Last year I blogged about the importance of receiving Lymph Drainage Therapy on the breast tissue as a measure of breast cancer prevention. Depending on your health care provider, the only measure of detection of cancer offered is a mammogram and you wait until 40 or 50 years old. Getting a mammogram before 40 may not be very clear because younger breast tissue is more dense due to hormonal fluctuations. The only problem is that more and more women are getting breast cancer BEFORE they are 40…sometimes before 30. And the women getting breast cancer don’t necessarily have a family history of it. I could speculate on why this is, but that is not the point of this blog.
Having this knowledge, and no one to do Lymph Drainage Therapy on my breasts, I decided to get a breast thermography done. If you don’t have know what it is, here is a link that explains it for you: http://www.breastthermography.com.
I thought that since I am 37, I would have no issues and just wanted to see what it would show. I was shocked when it came back with some results that were a little off. In fact, I freaked out a little. I really did not expect anything to be wrong.
After talking with the breast thermographer, my mind was a little more at ease. The thermography was recommending that I get a breast ultrasound just to be sure that the areas of heat were nothing to be concerned about. I called my primary care physician and had several back on forth conversations. Basically the only way they were going to let me have a breast ultrasound was to get a mammogram first.
I have decided to get another thermogram in 6 months after working with a naturopath to figure out if there are any hormonal imbalances and try to correct them. I was pretty sad that I was denied the ultrasound, but have no control or say when it comes to health insurance and I am pretty sure to pay for an ultrasound out of pocket may put me in a significant amount of debt.
I wanted to share this with you because by doing preventive measures like receiving breast lymph drainage, even if there are no issues and getting routine thermograms starting in your twenties, you could prevent having cancer and all of the emotional and financial burdens that cancer brings. Breast lymph drainage on healthy breast tissue is fairly quick and can be incorporated into an hour massage. If you want this, you will need to complete the release form. I also recommend Boston Thermography for the thermogram. It is not covered by insurance, but in my humble opinion, it is worth every penny.
Please contact me if you have any questions.
