Faced with new research suggesting that mammography is ineffective and even harmful, more women are choosing thermography coupled with ultrasound as a safe, preventive alternative, says Patricia Bowden-Luccardi, a certified clinical thermography technician with Breast Thermography International.

“Two major studies recently published in the British Medical Journal and the New England Journal of Medicine have shown that mammograms actually have done little to reduce late-stage cancer, and that up to half of all ‘early’ diagnoses have not saved a life, but instead led to over-diagnosis and therefore overtreatment,” she says. Another study in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine shows that decades of screening have not reduced breast cancer mortality. “This is even in the face of millions of new and supposedly early-stage or stage-zero cancers being diagnosed, which inflate survival rates,” she says.

Christiane Northrup, MD, has warned that “getting regular mammograms is actually more harmful because you are subjecting your healthy breasts to cancer-causing radiation.” In fact, the lowerdose radiation used in mammography has been shown to be up to three or four times more carcinogenic than high-dose radiation, Bowden-Luccardi says. “An alternative to radiation is thermography coupled with ultrasound,” she says. “Thermography is radiation free and painless. It has the ability to detect problems early enough to use preventive measures, rather than detecting disease at a stage where treatment is imminently required.”

Breast Thermography International, 250 Park Ave. 7th Floor, is offering $50 off one exam of choice. For more information, call 518.929.7579 or visit BTIScan.com.