparaben
• Parahydroxybenzoic acid
• Parahydroxybenzoate
• Methylparaben
• Ethylparaben
• Butylparaben
• Benzyl-parahydroxybenzoic acid
• Methyl-parahydroxybenzoic acid
• Ethyl-parahydroxybenzoic acid
• Propyl-parahydroxybenzoic acid
• Butyl-parahydroxybenzoic acid

Toxic Ingredient #1: Sodium Lauryl Sulfate

Did you know the same ingredient which produces all that foam and lather when you shampoo your hair is also the ingredient used in car washes and garages as a degreasing agent?

It’s true. And not only does it act as a penetration enhancer (allowing other potentially toxic ingredients to slip into your bloodstream), but according to the Environmental Working Group’s “Skin Deep: Cosmetic Safety Reviews”, research studies on SLS have shown links to...

• Irritation of skin and eyes
• Organ toxicity
• Development / reproductive toxicity
• Neurotoxicity, endocrine disruption, ecotoxicological, and biochemical or cellular changes
• Possible mutations and cancer

If you visit the SLS page on the Environmental Working Group’s (a non-profit public-interest research group known for making connections between chemical exposure and adverse health conditions) website, you will see a very long list of health concerns and associated research studies. In fact, you will also see their mention of nearly 16,000 studies in the PubMed science library (as well as their link to that list) about the toxicity of this chemical.

So look for it in your hair care products. It also goes by a
number of different names including sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium laureth sulfate, ammonium laurel sulfate, sodium dodecylsulfate, sulfuric acid, sodium salt sulfuric acid, A12-00356, Akyposal SDS, Aquarex ME, and Aquarex methyl.

Toxic Ingredient #2: Dioxane

In the medical journal Cancer’s 2007 review of mammary carcinogens, dioxane was identified as one of the 216 chemicals which was linked to breast cancer in rodents.

Not that this is anything new. Its connection to carcinogens was first reported in 1965 and confirmed in 1978.

In fact, back in 1985, the FDA recognized these dangers, and requested that manufacturers voluntarily limit dioxane levels in cosmetics and personal-care products to 10 parts per million.

But it hasn’t happened.

In fact, Los Angeles Times staff writer, Marla Cone, in February 2007 reported that all eighteen personal care products for both adults and children which she had tested by an independent laboratory were contaminated with high levels of dioxane.

Toxic Ingredient #3: Diethanolamine or DEA

In a recent FDA report, approximately 42% of all cosmetics were contaminated with NDEA, with shampoos having the highest concentrations. DEA also readily reacts with nitrite preservatives and contaminants to create nitrosodiethanolamine (NDEA), a known and potent carcinogen.

This is a big problem because DEA seems to block absorption of the nutrient choline, which is vital to brain development. Pregnant women actually require extra choline so they can pass it onto their fetus.

An associate dean for research at the UNC School of Public Health mentioned that choline is necessary to help provide proper nutrients for a healthy baby; stating that, “At this point it is a caution. But it would probably be prudent to look at labels and try to limit exposure until we know more.”

Toxic Ingredient #4: MSG

You’ve been told to avoid MSG in your food, right? After all, many people experience symptoms like headaches, dizziness, and stomach discomfort after consuming MSG-containing products. And according to the FDA, MSG side effects include: numbness, burning sensations, tingling, facial pressure, headaches, nausea, drowsiness and weakness, among other problems.

But did you know MSG, short for monosodium glutamate, is also more than likely in your shampoo, often secretly hidden and referred to as amino acids, yeast extract, nayad, glutamic acid, or glutamates?

Toxic Ingredient #5: Propylene Glycol

This active ingredient is found in engine coolants and antifreeze, airplane de-icers, tire sealants, rubber cleaners, polyurethane cushions, paints, adhesives, enamels and varnishes, and in many products as a solvent or surfactant.

And guess what? Despite the fact the material safety data sheet warns users to avoid skin contact with propylene glycol as it is a strong skin irritant and can also cause liver abnormalities and kidney damage, it’s more than likely in your shampoo!

Okay, so now that you’ve read about these 5 potentially toxic ingredients, let me ask you two critical questions: If you knew of a food which contained all of these toxins...

• Would you add it to your grocery basket on a week to week basis?
• Would you feed it to your children?

Of course, you wouldn’t.

But it’s safe because your skin is protecting you, right? Wrong. The reality is your skin is often a carrier, not a barrier and...

Toxins in Your Shampoo and Conditioner
May Be More Toxic Than Those in Your Food

You might think that because your skin is about one tenth of an inch thick, it protects your body from absorbing the many things you come into contact with.

