Posted by Dr. Guberman on 4/1/2013 to
Latest Nutritional News
Wouldn't it be great if medical science discovered a way to detect breast cancer much sooner and more accurately and best of all without having to have your breast painfully compressed via a mammogram?
Early breast cancer detection can significantly improve survival rates. However, current diagnostic tests expose women to the potentially harmful effects of radiation - and often fail to detect cancer in the earliest stages.
Well I have good news, researchers from Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, Georgia Tech, Emory University and the University of Ulm in German have discovered that a screening breath test can find cancer even before a mammogram can.
In other words the mammogram can be negative for several years before cancer shows up, yet the breath test can be positive much earlier. Furthermore, because it is more sensitive than a mammogram, their research showed that if the breath test is negative you don't need a mammogram.
In fact a negative breath test is superior to a mammogram, which has many false positives and makes women go through unnecessary biopsies, worry, expense, and associated surgical/ anesthesia risks.
So what is this breath test measuring?
Well a patient breathes into a tube which has an absorbent pad which captures a breath sample. The contents are then analyzed to see which chemicals are present. As a patient breathes into the device, these compounds are trapped and examined by a sensor. Specific patterns in the compounds are then found and used to confirm the presence or absence of breast cancer.
The breath test distinguished between women with breast cancer and healthy volunteers with a sensitivity of 94.1 percent.
The experimental test measures organic compounds expelled from the lungs and identifies the ones linked to breast cancer. The two chemicals that are measured are called alkanes and methylalkanes.
It is well documented that biopsies of women with breast cancer have far more environmental chemicals like pesticides, toxins from auto and industrial exhaust, plasticizers from our foods and air, heavy metals and other foreign chemicals.
These chemicals called volatile organic compounds (VOCs)are becoming a global epidemic and are found in a growing number of people.
These VOCs continually stockpile until we get a disease. As chemicals build up in the body, they create free radicals that eat holes in cell membranes. The consequences of destroying the cell membrane produces the chemicals, alkanes and methylalkanes.
The great news is that we can measure these chemicals and VOCs and specific nutrient deficiencies caused by this exposure. Based on this information you and your doctor will have the power to reverse the damage by correcting the deficiencies and getting rid of the cancer-causing chemicals in your body.