Can breast cancer go into remission if left alone?

Hello bOObs Bloggettes:

I was so thankful to discover this in the book “Busting Breast Cancer”:  A significant number of invasive breast cancers (BC), if left undetected by mammography, might disappear on their own. The authors of a 2008 study said their research concluded that “…the possibility that the natural course of some screen-detected invasive breast cancers is to spontaneously regress.”  This of course led to much back-and-forth squabbling in the citation’s comments section.

A surprising number of the patients I interviewed for my film — after divulging to their doctors that alternative medical treatments had put them into remission — were met with “Oh, then it must have spontaneously regressed” or (my personal favorite) “You probably never had cancer in the first place.” The former comment would lead one to believe that doctors know darn well that spontaneous remission is plausible and hence pull out that argument when it benefits any debate. The latter comment is just obnoxious — and it makes you wonder how many patients are treated needlessly following a misdiagnosis of cancer.

The bad news, despite other research citing spontaneous remission plausibility, is that women are instead being treated for all BCs found (surgery, radiation and/or chemo) including early stages. We will look at how thermography could be used to help these women avoid treatment (e.g., over-treatment) below.

The author of the above book, Susan Wadia-Ells, PhD, does a good job including medical literature citations for reference. While I had found research concluding it was difficult to know for sure how many women’s BC would eventually become invasive, Dr. Wadia-Ells found citations that I had yet to stumble upon regarding the over-diagnosis and over-treatment of invasive BC.

The precancerous Stage 0 DCIS we have discussed at great length in other blogs. But the fact that there are a number of citations speculating on the amount of over-treated invasive BC (that’s Stage 1B and higher) is another story — for these women are almost always hurried into treatment for cancers which might reverse on their own if not detected first via screening.

What’s really astounding is that Stage 0 and 1 cancers together represent 275,000 BC per year (for 2017), equating to about 63% of all BC — and the earlier the cancer is found, the easier it is to reverse through lifestyle changes (and oftentimes the conventional treatment of surgery, if the woman choses that route).

I’m sure some of you are out there are thinking: Yeah, but I want to know if I have breast cancer so I can treat it as early as possible through the wonders of Modern Medicine. But think about this: We’re talking about cancer that’s already labeled “invasive.” So even lower grade tumors (e.g., Stage 1B) taken out via lumpectomy or mastectomy run a risk of the cancer having already escaped (that’s why it’s “invasive”) — making it capable of seeding a new cancer elsewhere in the body. This is why they also throw toxic treatments like radiation and chemo at patients in addition to surgery, which are in and of themselves carcinogenic to the patient (really makes no sense, does it?).

Wouldn’t it be better if women tracked inflammation and invasive tumors via thermography (see previous blog) and then tried to reverse them with lifestyle changes first to avoid all those life-altering, harmful treatments in hopes that they might spontaneously regress on their own (with a little help from non-invasive treatments)?

BOTTOM LINE: We have discussed in a previous blog how mammography might be nudging the precancerous Stage 0 DCIS to turn into invasive cancer via its radiation and inflammation from breast compression, etc. Then we talked about how the literature is now discussing a possible “Watch and Wait” program for these women vs. immediate treatment. However, invasive BC patients (along with DCIS) may also be able to “Watch and Wait” using thermography as a tool to track the tumor’s progression or remission (again, via lifestyle changes, etc.) — instead of the patient running to needless treatment(s) that may induce cancer years later due to their carcinogenic properties.

FYI: A doctor and cancer researcher I interviewed said flatly, “Cancer is big business.”  Indeed it is! Consider this: Lumpectomies alone generate the BC industry some $10 Billion (with a “B”) in annual revenue and mammography is $8 Billion (again, another “B”). So changing this paradigm won’t be easy — but together we are strong, ladies!

Blog at you soon, thanks for reading and helping to spread the word!  (Please see the “share” links below.)  And we’d love to hear comments from you! (see below as well)

Stay healthy,

Megan

Megan Smith, M.S.
Director, bOObs: The War on Women’s Breasts

waymarkproductions.com