But the truth is, when you consume toxins in foods, such as pesticides in fruit and vegetables, the enzymes in your saliva and stomach often break them down and flush them out of your body. Food also passes through your liver and kidneys. The toxins which make it through are detoxified to varying degrees by enzymes before they reach the remainder of your body.

However when toxins are absorbed through your skin, they bypass your liver and enter your bloodstream and tissues – with absolutely no protection whatsoever.

Think of it like this: when you put shampoo or conditioner into your hair, the twenty blood vessels, 650 sweat glands, and 1,000 nerve endings soak in the toxins.

And some studies suggest skin can sometimes absorb more than your digestive tract. According to evidence presented at 1978 Congressional hearings, the absorption of the carcinogen nitrosodiethanolamine (NDELA), which is commonly found in shampoo products, was shown to be more than 100 times greater when exposure came through your skin than via your mouth. What’s more...

A Hot Shower Opens Up Pores in Your Skin
and May Make it Easier for Toxins To Enter Your Body

Here’s how it works: When you have a warm shower, your pores automatically open up, which may make it easier for sodium laurel sulfate... DEA... MSG... propylene glycol, and Ethylene Oxide to enter your blood stream.

And while you have been told about the damaging effects of pesticides and additives in food, the ugly truth about the damage shampoo and conditioner may do to your body has been hidden until now.

If You Think You Can Trust the Labels on
Your Hair Care Products THINK AGAIN!

For instance, about half of all the labels on 14,200 products examined by the Environmental Working Group ended up having mislabelled ingredients with some misspelled, and others having different names for the same ingredient depending on the manufacturer.

What’s more, there were 41 online retailers of cosmetics identified by EWG who failed to post any of their ingredients online. And when the FDA was pressured to make these retailers conform, they replied: “There is no requirement that a manufacturer put an ingredient list on a website.”

The reality is your shampoo and conditioner may be just as toxic. In fact, it’s a serious case of “Buyer Beware” because it is the manufacturer’s responsibility to determine whether a product is safe.

In my opinion, it’s an outrage. At least with cigarettes you know they are dangerous to your health. But the manufacturers selling you shampoo and conditioner are taking reckless advantage of the less stringent FDA regulations applicable to cosmetics.

The FDA Regulations (21 CFR Sec. 740.10) state quite clearly that “Each ingredient used in a cosmetic product and each finished cosmetic product shall be adequately substantiated for safety prior to marketing. Any such ingredient or product whose safety is not adequately substantiated prior to marketing is misbranded unless it contains the following conspicuous statement on the principal display panel:

“WARNING. THE SAFETY OF THIS PRODUCT
HAS NOT BEEN DETERMINED.”

So who’s in control of the safety?

The manufacturers. It seems that the FDA is allowing them to pass their own judgement about the safety of their product.

What a joke.

The FDA regulations are intended to protect you from dangerous products by insisting products which contain dangerous ingredients include warning statements. But the reality is that the agency does not have adequate resources to enforce this requirement.

Your Hairdresser Knows Best Right? Wrong!

A group which was founded in 1894 called the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association (which in 2007 changed its name to the Personal Care Products Council), is comprised of over 600 different distributors and manufacturers of personal care, cosmetic, and fragrance companies that are committed to championing “voluntary regulation and reasonable government requirement.” But here’s the ugly truth...

As Stacy Malkan made quite clear in her 2007 book, Not Just a Pretty Face, the following untruth was on its website as of January, 2007: “The FDA routinely conducts studies and tests to ensure the safety of all cosmetic products... FDA’s legal authority over cosmetics is comparable with its authority over foods, non-prescription drugs, and non-prescription medical devices.”

However, the FDA simply does not have the resources to “routinely” test skin products like shampoo in the way I believe they should.

And as long as the manufacturers’ profits stay high, I do not believe that anything is about to change. Meanwhile, most people are content to put their trust in the FDA and take them at face value believing if the products actually contained threats to their health, the FDA would have the resources to routinely take enforcement action.

In my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth.

And that’s why several months ago I decided that until Congress gives the Food and Drug Administration the required resources to do its job, I’ll do what I can to expose the truth about the risks that can be associated with hair care products.

The Problem with Natural Shampoos

The primary ingredient found in many natural shampoos is soap based. The problem with many of these “natural” shampoos is that they typically don’t clean very well, and tend to form scum by reacting with calcium and magnesium ions present in water. This leaves a residue that can leave your hair feeling unclean and looking rather dull.

What’s more, the pH of soap-based cleansers is very basic, about 8-9--which can cause damage to your hair by lifting cuticles and causing reactions which affect the disulfide bonds in your hair. Ingredients like sodium silicate and borax are added to help overcome the scum formation and dulling effect on your hair.

Additionally, many of the natural products on the market today don’t create a luxurious, creamy, rich lather.

Everything is Made From Natural
Ingredients – See Why I Believe the Purity is Supreme

The ingredients in my Volumizing Shampoo and Revitalizing Conditioner are completely natural and of the highest quality available. Aside from water, here’s a breakdown of what’s in each product...

Shampoo	Conditioner
Botanical extract of chamomile: Helps restore your hair’s shine and brings out its natural highlights. In fact, regular use can strengthen your hair and even help prevent split ends and breakages.	Botanical extract of chamomile: See left.
Red clover: Used topically to promote healthier-looking skin and hair.	Red clover: See left
Comfrey: Rich in minerals and B vitamins.	Comfrey: See left
Canadian Balsam: Made from the resin of the balsam fir tree which provides the product with its viscosity.	Canadian Balsam: See left
Surfactant derived from vegetable oil:Designed to reduce the surface tension between water and other liquids.	Sunflower (Helanthus Annus) Extract: When used in hair care, due to its rich polyphenol and vitamin E content, it protects hair color. It also helps provide a photo-protective seal around hair shafts from splits, therefore enhancing the sheen of your hair and promoting healthier-looking hair.
Kosher Vegetable Glycerin: A component of fat or oil which has been used since1857 in the Western World.	Witch Hazel Leaf Extract: An extract of the leaves of Hamamelisviginiana that is often used in aftershave lotions.
Cetyl Betaine (Natural fatty methyl esters):Used to thicken shampoo and stabilize foam.	Cetyl Alchohol (coconut oil): Used as a foam boosting surfactant.
Surfactant derived from glucose: Helps oil and water to mix so the two will not separate - resulting in a smooth, stable shampoo.	Natural Thickening Agent derived from cellulose: Keeps conditioner from being too runny.
Triticum Vulgare (wheat) protein: Obtained from wheat germ, this is a light yellow or reddish oil which offers conditioning, moisturizing, and helps your hair retain its moisture and overall appearance.	Natural conditioner derived from Guar Gum:Extracted from the guar bean. It is a natural thickener.
Citric acid: A non-toxic pH adjuster and foam stabilizer.	Vanilla fruit extract: A source of polyphenols which exhibit antioxidant activity.
Natural peppermint oil: Helps soothe skin.	Vanilla Planifolia Fruit Oil: Perhaps the hottest new substance in the international skin care industry. This plant is tucked away on the tiny island of Madagascar and is known for holding promise for exceptional skin rejuvenation.
Sorbic acid: A natural-based preservative which protects the balance of shampoo.	Aloe barbadensis Leaf Juice: More commonly known as aloe vera, this liquid is known to soothe skin.
Natural Vitamin E: Far superior to synthetic vitamin E due to its higher potency. It does a far better job of promoting more resilient-looking skin.	Citric Acid: A naturally occurring organic acid used as a gentle way to adjust pH down.
Grapefruit Seed Extract: A liquid derived from seeds, pulp, and white membranes of grapefruit.
Mentha Piperita (Peppermint) Oil: One of the most popular tonic herbs known to modern men and women.

Take a moment to check out the chart above and then compare the ingredients with the veritable witch’s brew of potentially carcinogenic ingredients and contaminants found in those you’ll find at your local salon and supermarket shelves. You’ll see that myVolumizing Shampoo and Revitalizing Conditioner gives you all the goodness without the potentially negative effects.

You won’t find any of the nasty toxins commonly found in shampoos such as Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, parabens, Ethylene oxide, DEA, MSG, or propylene glycol.

But you will find a shampoo that, with continued usage improves your hair’s texture and strength without stripping away essential oils. In fact, this invigorating and purifying formula helps to eliminate build-up from your hair and scalp, and encourages healthy-looking hair, leaving your hair looking thicker, fuller, and shinier.

How does my shampoo and conditioner manage to moisturize without stripping your hair? It all boils down to the fact that the ingredients are designed to nourish and strengthen your hair, while gently cleansing away impurities and toxins--providing your hair with the natural conditioning and healthy-looking results it deserves.

It reconstructs damaged hair… adds noticeable volume and shine… moisturizes… radically reduces the appearance of split ends… and shields your hair from damage due to the environment, and chemical treatments, without weighing your hair down.

So why not give your hair the best world-class ingredients today so you can enjoy naturally healthy-looking hair?

Volumizing Shampoo and Revitalizing Conditioner is gentle enough on hair for daily use. It will boost shine by nourishing your scalp, and leave your hair feeling healthier . And because it’s free of parabens and sulfates, it’s also one of the safest products to use on stressed or damaged hair that has undergone any chemical treatment.